Little Did I Know
2025-12-13
Christopher V. Hollister
Christopher Hollister, co-founder and co-editor-in-chief, reflects on his time with CIL in this farewell editorial.
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Communications in Information Literacy
- Publisher:
- —
- ISSN:
- 1933-5954
- Category:
- INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE
- Impact factor:
- 0.9
Feed status
9 parsed articles
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Latest articles
“‘What is one takeaway you've gotten from this learning experience?’ Analyzing Student Reflections on Introductory Information Literacy Instruction”
2025-12-13
Amanda Nichols Hess et al.
Reflection is a useful pedagogical tool for both learners in instructional settings and educators seeking to offer meaningful experiences; in this article, a group of academic librarians use the former to engage with the latter. We analyzed more than 830 first-year students’ responses to a reflection question posed at the conclusion of library instruction over the course of the 2023–2024 academic year with a specific eye to the concepts that were and were not resonant, as well as whether there were common areas of confusion. We used a grounded theory approach to make sense of the data and allow ideas to emerge. Based on our analysis, students seemed to find concrete applications of the information literacy frame “Searching as Strategic Exploration” to be their most immediate takeaways, while other frames—such as “Authority Is Constructed and Contextual” and “Information Has Value”—seemed to be less important. We were able to use this large-scale qualitative data set to more comprehensively understand students’ engagement with and meaning derived from these interactions. Better understanding what did—and did not—matter to our students can help us to be more effective instructors and to create more authentic learning experiences.
The Library Instructor as Learner: A Survey of Reflective Teaching Practices in US Academic Libraries
2025-12-13
Alicia G. Vaandering et al.
Reflective practice provides library workers with a critical opportunity to examine professional experiences, question assumptions and approaches, explore new perspectives, and develop innovative solutions to existing problems. When applied to instruction as reflective teaching, this practice better situates library instructors to meet the evolving needs of twenty-first-century library users. This research study explores how library workers engage with reflective teaching in academic libraries across the United States. A survey was distributed to academic library communities, and a total of 153 responses were collected. While 92% of respondents reported participating in reflective teaching practice in a variety of instructional contexts, results indicated that respondents have utilized a broad range of methods for reflection and experienced numerous benefits and barriers. These diverse experiences suggest that library instructors see value in reflective work and would benefit from greater training and opportunities to participate in this practice.
"Some Level of Skill for Life": Secondary Teacher Librarians Supporting Student Information Literacy Skill Transfer Beyond Secondary School
2025-06-14
Kasey L. Garrison et al.
Students entering higher education are expected to transfer information literacy skills and knowledge developed through their primary schooling and sharpened in their secondary years. However, the constant evolution of the information landscape means the mastery of these skills presents challenges for students to develop and teachers to teach. Through interviews, this phenomenological study examines the perspectives and practices of 19 Australian secondary teacher librarians supporting student information literacy skill transfer in school and life contexts and considers important changes in the teaching of these skills. Findings suggest time and content overload are preventing integration across subjects and limiting students’ ability to apply skills in real world situations. Further, participants identified changes in important ethical issues around information like copyright and intellectual property, especially for students entering university. Potential solutions to these challenges include the adoption of whole-school or state-wide approaches to information literacy and partnerships with secondary schools and universities.
Exploring Positional Knowledge: Using Theory To Teach Bias
2025-06-14
Thomas C. Weeks et al.
In this article, the authors explain how librarians can use positionality theory to understand how students produce value judgments around questions of bias, authority, and credibility. Librarians can help guide students to recognize the student’s own positionality when approaching issues of bias. Students are often instructed to choose credible sources for their research, which they often interpret as sources that avoid bias. Source evaluation tools and checklists, such as the CRAAP test and SIFT, also tell students to watch out for biased language. Unfortunately, many people, students and librarians alike, misunderstand bias and fail to recognize its significance in the information search process. Positionality theory, which locates individuals within their social context, offers librarians a way to conceptualize bias’s function in information literacy as a social construct in order to teach students about the complexity of bias.
Visual Literacy Instruction at Scale: Developing Asynchronous Learning Objects for First-Year Art and Design Students
2025-06-14
Jacqueline Huddle et al.
While learning modules are not new to academic librarianship, student-centered, asynchronous learning modules are an innovative approach not commonly considered within the academic librarianship literature. This article discusses the development and implementation of visual literacy asynchronous learning modules created by two librarians for a cohort of first-year studio art students. In creating these modules, the goal was to offer studio art students visual literacy instruction specific to their personal interests and future careers. Specifically, this article discusses the module design process and how student-centered learning can be incorporated into modules in order to offer deep learning opportunities.
Cognitive Apprenticeship Strategies for the Media Literacy Classroom
2024-12-13
Nate Floyd et al.
Inspired by the apprenticeship model of teaching and learning, two instructors report on their efforts to place current events at the center of a semester-long media and information literacy course. They discuss strategies to harness curiosity about contemporary topics (e.g., misinformation, climate change, algorithms, right-to-repair, blockchain, artificial intelligence, etc.), and create engagement-driven course content. The paper provides concrete examples of activities and assignments used to situate learning in real-world contexts and build students' confidence in navigating information independently. This case study offers insights for other educators seeking to apply cognitive apprenticeship principles to media and information literacy instruction.
Centering Relevance in Information Literacy Teaching and Learning
2024-12-13
Anne Jumonville Graf
The process of determining whether a source of information is relevant is multidimensional, dynamic, and subjective. This essay puts information science scholarship on relevance, including the process and nature of making relevance judgments, in conversation with models of teaching and learning information literacy. Teaching librarians are encouraged to recognize students’ relevance judgments as sites of reflection and instruction. This essay suggests a variety of ways librarians might do this, from re-thinking source evaluation methods to emphasizing the opportunities available at the source selection stage. The process of determining relevance is a practical site of reflective possibility and deserves greater attention in information literacy teaching and learning. Discussing relevance judgments can help students better understand and evaluate sources, reflect on their own and others’ perspectives and motivations, and create opportunities to discuss the impact of information systems.
Building on Strengths: A Collaborative, Asset-Focused Approach to Teaching Critical Information Literacy Skills
2024-12-13
Rebecca B. Penrose et al.
This article showcases an instructor–librarian collaborative model for teaching critical information literacy (CIL) skills in a higher education course by incorporating interactive workshops into a sequence of required course assignments. Using an asset-focused design, this assignment sequence allows students to first demonstrate their existing research strategies and then evaluate those strategies during workshop activities, applying the CIL principles they are learning. In this way, the approach recognizes students’ existing strengths and builds upon them, while emphasizing self-reflection opportunities and an intentional research focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and representation. Results from our one-year study are also highlighted. The suggested instructional strategies could be adapted to any course with research-related projects.