There are countless ways to partner with Library faculty members in order to teach students how to do college-level research well; these approaches also instill the skills and habits of mind for lifelong learning. You'll find a number of approaches here, ranging from fairly passive to more active. These approaches can be used separately or in combination. Please contact any librarian to discuss further. This kind of work is the core of what we do and we are here to help you and your students!
On your syllabus:
Working with a library faculty member:
In addition to the resources on this page, you will want to consult the following two guides for ideas and philosophies behind teaching research to students.
The library's support for student learning embraces classroom learning, individual consultations, the design of the library's physical and virtual spaces, and the curation and discovery of resources.
We seek to develop students’ understanding of information: where it comes from, how it circulates, how it can be interpreted, and how it can be created.
We foster students' disposition to inquire ethically and with an open mind in order to actively participate in the world as free human beings.
Our teaching is a collaboration with faculty in all departments and programs. While this kind of learning occurs in courses and experiences across campus, the library faculty strives to ensure all students have the opportunity to develop a nuanced understanding of information.
See the library's assessment plan.
Information literacy means understanding how information in its many forms is produced and circulated, how to interrogate it critically, and how to create new meaning ethically and with integrity.
Inspired by the Association of College and Research Libraries' Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.
Library instruction sessions are
We are happy to meet with your students more than once. We’ve had notable success teaching multiple sessions for a single course, especially if students are doing advanced research and/or are struggling to find sources.
Feel free to contact your department liaison to talk further. To see if one our labs is available, view the library's instruction calendar.
When's the best time to bring students in for a session? Right when they pick topics or later?
Where do the session(s) happen?
How far in advance should I schedule the session?
There are six of you. Who should I contact for a session(s)?
If I ask you for a session(s), aren’t I just adding to your workload?
Should I plan on being at the session(s)?
The library faculty is committed to ensuring that every student develops sophisticated research skills and attitudes. While traditional library instruction sessions help students in specific classes learn the tools and skill to help them accomplish research tasks, the approach doesn't target all students. Many students graduate without more than one or two library sessions. Others express frustration that they've had over a dozen instruction sessions during their time at Gustavus and feel the approach is repetitive. We seek to help all Gustavus students develop information literacy skills that will help them pursue lifelong learning and make them informed citizens.
We will work with every department to help articulate the specific research skills and habits of mind we want students to have upon graduation. Using assessment data collected by both the departments or programs and the library, we can identify student research strengths and weaknesses and create approaches to instruct students in systematic and comprehensive ways. This approach insures that all students graduate prepared to gather, evaluate, synthesize and produce information in whatever field they pursue.
Our most developed approach on campus has been a semester-long library lab as part of POL 200: Analyzing Politics. The lab grew out of a collaboration between Chris Gilbert & Kate Knutson in Political Science and Julie Gilbert in the Library. Assessment data indicate that the lab has a high impact on student research skills, both during the time students are taking POL 200 and later in the major. While this is just one possible approach, the lab can be tailored to fit other disciplines and is scalable for other departments and programs.
Please contact any of the library faculty to discuss research in your discipline further.