This best practice case presents the development of information literacy workshops embedded in a bachelor’s thesis course when moving the teaching to an online environment. On-site information literacy (IL) lecture on the principles of information searching, presentation of the most important databases and hands-on information search training given by an academic librarian had been part of the on-site course curriculum in LUT University since the early 2010s. When the Covid pandemic restrictions started in March 2020, IL teaching had to be moved to an online environment. To find the best IL e-learning methods, iterative student feedback evaluation for continuous development was utilized.
The Two Phased Development Process
To develop the online IL workshops, a new model was implemented in the autumn of 2020. In this model, students (n=35) got a preliminary assignment based on online learning material. The assignment consisted of an essay where students described their information search process for their thesis and reported the results. In the online workshops librarians then gave them feedback and pointers based on the essays, moving on to demonstrations using the University Library’s search portal and the Scopus database. After the demonstrations, students performed searches in smaller groups and reported their results at the end of the workshop.
Webropol questionnaire was used to collect feedback from the students to find out about their satisfaction with the workshop. According to grounded theory-based analysis, the result was twofold. In their open answers, some students appreciated the group work, while others considered it not being as beneficial as the rest of the workshop. In addition, comments were made on the scheduling and heaviness of the session with back-to-back demonstrations.
In the following revisions, the preliminary assignment was split into four narrower questions covering the scope of the essay. In the workshop, the group work was replaced by two independent search sessions, giving students an opportunity to both have a little breather and to do searches based on their thesis topic. Other parts of the workshop remained the same. Lastly, feedback was collected.
Conclusion
Like other flipped and online classroom initiatives report (Fisher et al., 2017, Yap and Manabat, 2021), students appeared to benefit from getting acquainted with the learning material in advance and from using class time for active learning activities. According to citation analyses of preliminary assignments, students had learned the skill to find scientific documents on their topics by reading the online learning material (Talikka et al., 2022). Students considered independent searching for information on their thesis topic very useful, and group work did not appear to support it sufficiently. The overall satisfaction with the renewed workshop was good.
References
- Fisher, R., Ross, B., LaFerriere, R. & Maritz, A. (2017). Flipped learning, flipped satisfaction, getting the balance right. Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 5(2), 114–127. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.5.2.9.
- Talikka, M., Naukkarinen, J., Mielonen, K. & Eskelinen, H. (2022) Guided process to enhance undergraduate engineering students’ thesis work. In 2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), Uppsala, Sweden (pp. 1–6). https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962441
- Yap, J. M., & Manabat, A. R. (2021). Are we in-sync? Students’ virtual instructional experience and perceived information literacy skills in time of pandemic. Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 25(4), 169–184.
Riikka Sinisalo, Marja Talikka
LUT Academic Library, LUT University, Lahti, Finland
English 
French