Inquiry-Based Learning in LIS Education: Enacting SOTL

Muzhgan Nazarova, Ph.D. CandidateBertram Bruce, Professor

Ann Bishop, Associate ProfessorGraduate School of Library and Information Science

Teaching and

Learning

Discovery

Integration

Engagement

Scholarship

(1) What is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL)?

(2) What is inquiry?

(3) How can we bring an inquiry approach to LIS education?

(4) How do students respond?

Outline

(1) Scholarship of Teaching

Thinking about teaching begins where all intellectual inquiry begins, with questions about what is going on and how to explain, support, and replicate answers that satisfy us. With the blurring of the boundaries that we have long drawn between faculty roles in research and teaching- and a growing recognition of their common intellectual patterns of questioning, exploring, testing and professing-a new phrase has emerged, challenging the stereotypes and calling for further amplification: “the scholarship of teaching.”

- Bender & Gray, 1999

1998The Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) is established including three components: The Pew National Fellowship Program for Carnegie Scholars; The Teaching Academy Campus Program; Working with Scholarly and Professional Societies.

1990 Ernest Boyer proposes abandoning the old paradigm of

research versus teaching for the new paradigm: faculty should be engaged in the scholarship of discovery, integration, application and teaching

1997 “Scholarship Assessed” takes the academy through a process for setting standards of scholarly work, documenting scholarship, developing trust in the process and suggesting the qualities of a scholar

SOTL: Boyer’s Paradigm

Teaching and Learning

Discovery

Integration

EngagementScholarship

ScholarshipWe believe the time has come to move beyond the tired old "teaching versus research" debate and give the familiar and honorable term "scholarship" a broader, more capacious meaning, one that brings legitimacy to the full scope of academic work. Surely, scholarship means engaging in original research. But the work of the scholar also means stepping back from one's investigation, looking for connections, building bridges between theory and practice, and communicating one's knowledge effectively to students.  

- Boyer, 1990

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

… our experience… confirms that faculty do see teaching as significant intellectual activity. Thus, we learned that it isn’t necessary to create interest in the investigation of teaching and learning issues, merely to unleash it… A scholarship of teaching and learning may have greater potential to improve teaching than any teaching initiative in at least the last third of a century… Every person who supports change can become a leader effecting it. Many faculty members have long ached for change that elevates teaching.

- Thompson, 2003

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

An act of intelligence or artistic creation becomes scholarship when it possesses at least three attributes: it becomes public, it becomes an object of critical review and evaluation by members of one’s community, and members of one’s community begin to use, build upon, and develop those acts of mind and creation.

- Shulman, 1999

SOTL: Characteristic Features

• It reflects the natures, values, fundamental concepts and modes of enquiry specific to the discipline

• It considers learning assessments and outcomes • It inquires into the effectiveness of aims and research

into teaching and learning • It responds to the need for continuous improvement

resulting from reflection and inquiry • It communicates new questions and knowledge about

teaching and learning

- Trigwell et al., 2000

SOTL at UIUC

• Member of AAHE/Carnegie Foundation Academy Campus Program;• Member of the Research University Consortium for the Scholarship

of Teaching and Learning (RUCASTL);• Two Carnegie scholars on campus: Vernon Burton (2000-2001)

and Michael Loui (2003-2004);• Active in the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching

and Learning;• Part of Instructional Development area of the Center for Teaching

Excellence (CTE); • Teaching Advancement Board (TAB);• Provost Initiative for Teaching Advancement (PITA)-- through

Category 3 of the PITA grants, the Office of the Provost and TAB provide funding to faculty engaging in SOTL work;

• University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar Program through the Campus Curriculum for Instructional Excellence sponsored by TAB;

• Teaching Academies at different colleges

                                    

   

                                                               between the University Library and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, under the auspices of the Provost's Initiative on Teaching Advancement at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A theme: Promoting Scholarship of Teaching and Learning through Action Research in LIS

Topics of the events: • Student diversity: “Who are our students?”• What do we know about undergraduate learning? (Chip Bruce)• Effective Lecturing series• Learning Styles and Peer Observation (Faculty Retreat)• Teaching with Technology, Teaching in Electronic• Classroom, Exemplary Teaching (Lunchtime Symposiums)

Linda Smith – a UIUC Distinguished Teacher/Scholar Awardee; Teaching Alliance Presentation at June 2002 ALA session "Librarians in

the Big Leagues: Are You Ready for the Teaching Academy?"

What matters is not just what the disciplines can do for the scholarship of teaching and learning, nor even what the scholarship of teaching and learning can give back to the disciplines in return. What matters in the end is whether, through our participation in this new trading zone, students' understanding is deepened, their minds and characters strengthened, and their lives and communities enriched.

- Huber, 2002

Disciplinary Styles in SOTL

Teaching in LIS Education

Academic librarians now provide instruction on how to approach academic inquiry, to utilize a myriad of resources both print and electronic, and to critically analyze and incorporate the information gathered from these sources. More than ever, librarians are partners with discipline faculty and take a vital role in instruction. Rather than solely Librarians, we are also Instructor, Professor, Coordinator; we are teachers of information literacy.

- Meulemans & Brown, 2001

Learning and Teaching in LIS Education

The process of facilitating learning is a continuous one involving both the teacher and the learner in ongoing interaction. In some manner or other, virtually every librarian is involved in this process and it is an increasing role for the most positions…..The understanding of the entire learning/teaching process influences how we go about that training and how effective we are in its delivery.

ALA Task Force on Core Competencies Draft Statement

(2) What is Inquiry?

• Creating opportunities to engage people in active learning based on their own questions.

• A learner centered and learner driven process.

• A cycle where each question leads to an exploration which will then lead to more questions to investigate.

• The process of asking, investigating, creating, discussing, and reflecting, and then asking again.

Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL)

Inquiry-Based Learning is often described as a cycle or spiral, involving the formulation of a question, investigation, creation of an appropriate solution or answer, discussion and reflection on the outcome but in practice not all the steps I this cycle are necessary to be followed in sequence.

The Cycle of Inquiry

Problems of EducationLocated not in What we teach (content) or

How we teach (methods).

Instead, in the breakdowns between

lived experience and formal schooling;

community and academy; action and

understanding.

Need to re-visit the work of Jane Addams and John Dewey

Community Inquiry Labs (CIL)

• Collaborative activity around creating knowledge that is connected to people's values, history, and lived experiences;

• Open-ended, democratic, participatory engagement;

• Bringing theory and action together in an experimental and critical manner

(3) How can we bring an inquiry approach to LIS education?

Inquiry-based learning as an innovative method of instruction in LIS found its place in a field where dealing with inquiries on a daily basis is a major part of your work, providing more flexibility and developing and engaging in different communities of inquiry with people from all walks of life.

Community Inquiry (CI) in LIS

The goal of the CI track is to follow a pattern of user-centered services and resources in LIS; to address the needs of different communities; and to explore how different applications can foster collaborative knowledge in these communities.

The Community Informatics Initiative (CII)

Community Informatics (CI): Study and practice of enabling communities with information and communications technologies (ICTs).

Community Informatics Initiative (CII) works with people to develop information and communication technologies to achieve their goals. It fosters collaborations across campus, local, national and international communities. Together we build innovative community networks, community technology centers, software, and library services.

Core of the CII is Community Inquiry: collaborative action to create knowledge and technology connected to people's values, history, and lived experiences; the development of models of engagement that are just, democratic, participatory, and open-ended; and the integration of theory and practice in an experimental and critical manner.

Mission of the Community Information Corps: To prepare information professionals, through academic inquiry, practical engagement and professional development, for careers in community and public interest work.

CII Activities at GSLISTeaching & Learning: CI Track, CIC Corps, Journal of Community

Informatics;

Engagement: Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC), Digital East Saint Louis Collaborative, Libraries to Prisoners, HERMES-a Student Run Free Clinic;

Discovery: Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Participatory Design (PD), Reflective Action (RA), Collective Practice (CP);

Integration: Center for Global Studies (CGS), Ethnography of the University (EOTU) ,Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12), The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) , Institute of Genomic Biology, International Association of Educators (INASED).

http://www.digitalesl.org/modules/news/

https://hermes.navsaria.com http://ci-journal.net/index.php

http://www.prcc-chgo.org/afc_library.htm

http://www.cgs.uiuc.edu/

http://www.eotu.uiuc.edu/EOTUMODEL/

http://www.inased.org/

http://www.beespace.uiuc.edu/

Communityware: Prairienet, Inquiry Page, Inquiry Labs

http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/

http://www.prairienet.org/

http://inquiry.uiuc.edu

Community Inquiry Track at GSLIS

LIS 451: Introduction to Networked Systems LIS 490: Community Information Corps LIS 491: Literacy in the Information Age LIS 590 CI: Community Information Systems LIS 590 IBL: Inquiry-Based LearningLIS 590 SI: Social Informatics LIS 590 PT: Pragmatic TechnologyLIS 590 SJ: Social Justice in LIS (Fall 2005)LIS 591: Practicum

Inquiry Research Group (Spring 2006)CI Research Speaker Series (Spring 2005)

(4) How do students respond?

Pilot study:

Survey via email: 36 students taking Inquiry Based Learning (IBL), Social Justice (SJ), and Pragmatic Technology (PT) courses

Plans for the future:

Preliminary survey with 300 students in Introduction to Networked Systems (INS) course, followed by interviews with 20

Will Community Inquiry concepts be helpful in your career?

CIL concepts have already changed how I do things and we walk away from those courses with a lifetime of knowledge;

I am already seeing applications for the CIL in other settings. Dialogue, possible courses that bring together people from distant areas, the internship opportunities for students to share their experiences with others in similar but different settings are all aspects of the CIL that will be used. Any tool that can be tailored to the use by different groups, helping to achieve goals is valuable to me as professional;

One of the primary insights I gained in the IBL course which I have repeatedly observed in professional practice is the importance of the affective component in the research process;

The inquiry approach creates a wonderful opportunity to serve patrons by provide resources that can instill this approach in finding aids, electronic resources, as well as in instructional settings.  Also, I have found that as careers progress that development lies more and more on the individual.  IBL provided tools to allow me to develop my on plans for my continued development in areas that are of personal or professional interest.

What is a value of this class in LIS curriculum?

It is a course that brings Masters Level, PhD Level, and students from other disciplines together.  It was also powerful because of the iLab project to see members from other parts of the University Community come together with their variety of perspectives to the content and process of this course.  It was a practical way to see how information professionals must work with the styles of different disciplines.

How did using the inquiry-learning cycle help you to represent your ideas

and thoughts?I would say that the biggest thing that it did was to

give a structure to the process of inquiry, but then it also allowed for restructuring and rearranging, experimentation, etc.

I think the inquiry cycle is in general the learning cycle for me. To have the structure lets you feel through the part of the process you are currently in, and enable the focus of attention to the part of the cycle.

What do you think is appealing, potentially beneficial for LIS

education and practice?

The topics have a strong connection to LIS, but also have an appeal to other fields of study. To see that there are strong connections across disciplines in a valuable learning opportunity. I also think the topics in the track are ones that are often lost between the technical and traditional branches of LIS.

What was the value of a course to you?

This course (IBL) was very helpful in providing a theoretical frame and hands on tools for inquiry.  This is one of those courses that impacted me beyond my course work or position, but had implications into my personal life in providing frameworks for discovery and life long learning.

Students: on a positive note…

Keep moving forward, for I think these courses, track and area of study is exciting and puts focus to the sensitivities to many who enter the LIS professions. It gives them hope and a way by which they might be able to do work for a purpose.

Students: on a positive note…

When I think back on the course and compare it with others I've taken at GSLIS, the one word that comes to mind is "different." The primary value for me was that it was philosophically informed (Dewey and others) and was a "foundational" course in that it tried to make the students inquire into the topic of inquiry itself--how we learn, why, and what to do with what we learn. The course also focused  on questions concerning the "use" (and usefulness or not) of information and its impact on the community at large. These are significant questions that should be raised in all our classes. I also enjoyed the spirit of generosity that prevailed; often academics seem to be distributing knowledge/information (already prepackaged)instead of sharing it spontaneously. The first route is the safe one; the second one isn't, so I don't think the pedagogy used in the course is for everyone. Still, learning (change?)often occurs when the unfamiliar surfaces in occasions least expected.

[Inquiry is] the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole.

- Dewey, 1938

Conclusion

References

Bender, E. & Gray, D. (April 1999). The Scholarship of Teaching. Research & Creative Activity, XXII (1).

Boyer, E. (1990). Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate.  Princeton: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Dewey, J. (1938). Logic:The theory of inquiry. New York: Holt and Company.

Glassick, C., Huber, M. & Maeroff, G. (1997). Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Huber, M. & Morreale, S. (Eds.). (2002). Disciplinary Styles in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Exploring Common Ground. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education.

Hutchings, P. & Shulman, L. (September/October 1999).The Scholarship of Teaching: New Elaborations, New Developments. Change, 31 (5), 10-15.

References

Meulemans, Y. & Brown, J. (2001). Educating Instruction Librarians: A Model for Library and Information Science Education. Research Strategies, 18: 253-64.

Shulman, L. (July/August 1999). Taking Learning Seriously. Change, 31(4). 10-17.

Thompson, S. (2003). From two box lunches to buffets: Fulfilling the promise of the scholarship of teaching and learning. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 14(2), 119-134.

Trigwell, K, Martin, E., Benjamin, J. & Prosser, M.  (2000). Scholarship of Teaching: A Model.  Higher Education Research and Development, 19(2), 155-168.

Turgeon, W. (1998). Metaphysical horizons of philosophy for Children. Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy. Boston, MA August 10-15. http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Chil/ChilTurg.htm

or contact us with questions, ideas:

Ann Bishop: abishop@uiuc.eduChip Bruce : chip@uiuc.eduMuzhgan Nazarova: nazarova@uiuc.edu

http://www.cii.uiuc.edu/

For additional information please visit:

http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/cic