1) Number of participants?

41

2) Who was the audience for the class/workshop/activity?

This instruction session was designed for high school students enrolled in a two-week course centered on enacting social change through public policy.

3) Describe your experience planning with the instructor.

I met once with the LSC director to discuss expectations of the instruction session. A one-shot, 3-hour long session was requested. The final assignment of the course included a draft of an issue or policy brief on a topic of interest identified by the students. Students were divided into 4- or 5-person groups of similar topic interest. All topics were centered around an issue of social change. The groups were decided by the time of the instruction session.

The final project incorporated a visual element, so the librarian overseeing the Digital Design Studio created a guide to help students with the logistics of the creation of this element. The LSC director contacted and met with the director of the DDS separately; I was not involved in instruction regarding the visual element, and I was not requested to include this in the instruction.

The LSC director requested that the instruction session cover basic research principles, social science and policy resources, searching news sources, and citation management. She also requested I incorporate hands-on activities in the session.

4) What were your goals for the class/workshop/activity?

I sought to meet the goals requested by the LSC director: basic research principles, social science and policy resources, searching news sources, and citation management, while incorporating hands-on activities. The director and I also decided to not assume all students would have laptops.

I used a combination of the AASL Standards Framework for Learners and the ACRL Information Literacy framework as the basis for designing the lesson. I divided the lesson into three mini-lessons: finding information, organizing information, and evaluating information. All illustrative examples were grounded in the disciplines of social science and public policy.

Finding information

This part of the lesson addressed the frames Research as inquiry and Searching as strategic exploration, and the Standards Inquire across the domains of Think, Create, and Grow (Standards I/A, I/B, and I/D), and Explore across the domains of Share and Grow (Standards V/C, and V/D), and incorporated unstructured searching practice.

Organizing information

This part of the lesson addressed the frames Information has value and Scholarship as conversation, and the Standards Curate across the domains of Think, Create, Share, and Grow (Standards IV/A, IV/B, IV/C, and IV/D) and Engage across the domains of Create, Share, and Grow (Standards VI/B, VI/C, and VI/D), and incorporated a rigidly structured hands-on activity.

Evaluating information

This part of the lesson addressed the frames Authority is constructed and contextual and Information creation as a process, and Standards Collaborate across the domains of Share and Grow (Standards III/C and III/D), and the entirety of the domain of Share across all Standards (Standards I/C, II/C, III/C, IV/C, V/C, and VI/C), and incorporated a semi-structured hands-on activity.

I also created a Research Guide for the students that gathered relevant databases and other links.

5) Describe the session(s) and the logistics of any hands-on activities.

Because of the large number of students I wanted to minimize the amount of time I lectured at them, so large chunks of time were set aside for group and individual work.

The first mini-lesson covered both where to locate material in the Tisch Library, and also the mechanics of using library databases. Considering the age of the students I explicitly described the difference between Google and database search engines with the understanding that most students would have had no formal instruction on search techniques. The lecture was delivered using a PowerPoint slide deck, after which the students were given 30 minutes to “try it themselves.” The slide deck covered JumboSearch, topical databases, and Boolean operators. Many students asked to borrow laptops, and used them throughout the remainder of the lesson. A few students asked for help searching, thinking of synonyms, and finding physical holdings in the stacks. We debriefed shortly after the 30 minutes, during which some students expressed frustration at the difficulty of locating resources using the library database, and questioned why they couldn’t just use Google.

The second mini-lesson covered citations and citation managers. The lecture portion was delivered using a PowerPoint slide deck, after which students were given instructions for installing Zotero on their computers and an exercise sheet for using Zotero. The exercise sheet asked students to manually enter six citations into Zotero. Most students expressed confusion about the purpose of the exercise, and became frustrated. Computer issues exacerbated the situation as I was not prepared to address some of the errors that students encountered. No students finished the entire exercise. As a way to wrap up this portion of the lesson I showed students how to use Zotero to create a bibliography, but I did not get the “Aha!” moment that I had hoped for.

The final mini-lesson covered looking at one issue from many perspectives. (This was a modification of the Jigsaw activity Elliot outlined). There was no lecture portion to this part of the lesson. Students gathered into their project groups and each group received printouts of material related to the legalization of marijuana in Massachusetts. I attempted to gather material to cover as many types and perspectives as possible:

1. The Wikipedia page “Cannabis in Massachusetts”
2. A Boston Globe article about over-regulation of marijuana
3. A National Review article reviewing the book Tell your children: The truth about marijuana, mental illness, and violence
4. A “Statement of Concern” published by the Pediatricians, Mental Health and Addiction Clinicians & Scientists of Massachusetts
5. A vendor-sponsored article from The Portland Press Herald about cannabis in Massachusetts
6. An opinion article from the Journal of the American Medical Association about the legality of the use of medical marijuana
7. A law review article about the impact of the legalization of marijuana on search and seizure laws
8. A publication from the Cannabis Control commission describing the Commission’s code of ethics of their information campaign
9. A Boston Globe article about black market sales of marijuana despite its legalization

This activity was semi-structured in that the students were given free time to read the article and answer a number of questions about it, after which we regrouped and a spokesperson from each group led a discussion about their article. After each article was discussed I led a short discussion about how that article may be used or misused, and things for the students to consider if they had come across that article in their research.

6) What went well? What might you do differently next time?

I felt this lesson could have gone better. A few items that contributed to this feeling were:

• The length of time of the lesson. Three hours was too long to hold the students’ attention. Especially during the Zotero exercise, students were disengaged and frustrated. Some students used the free time of the last activity to play on their phone or socialize. This was unfortunate as it placed a burden on the other group members. I suggest that future iterations of this lesson be given over two 90-minute sessions if possible, or if it must remain a one-shot session that the length be shortened.
• The Zotero exercise. The Zotero exercise was poorly planned and poorly implemented. Aside from the computer issues, the instructions were not clear, incomplete, and only useful for PC users. The group was so large that some students inevitably advanced faster than others, and many students required help. In the future I would overhaul this exercise completely. I would make sure it explicitly ties to the lesson, give clearer instructions, and demonstrate a few examples before asking the students to do the exercises on their own.
• Room management. Room management was difficult because of the number of students, which caused the students to become distracted and hold side conversations. I found myself having to ask students to quiet down and listen to the speaker. They also needed to be told multiple times when to return to the room. Somewhat relatedly, the students did not show much respect for the space. A group of students used Tower Cafe for their group work, but they were very loud, and put their feet up on the couches. Also, the room was left a mess, with a number of toothpicks discarded on the floor and food wrappers left on the table.

Some things that worked well for this lesson were:

• Jigsaw exercise. The students were engaged and interested while doing the jigsaw exercise. I chose a topic for which it was possible to provide multiple viewpoints and types of documents. One of the groups received a lengthy, technical document about the medical benefits of marijuana. The students expressed exasperation at the length of the article, but were calmed when I instructed them to read the article in the context of the exercise sheet. I believe the nature of the topic contributed positively to the students’ engagement. However, because I had to wait until the lesson began to see if every student would have access to a laptop (depending on how many were available and how many students would need to borrow one), each student received a hard-copy of their group’s article. A student commented that this seemed like a waste of paper. For future iterations of this exercise I would explore ways to use less paper.
• Unstructured free time. The first portion of the lecture ended with 30 minutes of unstructured free time. It was good to do this early in the lesson because the students were motivated to work on their material. If the free time were given at the end of the lesson, the students may have used it as an opportunity to take a break from their work.