Wake Up That Back Row! Interactive Library Instruction Without Hands-On Student Computers

Abstract

A review of education literature reveals a pedagogical shift away from linear, step-by-step, instruction toward a fostering of critical thinking and information literacy through active student participation. This conceptual change reflects advances toward cooperative and participatory learning in education. In addition to the students learning more when they are engaged and thinking, we are invigorated as instructors and our tendency toward burnout is reduced or alleviated. This article discusses how those bibliographic instructors who only have one teaching computer in the instruction room can involve the students in their own learning. The author shares ways to conduct a fifty-minute bibliographic instruction session in which all of the students are intellectually engaged in the research process, actively participate in the problem solving of on-line searching, and have fun in a library. Once the students are given agency in the bibliographic instruction session, they begin to develop the critical thinking skills essential to mastering the tools and methods of library research.

Key Words:

• Bibliographic instruction
• teaching methods
• active learning
• student-centered learning
• cooperative learning
• critical thinking
• computer based instruction
• information literacy