Description
Book SynopsisThe “first-year experience” is an emerging hot topic in academic libraries, and many librarians who work with first-year students are interested in best practices for engaging and retaining them. Professional discussion and interest groups, conferences, and vendor-sponsored awards for librarians working with first-year students are popping up left and right. A critical aspect of libraries in the first-year experience is effective information literacy instruction for first-year students. Research shows that, despite growing up in a world rife with technology and information, students entering college rarely bring with them the conceptual understandings and critical habits of thinking needed for finding, evaluating, and ethically using information in both academic and real-world contexts. Faculty in upper-level courses expect students to learn about the research process in their first year of college, and instructors in the first-year curriculum expect librarians to teach this to their students. Despite all this, designing, teaching, and evaluating effective information literacy instruction specifically for first-year students is not necessarily intuitive for instruction librarians. That is why Teaching First-Year College Students: A Practical Guide for Librarians is a comprehensive, how-to guide for both new and experienced librarians interested in planning, teaching, and assessing library instruction for first-year students. The book: ·Examines the related histories of library instruction and first-year experience initiatives ·Summarizes and synthesizes empirical research and educational theory about first-year students as learners and novice researchers ·Establishes best practices for engaging first-year students through active learning and inclusive teaching ·Features excerpts from interviews with a number of instruction librarians who work with first-year students in a range of positions and instructional contexts ·Includes examples of activities, lesson plans, and assessment ideas for first-year library instruction for common first-year course scenarios ·Includes a template to use for library instruction lesson planning Written by a library instruction coordinator with a graduate degree in First-Year Studies and a first-year instruction librarian, Teaching First-Year College Students: A Practical Guide for Librarians is the first comprehensive, how-to guide for both new and experienced librarians interested in planning, coordinating, teaching, and assessing library instruction for first-year students.
Trade ReviewThis book is a welcome addition to the growing literature on First-Year Experience (FYE) librarianship as it provides helpful tips, advice and strategies for building an FYE librarian's program from instruction to outreach services. Readers will develop a better understanding of the information seeking behaviors and needs of incoming first year students. -- Raymond Pun, Academic Librarian, Alder Graduate School of Education and Co-Editor of ACRL's The First-Year Experience Library Cookbook (2017)
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Focusing on the First Year Chapter 2: Getting to Know the Novice Researcher Chapter 3: Examining the Landscape of First-Year Library Instruction Chapter 4: Preparing to Teach Chapter 5: Planning Your Instruction Chapter 6: Engaging Students in the Classroom Chapter 7: Designing Instructional Materials Chapter 8: Teaching First-Year Students Online Chapter 9: Seeing Assessment as a Learning Process Chapter 10: Forecasting What’s Next for First-Year Instruction Appendix: Lesson Planning Template
