Teaching information literacy online

At the end of August I finished skimming through the book Teaching Online: A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice by Claire Howell Major. It was recommended to me by a librarian friend as I was confiding in her my lack of knowledge about teaching online. I'm regularly embedded in online classes, and I've tried things like discussion groups, posting a video, posting tutorials, making powerpoints with my voice-over, and combinations of the two. And they've never seemed successful, so I chalked that up to "maybe I don't know what I'm doing." I think it's doubly challenging as a guest lecturer in an online class, where you are walking into group norms and customs and have to figure out how to interact in that system, without any synchronous or visual cues to correct course mid-module.

What this book reiterated for me, is that I know a lot of stuff! It covers Frier's banking model of education, the mantra of "don't let technology drive your pedagogy," constructivism and connectivism in learning (which I've even written a paper about), and the SAMR model (which I've used in one of my information literacy courses). However, it was helpful thinking about all of these in frame of online teaching.

This book also came at a perfect time as our whole department is thinking about our strategy for online instruction: What are our goals? How will we implement this?

You know, big picture stuff.

One of my big takeaways from Teaching Online was thinking about the technology models of education: Feenberg's factory model, which emphasizes efficiency, standardization and reproduction; and Feenberg's city model, which emphasizes communication, flexibility, interaction, and distribution of information.

I think both of these models should be part of our strategy:

• The factory model is out-of-the-box supplemental instruction resources (like libguides, tutorials, videos, powerpoints) and template instruction and instruction activities (like modules, standardized lesson plans, reproduced activities). This model would have the goal of providing background knowledge to students who need it. We would track things like clicks or views. This model could also be used to drive engagement. 

• The city model is customized resources, with the goal of engagement. We would demand a back-and-forth, student responses, student assignments, or some other artifact of active participation. Howell Major defines engagement as "students willingness and desire to participate and be successful in the learning process that leads them to higher level thinking" (p. 208). This is not just clicks or views.

I shared with our department Howell Major's reflection questions when considering teaching online:

• Can you maintain your core teaching values?
• What is our reason for teaching online?
• What is our goal for teaching online?
• Do you know what you need to prepare?

When teaching online, I think I can maintain my core teaching values of purposeful and transparent instruction, as long as it is embedded at the right time and place. We are making a big push now because more and more classes are being taught online; the higher education culture demands it. My goal for teaching online is to model and provide opportunities to practice excellent information literacy skills for distance education and online students. I know I need access to hardware like a webcam, and I know I need to streamline all the software I use (powerpoint, Zoom, Jing, Camtasia), and I know there will be a lot of upfront work to create these out-of-the-box resources and instruction.

My vision for our online strategy: We have an out-of-the box menu faculty and students can ask for and implement with little librarian time. We also have a customized menu that requires more library time, but ideally, fosters more engagement. 

I go back to my initial complaint -- it's hard to pop in mid-semester to class without being involved in the planning process of the course, especially at a university that has no standardization of online teaching. Would it be too crazy to invite them to our environment? Have a true virtual "space" that students visit, with our classroom, our rules, our setup? 

How are other people handling library instruction in online classes? Has the machine replaced the librarian?