Faculty: Margaret Gehring, Nancy Knop from Department of Physical Education
Librarian: Joy He, Beeghly Public Services Librarian
Proposal Overview
This proposal describes a continuation of the 4-tiered project to promote information literacy
throughout the physical education major that our department started last year. Two classes in the
major were not amended last year -one because it was not offered and one because the faculty member
did not buy into the literacy proposal. Another class was amended (PE 374) but the focus of that
course is being changed this year. The focus of this proposed project is to reconstruct these three
courses to be consistent with the departmental literacy goal of embedding and supporting strong
information literacy components within the current course pedagogies. It will include instruction
in the classroom and class tasks, some of which will be supported by Web-based examples and
tutorials, and sessions in the library and computer lab. These courses and the information literacy
initiatives will also be supported by E-Res.
The primary focus of the proposal is to create tasks that allow students to actively engage in
the course content using emerging and newly developed information literacy skills. These tasks
will address student understanding of how, for example, different political and social issues
impact sport and the perception of sport in our society and the reverse - how sport influences our
perceptions of our society. Students will engage in tasks designed to teach them how to find and
evaluate the information that is found. Further, these courses will guide students to critically
analyze related course content by creating a written and verbal presentation that convincingly
documents sides of an issue and supports an argument for action. The presentation tasks are more
terminal projects and will be created through a series of smaller tasks designed to give students
feedback and guidance on the process of researching and communicating their findings in a meaningful
way. This will be a primary focus of this project since these courses are usually taken later in the
student's career in the physical education major. A further purpose of this proposed project is to
model good, dynamic information literacy based education to future professionals so they will have
templates in their minds of what good instruction of this content should look like. A final purpose
is to create a fun, dynamic, challenging courses that are composed of a synchronous weave of
information literacy and content concepts specific to our discipline.
While this grant is proposed for Physical Education major courses, we hope to make the information
literacy skill support materials created for these courses available to all physical education
faculty and students via links on our departmental WWW pages. Further, all materials, links,
strategies, and tasks supporting the information literacy project within the health class will be
created as support pages on a virtual physical education information literacy course on E-Res. In
this way, once the information literacy project is over the results will continue to exist and be
amended to encourage continued information literacy skill development within the physical education
and health curriculum.
All courses proposed in this project are Tier 3 courses. The following information literacy goals
were determined this past year for Tier 3 courses and include: continued use of E-Res applications,
application and critique of discipline specific hard copy and online resources, ability to transfer
knowledge into original questions to support further research, and ability to communicate these
findings in a verbal and written form.
Timeline for the Project
- Determine a priority of information literacy skills that will best enhance information literacy
and content learning across student's experiences in the major via these three courses.
- Determine information literacy-to-content relationships for each course in this project to
create best fit for what information literacy skills appropriate in each course.
- Examine individual course content to determine how to best weave meaningful information
literacy issues throughout them.
- Determine delivery methods (teaching, activities, projects, and support) appropriate for
learning/applying information literacy skills in each course.
- Design information literacy skills appropriate for each course.
- Design accountability system to support information literacy skills and content learning in
each course.
- Design a programmatic assessment plan to evaluate student information literacy learning in each
course and across the major.
Phase 1 -Summer 2002
- Predict which information literacy issues will be most important for each class.
- Meet 1-2 times with librarian to brainstorm information literacy issues and how to
pedagogically weave them into course content.
- Create this work into an outline, lesson plan and support pages to be placed on E-res pages
archived for the following semester
Phase 2 - Fall 2002
- Teach fall courses in the project with the support of library liaison.
- Conduct regular meetings with individual instructor and library liaison to discuss and
document changes for remaining semester.
- Document these needed changes so changes will be made for subsequent semesters.
Phase 3 - Early and Late Fall 2002
- Pre-testing of students' information literacy knowledge using survey generated for each tier of
courses.
- Embed several information literacy-based but content specific questions in all course tests.
- Post-testing of students' information literacy knowledge (tier survey).
- Conduct focus group interviews of representative sample from each course to get student
perspective on the information literacy skills embedded in the course.
Phase 4 - End of fall semester
- Review changes for course taught in spring semester.
- Reflect on fall courses and student feedback to fall courses.
- Make edits to support pages and individual course syllabi and supporting materials.
Phase 5 - Spring 2003
- Teach spring course in the project with the support of library liaison.
- Conduct regular meetings with individual instructor and library liaison to discuss and
document changes for remaining semester.
- Document these needed changes so changes will be made for subsequent semesters.
Phase 6 - Early and Late Spring, 2003
- Pre-testing of students' information literacy knowledge using survey generated for each tier of
courses.
- Embed several information literacy-based but content specific questions in all course tests.
- Post-testing of students' information literacy knowledge (tier survey).
- Conduct focus group interviews of representative sample from each course to get student
perspective on the information literacy skills embedded in the course.
Phase 7 - End of spring semester
- Review changes for course taught in spring semester.
- Reflect on fall courses and student feedback to fall courses.
- Make edits to support pages and individual course syllabi and supporting materials.
Estimated amount of time for faculty member
Phase 1: (early summer, 2002): _5 hrs X 2 faculty/staff= 10 hrs
Phase 2: (fall, 2002) _10 hrs X 2 faculty/staff= 20 hours
Phase 3: (fall, 2002 ) _ 5 hrs X 2 faculty/staff= 10 hours
Phase 4: (end of semester)_ 5_hrs X 2 faculty = 10 hours
Phase 5: (end of fall/spring, 2003 ) 5_hrs X 1 faculty/staff= 5 hours
Phase 6 (Spring 2003) 5_hrs X 1 faculty/staff= 5 hours
Phase 7 (End of Spring 2003) 5_hrs X 1 faculty/staff= 5 hours
Total hours = 65 hours
Specific goals for task construction that will allow active learning
Some of the goals for information literacy that will be embedded and weaved into many of the
other physical education major's courses are listed below with some specific examples of topics
for the tasks.
Goals
- Identify different types of resources to find relevant info. (i.e. finding and evaluating
health or fitness assessment instruments, for example: BMI, skinfold, underwater body fat testing,
Waist/Hip ratio or determining how to assess people - practices, protocols).
- Know when to use each type of resource (i.e., obtaining info on very specialized methods for
example, why use BMI - why is it so frequently used?).
- Find resources using various tools - online catalogue and search engines. For example, learning
and using advanced search techniques and make use of on-line journals
- Evaluate sources of information (books, journals, WWW, popular media sources), for example how to
integrate different types of resources in writing a research paper (when are peer reviewed
articles used, when are popular media articles appropriate?).
- Understand how to effectively make an argument incorporating evidence obtained through library
research. For example, write a clear and compelling argument while appropriately bringing in
relevant evidence or delivering a clear and compelling argument in speech - forum, roundtable,
panel, deliver a lesson to high school students.
- Appropriately using citations in writing and speaking
- Locating and evaluating www sites on health topics
- Choosing topics for papers, how to begin research
Strengths of this Approach to Information Literacy Instruction.
The proposed system of instruction for physical education and health students has several
advantages over the current system of instruction.
- The several phases of the project allows time for both the instructor and librarian to reflect
on what was learned in the attempt to embed information literacy into the course. Following that
changes based on what was learned can be made to ensure success of the project.
- The use of ERES pages to support information literacy with the course offers an asynchronous
method of supporting student learning of both the information literacy and content issues. These
further support the deep embedding of information literacy issues within the course after the
project is over.
- Team planning and teaching of the information literacy embedded course content by the librarian
and instructor should provide a more seamless integration of information literacy into the course.
It will allow better support for students as they leave the class and enter the library. It will
also allow for better construction and communication of class tasks and uses of campus and CONSORT
resources.
- Each of the embedded information literacy class tasks will allow students to practice
information literacy skills with the content immediately after the information literacy skill is
addressed. Further, many of the information literacy tasks will build on each other allowing
students multiple opportunities for practice, critique, and feedback on their decisions.
- Several times in the semester, students will complete tasks, which guide them to evaluate,
organize, and integrate information from a number of sources. From here students will be asked to
communicate verbally and in written form both the process of finding and weighing the value of the
information and what was learned from it.
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