Cultivating a Community of Scholars: Crafting a Virtual Information Literacy Hub to Support Student Research

Abstract

This paper focuses on how one university library embarked on a journey to provide information literacy instruction when a change in curriculum altered the library’s role in a first-term research methods course. Enter the Scholarly Skills Community: a virtual learning landscape, consisting of more than 20 modules designed to fill gaps in information literacy and research skills. Embedded into the university’s learning management system, the Scholarly Skills Community is an interactive, asynchronous destination for users to cultivate new knowledge and earn micro-credentials on topics related to information literacy and scholarly writing.

Keywords:

• Information literacy
• academic libraries
• instruction
• instructional design

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the rest of the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences librarian team for work contributed to the Scholarly Skills Community project: Alexia Sheck, Eric Robinson, Esther Garcia, and Shaina Berlant. We’d also like to acknowledge Joel Rahn, our instructional design partner, and Hideki Nakazono, the director of the Writing Center and Tutoring Services.

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose.