Teaching information literacy and writing studies - Grace Veach 2018

Promoting self-regulated learning in the first-year writing classroom
Pedagogies and Practices

INTRODUCTION

Today’s students never knew a time when the digital environment was not available and have a reputation for having mastered the Internet. When they need to find information for assignments in a first-year writing course, however, students face a perfect storm. They are new to the conventions of the academic conversation, new to the sources available through an academic library, and new to the critical thinking needed to evaluate information for college work. Students are then asked to write about a topic that interests them without the help of their most familiar tool, Google. This challenge is even more daunting when students need to tie academic sources together for interdisciplinary issues.

A seemingly innocuous writing assignment could ask students to pick a current issue from the news; use eight sources (five of which must be scholarly) and explain how this issue affects them. Certainly such assignments engage students in an authentic situation, but consider how the granular nature of scholarly information fits into the broad issue of current events. If the student wants to discuss alternative fuel cars, academic sources may range from engineering studies of lithium batteries to case studies of consumer behaviors. Even a seemingly focused thesis such as the use of therapy dogs in treating PTSD patients could retrieve sources ranging from how these animals are trained and paired with clients to the effectiveness of this therapy. Additionally, students need to make significant links between information aimed toward a general reader when using newspapers or magazines and specialized articles from the scholarly community. Students in first-year writing courses are generally brought to the library for an introduction to the available materials and services. This collaboration can nurture their introduction to the academic conversation as well as demonstrate how to link a broad discussion from a general source to relevant academic sources in a variety of disciplines.

There are a number of choices to be made when bringing academic disciplines together: which database to use, how to evaluate the information, which source to select, and how to integrate information into their assignments. In order to navigate these choices, students need to become self-regulated learners (SRLs). They need to develop an awareness of the range of available search tools, the variety of available sources, the diverse criteria for evaluating the appropriateness of each source, the task at hand, and then how to select an appropriate tool and method of evaluating information to complete their assignment. Self-regulated learning provides a structure for consciously selecting search tools and evaluating the resources they locate. Appreciative inquiry (AI) provides an approach for nurturing confidence in identifying and evaluating alternatives as students develop a broader range of skills.

Rather than “fixing” old habits, AI provides a way to build on students’ experience through discovering their abilities, identifying what they want to be able to do, and closing the “is-ought” gap through implementing a plan of action (Harrison & Hasan, 2013, p. 71). Library instruction can play a vital role in developing these skills as students begin to find sources for their writing assignments. After a brief survey of SRL, the chapter examines how developing AI can improve students’ performance on first-year writing assignments through examining how to coach students using this method in the context of a one-shot library instructional session.

SELF-REGULATED LEARNING

Self-regulated learning (SRL) refers to the ability of students to guide their own learning through developing an awareness of current skills and tools, an understanding of the assignment, and an ability to reflectively select the most appropriate way to complete the task at hand within their abilities (Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1990). It involves developing strategic knowledge, which includes a familiarity with the different types of tasks; knowledge about the cognitive task, which includes understanding the task and the strategic knowledge needed to complete the task; and self-knowledge, which refers to the ability to judge which strategy would work best in a given situation (Nilson, 2013, pp. 2—3). Preparing students to locate appropriate material for their paper requires strategic knowledge, which includes an understanding of the functionality and content of various databases, evaluation criteria for vetting a variety of sources, and the conventions of citing used in an academic conversation. Knowledge about the task refers to the requirements of the assignment, and self-knowledge refers to the ability to select the most appropriate strategic knowledge to complete the assignment.

Instructing self-regulated learners is fundamentally different from demonstrating the functionality of a database, or providing an orientation to the sources available through the library. Rather, it involves making an informed choice from a range of familiar options. If the task involves finding background information on a source, the student could use the library’s OPAC to find a book, the library’s discovery tool to find a magazine, or even Google to find an article in Wikipedia. Each of these sources requires using a different tool to locate material and a different method of evaluation to assess its relevance. While editors assess books, magazines, and newspapers, there is no editorial control of social media, and Wikipedia’s editors are not clearly evident. While scholarly articles have bibliographies and a peer-review process to check the credibility of the source, newspapers, magazines, and books undergo a different method of quality control. In addition to a familiarity with the various ways of evaluating sources, there is the issue of developing a familiarity with using a number of different search tools to identify and access relevant material.

Developing self-regulated learning is especially useful in working with interdisciplinary topics. Students tend to recycle methods used in high school and stick to a single routine from one assignment to the next (Head & Eisenberg, 2010, p. 3) “Whether they were conducting research for a college course or for personal reasons, nearly all of the students in our sample had developed an information-seeking strategy reliant on a small set of common information sources—close at hand, tried and true” (Head & Eisenberg, 2009, p. 3). Furthermore, students who had not developed a solid background in their issue “appeared to develop further erroneous habits as they continued[;] this may partly be due to frustration and fatigue as they worked with the challenging task” (Debowski, 2001, p. 378). Consequently, library instruction needs to expand the range of tools and sources students use.

Narrating the thought process of a self-regulated learner involves explaining the process, thinking aloud as one chooses among a variety of approaches to accomplish the task at hand. This is designed to develop an awareness of available techniques, explain the rationale for selecting sources best suited to the assignment, and critically evaluate the source, the tool, and the relevance of material. This activity is not “fixing” a search strategy, but rather explaining choices, demonstrating how one knowledgeably selects an appropriate tool from a range of known options, evaluating the source using criteria appropriate for that assignment, and effectively incorporating the source within the assignment. This instruction is not deliberate practice. Whereas deliberate practice involves breaking a task into components to perfect steps in a larger process, SRL involves the metacognitive task of selecting and employing appropriate procedures (Nilson, 2013, p. 6). Bridging the gap between how students searched for information and how they need to search for information involves adapting new skills.

APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY

Appreciative inquiry (AI) acknowledges the abilities students developed through previous searching activities, explores the skills needed to complete academic assignments, and provides a plan to bridge this gap. Cooperrider and Srivastva developed AI in the late 1980s as a tool for improving organizational effectiveness (Cooperrider, Stavros, & Whitney, 2008). Developed in a business environment, this method explores issues using the perspective of everyone in an organization within the categories of the 4-D structure of appreciative inquiry; Discover, Dream, Design, and Delivery. Discover encourages participants to acknowledge the best current practices within an organization. Dream encourages participants to envision what an ideal situation might be. Design organizes a plan for reaching these aspirational goals, and Delivery involves implementing and perpetuating these objectives. Bloom, Hutson, He, and Konkle (2013, p. 8) added two additional phases to the 4-D structure of AI: Disarm and Don’t Settle. These two phases provide bookends around the 4-D structure by preparing a supportive environment at the beginning of the session, and motivating the student to continue using the techniques discussed after the session ends. The author will use all six elements of AI in an analysis of the content of instructional sessions for first-year writing students.

AI is far different from problem solving. Problem solving involves a postmortem of a situation with the intention of fixing something that is not working well. It involves analyzing what caused the problem, investigating possible solutions, and enacting a remedy. AI begins with appreciating the best features of current practices, envisions what might work better, designs a method for achieving these aspirational goals, and carries through with these plans (Cockell & McArthur-Blair, 2012, p. 15). Whereas problem solving is reactive and limited to a particular situation, AI is forward-looking, focuses on achievement, and is open ended. Rather than fixing a situation, one can improve a process through AI. AI practices have been adapted to an educational setting in a number of ways (Bloom et al., 2013; Cockell & McArthur-Blair, 2012; Harrison & Hasan, 2013). This approach is especially helpful in overcoming many of the negative mythologies labeling students, parents, and the educational process (Harrison & Hasan, 2013, p. 65).

Librarians can use AI in structuring the sessions as well as conducting the class. Examining the literature from an AI perspective reveals what the current situation is, articulates aspirational goals, and can lay the groundwork for reaching these goals. AI in the classroom provides positive reinforcement for what students know how to do, and offers a supportive environment in which to develop the skills needed to inform an academic conversation. Students build on their extensive Internet experience when learning to locate information for more sophisticated tasks, and librarians use these experiences as a foundation for developing more robust skills in locating and evaluating information. “AI can be utilized deliberately in shaping experiences and processes designed to focus student attention and reflection on both the dynamic complexity of their world and the agency of purpose available to them” (Harrison & Hasan, 2013, p. 71).

Disarm

The first phase of AI involves creating a safe environment (Bloom et al., 2013, p. 8). Students, faculty, and librarians come to instructional sessions with a number of preconceived notions. Creating a safe environment involves abandoning such characterizations as: students are Google dependent, faculty have unrealistic expectations, and librarians are little old ladies who constantly patrol the stacks of books reminding patrons to be quiet. In reality, professors are mentoring students in the conventions of an academic conversation. Rather than abandoning a familiar technique, students are developing more sophisticated search strategies and developing more rigorous evaluation skills to effectively participate in a new conversation. Librarians are not fixing defective searching strategies but rather mentoring successful strategies for managing information needed in an academic conversation. AI provides a framework for looking past negative sweeping overgeneralizations while searching for positive traits to continue and aspirations to meet (Harrison & Hasan, 2013, p. 65).

Discover

This phase involves learning other people’s perceptions of their own personal strengths and the strengths of the organization of which they are a member (Bloom et al., 2013, p. 8). The literature provides a wealth of information about how students, faculty, and librarians view the library; resources available through the library; and the assistance provided by librarians.

Students appear to have always had problems finding sources for an academic conversation. In the 1990s, Jennie Nelson concluded, “Students tend to draw quotations from sources that they have not demonstrated they have read and understood and engage in ’patchwriting’ rather than synthesizing information or creating their own understanding” (Fister, 2015, p. 98). Around the same time, Leckie (1996) concluded that students were desperately seeking citations. Twenty years later, students are still desperately seeking citations (Rose-Wiles & Hofmann, 2013). Blundell (2015, pp. 35—37) found that students used family, friends, and peers as primary sources of information, demonstrated a reluctance to change search strategies even following library instruction, exhibited a tendency to resort to minimal requirements of an assignment because of anxiety, and continued to experience difficulty when trying to locate relevant academic resources. Furthermore, these students believed they were more proficient in finding material than their skills demonstrated.

The challenge of engaging students has been studied by Linda Nilson and others. In describing how to create a “Self-Reflective Learner,” she summarizes an apparent apathy on the part of students that undermines efforts to engage them in the following way: “Specifically, these students take little or no responsibility for their own learning, blaming their shortcomings in achievement on their ’ineffective’ instruction and the ’too advanced’ or irrelevant course material” (Nilson, 2013, p. 20).

Porter (2011) found that millennials begin on Google, using natural language queries, and generally select a source from the beginning of the results list because they trust that the search engine has already prioritized the results. He contrasts the success students experience on popular search engine sites with the difficulties they experience on library database sites. Students also appear to make a number of careless mistakes as well. A number of studies report that students make rudimentary mistakes in logic and spelling, make errors in manipulating a database, and exhibit problems in citing sources (Debowski, 2001; Fidel et al., 1999; Ford, Miller, & Moss, 2002; Minetou, Chen, & Liu, 2008; Thatcher, 2006, 2008; Wildemuth, 2004). Might we be missing something? Townsend, Brunetti, and Hofer (2011) provide an interesting observation about the innate knowledge students appear to demonstrate.

Students understand instinctively that you would not look in the school newspaper for a definitive one-page biography of Lincoln any more than you would check out a book of postmodernist film criticism to [find] this week’s movie listings. Capitalizing on this understanding, instructors can guide students toward connecting what they understand through their own experiences with the underlying principle of why information formats are distinct entities. (Townsend et al., p. 861)

Clearly students have some “instinctive” knowledge. Numerous studies document the benefit domain knowledge has in the search process (Lazonder, Biermans, & Wopereis, 2000; Waniek & Schäfer, 2009; Wildemuth, 2004). Students who developed a familiarity with the broader issues of their topic use better keywords and select more relevant sources. The lack of such a background is perhaps the most difficult obstacle to overcome.

Finding contexts for “backgrounding” topics and for figuring out how to traverse complex information landscapes may be the most difficult part of the research process. Our findings also suggest that students create effective methods for conducting research by using traditional methods, such as libraries, and self-taught, creative workarounds, such as “presearch” and Wikipedia, in different ways. (Head & Eisenberg, 2009, p. 1)

Faculty know that students experience problems when asked to find information for assignments, value the instructional support provided by librarians, and collaboratively work through a number of instructional initiatives (Wolff, Rod, & Schonfeld, 2016). The instructions for their assignments, however, may not provide adequate guidance in the techniques for searching for appropriate sources or evaluating the quality of the sources their students choose to use (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). Furthermore, faculty appear to use many of the same Internet tools their students use. Through social media, blogs, and Google, some faculty keep current in their field of research. After locating information on authors or sources, however, they turn to the library to access the needed material (Wolff et al., 2016).

Librarians have gone to great lengths to empower users to independently access the information they need. Their familiarity with resources and search tools, however, may cause librarians to overestimate the importance of particular techniques or sources. Badke provides three remarks that deserve special attention in relation to teaching first-year students. Badke (2010) says that librarians can demonstrate how to walk through the resources of a discipline. He believes that librarians can play the role of a mentor in deciphering an assignment (Badke, 2014b). Librarians can untangle the complications behind the enticing simplicity of Google searching (Badke, 2014a). Librarians may also need to rethink the selection process.

Librarians generally regard “satisficing” as settling; as accepting less than ideal information or locating it through an ineffective process. The notion that something is “good enough,” however, means various things. As skills improve, expertise in a discipline develops, and requirements become more rigorous, one becomes more selective about the information gathered. Whereas faculty are satisficed only when they located the breadth and depth of sources relevant to a particular area, students look to the requirements of an assignment (Barrett, 2005; Nicholas, Huntington, Jamali, Rowlands, & Fieldhouse, 2009, p. 109; Prabha, Connaway, Olszewski, & Jenkins, 2007). “A satisficing search is ’thermostatic’ in that it is turned on or off as the need arises; formal information seeking is never done without a proximate cause of specific question in mind” (Zach, 2005, p. 25). Librarians can effectively mediate between the professor’s expectations and the student’s performance by discussing where the thermostat is set in an instructional session. Librarians are not crafting little experts nor are we initiating them into a discipline. Rather, we are working with students to become “participants in the community of college graduates. More narrowly, they are apprenticing to the community of scholars in a particular discipline or to the community of a particular profession” (Kuglitsch, 2015, p. 461). Sources that are “good enough” for a first-year composition course are clearly different from sources that are “good enough” for a master’s thesis. The tools that are used to locate these sources as well as the criteria used to evaluate them should reflect a growing sophistication as students progress through their academic career.

This brief survey reveals that students have a basic sense of the relation between different types of sources. Faculty may use the same tools as students but have more success in using the tools more effectively because of their superior domain knowledge, and librarians can act as a mentor while untangling a Google search or deciphering an assignment. Building on this foundation is the next phase of AI.

Dream

The goal of this stage is discovering the big picture ideas (Bloom et al., 2013, p. 9). Information overload is now a fact of life, and the goal of library instruction is to develop a student’s ability to navigate these sources. Clearly the assignment sets the thermostat. If five sources are required, five relevant sources need to be included. If five sources within the field of psychology written within the past three years need to be included, then five relevant psychology sources written in the past three years need to be included. So articulating the quality and relevance of the sources becomes an important part of the assignment. Establishing a context for their topic, however, requires students to develop expertise in using a broader variety of search tools and more sophisticated evaluation criteria, and the language we use to pursue these goals is important. “Telling people they are capable and that their successes depend on them opens up opportunities for new thinking and positive action. Conversely, using judgmental language or language that diminishes self-respect is oppressive” (Samba, 2013, p. 57).

Librarians can verbalize the process of what adequate background means within the context of an assignment and show how to turn broad topics into more narrowly focused questions. These questions then provide descriptive keywords for a search as well as criteria for selecting relevant sources. If the source addresses a particular question, it should be selected. If it does not, it should be passed by. As students become more familiar with conventions within their discipline, perhaps instructions can assume a greater familiarity of expectations.

Design

This stage involves charting the journey from “is to ought” (Bloom et al., 2013, p. 8). It involves designing learning objectives. The unique attribute of AI is involving all stakeholders in the process. Students, however, have not been involved in the discussion to this point. Engaging students in the process becomes a critical element of designing an instructional session. As we move from Is (Discover) to Ought (Dream), we need to keep in mind the supportive atmosphere first discussed (Disarm). Students have likely used a search engine, and developed a familiarity with selecting items, placing results in a shopping cart, and downloading content. They may, however, have less familiarity with filtering their results, and may not have needed to distinguish between the types of sources they retrieve. Acknowledging what students know while emphasizing where they need to grow is an essential part of AI.

Preparing for an instructional session involves explaining the assignment, demonstrating how to use the tools available for locating sources, and explaining the rationale for selecting one tool over another. Furthermore, it involves explaining why one source in the list of sources is better than another. Following an instruction session, students should be able to locate background information about their topic, formulate a research question, use descriptive keywords in a search, make informed selections from the list of results, access their selections, and use the selected sources in their assignment within the citation conventions of the academic conversation. While this is an optimistic list of objectives, these become the goals we aspire to reach.

Deliver

This stage involves carrying out the plans created in the previous section (Bloom et al., 2013, p. 9). In this case, a class presentation incorporates the principles discussed above. Introductory remarks can create a supportive environment in which the students’ previous search experience is acknowledged (Disarm). Linking the search process to what students may have done in Google provides a connection between what they have done (Discover) and what they need to do (Dream). The same bridge needs to be built between the terms they use, the process they apply to select results, and the method they use to access the selected material. Clearly they need to adopt more sophisticated methods of evaluation, develop an awareness of a broad range of databases, and adopt a more rigid method of documenting the sources they used and the way they use the source (Dream). Moving beyond the mere number of sources involves the last component of AI.

Don’t Settle

This stage challenges one to revisit the process (Bloom et al., 2013, p. 9). In information literacy, this stage involves moving past locating three scholarly sources to finding three scholarly sources that are relevant to the assignment, integrating them into the assignment, and doing so within the conventions of the academic conversation. In Discover we’ve learned that students may resort to minimally acceptable sources, and faculty to assignments that do not emphasize the connection between sources and the academic assignment. Students need to understand the link between the research question, the descriptive words used in the search query, and the connection between individual sources and the original research question. The classroom environment provides an excellent forum in which to explain how each source relates to the research question.

Utilizing SRL in the Classroom

A brief survey of several common writing assignments illustrates the range of tools needed to complete an assignment and the variety of evaluation techniques required to select viable sources. Instruction needs to discuss the differences between academic sources and popular material, content type with publication cycles to determine currency, and free-range information on the Internet with material approved by an editor or peer review process. Writing about a contemporary issue requires students to pick an issue, locate enough background information to become familiar with the context of their topic, evaluate relevant information, and integrate sources into the assignment using appropriate citation conventions. The sources for current issues can be found in newspapers, social media, or broadcasts. One could use Google, a discovery tool, or a specialized database to locate the initial source. When evaluating these sources, students need to realize that there will be no bibliography to indicate the sources used in the story, and an editor checks the accuracy of the article before it is published.

Placing that event in a context involves accessing an understandable source for background. This could be a general news magazine, a book chapter of a book, or a feature article in a newspaper. The tools used to locate this could include a specialized database, such as CQ Researcher; a book, such as one from the opposing viewpoints series; a newspaper database; or a discovery tool (limiting the results to magazines or newspapers). Using the AI process in this instruction involves creating a safe environment through comparing this activity with those many students regularly do (Disarm), linking common procedures used in finding background information with the techniques commonly used in searching the Internet (Discover), identifying the more refined requirements needed for finding background information (Dream), creating the search (Design), executing the search and evaluating the results (Deliver), and ensuring the selected resources are relevant to the research topic (Don’t Settle).

A different writing assignment involves analyzing a literary work. While the AI goals may be the same in an interdisciplinary investigation, the tools, sources, and method of evaluation are different. Students may find background information in SparkNotes or a Wikipedia article using Google but would need to use the library’s OPAC to find books about the author or work. While these sources can provide background information, only the book would be considered a scholarly source, which could be used in the essay and included in the bibliography for the assignment. Additional scholarly information can be located through searching a specialized database, using a discovery tool, or citation chasing from the bibliography of a book. An interesting twist on a literary analysis involves investigating an issue raised in a course reading and comparing the historical context of an issue evident in the story with the current treatment of that issue. Examples include the status of women in Chopin’s The Story of an Hour, or psychological illness in Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily. This involves gaining a familiarity with the literary work as well as a historical perspective of an issue. One would use a literary database to explore issues discussed in the story, and a discovery tool to find background information concerning the issue when tying a historical perception to a present outlook, and any one of a number of databases when locating scholarly perspectives.

In A Rose for Emily, one could examine mental health. This would require students to find background information on the history of the treatment of mental illness and then find scholarly information about current practices regarding specific pathologies. Although the content may be unfamiliar, students would have some familiarity with the search process (Discover). Comparing results from Google and a discovery tool would reveal that the discovery tool helps refine searches through using filters for content type, date, and even discipline, and students would need to develop an understanding of the distinctions between newspapers, books and journal articles (Dream). A Wikipedia entry could provide some background, but would need to be validated through scholarly material for the assignment. The narrative in this assignment would discuss the role a Google search and Wikipedia could play in developing enough background so the student can understand the professional literature dealing with mental health, and then discuss how descriptive keywords would be used in a discovery tool to retrieve a set of results, which would then be filtered (Design and Deliver).

REFLECTIVE MENTORSHIP: CULTIVATING SRL THROUGH THE RESEARCH PROCESS

At the University of Central Missouri, six hours of the general education curriculum are devoted to two English composition classes, and a major assignment in the second-semester class involves writing an extended essay. The essays professors assign range from exploring current events to analyzing literary works. Library instruction generally consists of a single class period, and the author focuses the instruction on locating information to support the specific essay assigned. Classes generally have between 20 and 25 students, and usually meet in a hands-on environment. Learning objectives for library instruction focus on using a discovery tool, a literary database, and evaluating information when making selections. Appreciative inquiry guides a journey from search activities students are generally familiar with, to more sophisticated evaluation techniques and a wider range of search tools. The narrative uses principles of SRL in discussing the available options for selection along the way, and explains the rationale for those choices.

An interesting assignment involved integrating the university’s common reader that year, Elizabeth Svoboda’s What Makes a Hero, with a short story selected by the student. The essay needed to examine the heroic nature of a character from the story using several sources, five of which must be scholarly. Students need to have a familiarity with the common reader, the short story they chose, and an issue they want to use to tie these sources together, and integrate the granular information of scholar sources into the essay.

When class begins, students are in a computer lab, and the teaching podium projects computer images on a screen at the front of the room. Before coming to class, students are expected to have selected a story, formulated a topic, and prepared several questions from earlier class discussions. At the beginning of the class, the handout is distributed (see Appendix), and preliminary introductions and explanations of the assignment involve a few minutes and several PowerPoint slides (Disarm).

The narrative discusses the importance of having a context for the assignment. While the students have done this in class, the narration explicitly links this background information to finding sources and writing the essay. The discussion turns to finding background information using some nonscholarly material, including SparkNotes and even a well-written Wikipedia article. Students then follow the author on an analytical discussion of what the professor wants as we collaboratively work thorough the handout.

The first section of the handout addresses the thesis of the essay. It is phrased as a question so that it becomes a tool for evaluation. A question requires an answer, and serves to more precisely describe their essay. An academic database will provide access to dozens if not hundreds of peer-reviewed sources for practically any topic. If the source answers the question, it is relevant to the essay. If the source does not answer the question, it is not relevant. The next section of the handout involves an analysis of what Svoboda considers heroic. The class then considers Faulkner’s Homer, and students analyze his character using Wikipedia and SparkNotes. These are not scholarly sources, but can provide background for understanding the context of the story, the time, and some of the issues. As the author uses Google, Wikipedia, and SparkNotes, students are encouraged to evaluate sources and identify what each source can provide. The class collaboratively looks for signs of scholarship and critically evaluates the information retrieved. For example, Wikipedia may have a bibliography but is not scholarly. Whereas Wikipedia prohibits original research, scholarly publications only contribute original research to the academic conversation. Whereas Wikipedia strives for consensus in the community contributing to an issue, academic conversation embraces unique, original, and controversial ideas in the conversation of a discipline. None of these popular sources count in the five scholarly sources required for the essay, but they can provide the needed context for evaluating the assignment and selecting relevant material. At this point, the narrative discusses attributes of a scholarly article: material written by professionals for professionals, extremely detailed and specific, and following the conventions of an academic conversation in a specific discipline. These conventions include how citations are formatted as well as the importance of the accompanying bibliography. If the article doesn’t have a named author or a bibliography, it quite likely is not scholarly.

The class then collectively uses the research question to identify search terms that would be appropriate, and looks up words that may be unfamiliar, such as antebellum South. Through this diversion, students have the experience of working through a frequently encountered obstacle, unfamiliar terms. The class then investigates the different between Google and a discovery tool. On the worksheet, the two boxes below the search information inquire about some context for heroic expectations of the character and heroic expectations discussed by Svoboda. At this point, students have a research question, and they have selected keywords from that question to use in a Central Search, the discovery tool used at UCM. Following the search, they identifying the number of magazine in which journal articles are available. In this example, the author is looking for examples of heroism in the antebellum South. The search retrieves hundreds of journal articles, all of which are peer-reviewed scholarly sources, but not all of them are relevant to the questions raised on the worksheet. The first several titles have nothing to do with the topic. Using the research question to evaluate relevance, two sources are selected because they address that question, and MLA citation format is used to identify the selections. The narrative uses appreciative inquiry by tying past search experience to the present task while setting more rigorous goals to accommodate the requirements of the current assignment. This activity generally takes one of two sessions devoted to library work by this professor, and the second session provides time for individual consultation using the worksheet as a framework for focusing the search and selecting the results.

Appreciative inquiry identifies transferable knowledge that can be used on the task at hand. The basic mechanics of searching (Discover) are developed by building more sophisticated skills in describing and evaluating sources for use in academic work. The questions need to be more focused. The keywords need to be more descriptive, and skill in manipulating a database needs to develop to include filtering the results (Dream). The worksheet provides a framework for structuring the exercise (Design), and working through the exercise steps the student through the various stages of locating and evaluating material for the essay (Deliver). The process of selecting relevant material embraces the Don’t Settle objective.

CONCLUSION

Instead of giving students a fish in the form of information contained in textbooks, reserve readings, or lectures, assignments force students to learn to successfully fish for sources through gaining proficiency in finding what they need. Creating SRLs involves familiarizing students with a number of different tools and techniques. This instruction cultivates an awareness of the task so students can effectively choose the technique suited to the task. Reflective mentoring in the classroom offers a “director’s commentary” on the search process in which librarians verbalize the thought process involved in analytically evaluating the research question, selecting descriptive keywords, selecting a search tool, and evaluating results. Library instruction can effectively cultivate information management skills through reflectively mentoring the critical thinking needed to overcome crucial obstacles in the research process and begin the process of linking the sources to the assignment. In this context, the challenges of information overload and anxiety can be addressed through discussing how to filter and evaluate a seemingly overwhelming list of results. AI recognizes skills students may already have, but identifies these abilities as a foundation that needs to be developed to successfully complete the task at hand.

Stories provide a memorable way to communicate information (Devine, Quinn, & Aguilar, 2014; Klipfel, 2014). A director’s commentary on why choices in the research process are made provides such a story. Narratives provide an explanation when selecting one search tool over other available options, and how one is working with aspects of an issue provides a bridge between parts of the research exercise and past the obstacles discussed above. SRLs are able to choose the most applicable tools for a task, provide a rationale for that choice, and have an awareness of their ability to decide which technique is more effective for a given situation. Modeling this behavior provides an example that students can follow in a narrative they can relate to. This approach to satisficing sets the thermostat according to what the professor wants in an assignment while explaining how to achieve it to students. It explores which search tool is appropriate and which attributes of the source need to be evaluated. An AI approach recognizes the abilities students have while setting aspirational goals for completing more rigorous tasks along the way, and students gain more sophisticated research skills as librarians reflectively mentor self-reflective techniques through verbalizing critical choices along the way.

APPENDIX. Example of Completed Worksheet

REFERENCES

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Cockell, J., & McArthur-Blair, J. (2012). Appreciative inquiry in higher education: A transformative force (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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