16: Moving Ahead by Looking Back - Crafting a Framework for Sustainable, Institutional Information Literacy

Chapter 16. Moving Ahead by Looking Back: Crafting a Framework for Sustainable, Institutional Information Literacy

Lori Baker and Pam Gladis

Southwest Minnesota State University

Introduction

Infusing information literacy (IL) into the curriculum is long, hard, and often frustrating work. At our small, public liberal arts university, faculty have been crafting the pieces of an IL initiative for the past 10 years. Moving from the theoretical ideal of IL to an on-the-ground working reality takes much thought, time, and effort. Through trial and error, reflection and research, our campus is slowly moving forward toward what we would term an “institutional” model of IL appropriate for our university.

What we are finding is that this process is one of starts and stops, slowly shifting the culture to recognize the roles that all university stakeholders have in IL. Though we have not fully integrated IL, we are, we believe, building a framework that supports institutional IL, one that meshes well with the new Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (Framework for IL) (2015) and will enable our institution to adapt as the process on our campus moves forward.

We have found two key factors associated with this move to an institutional model: 1) a required shift in perspective about agency connected with IL; in other words, who is responsible for what, who does the work of IL and in what form; and 2) the importance of kairos, a Greek term often translated as “opportune moment,” and the factors that helped lead our university to its opportune “moment” to take on institutional IL. These two reflective frames are useful even as the guidelines for IL shift, for they are not dependent on the model of IL in place but rather serve as heuristic lenses enabling us to identify any blind spots. Reflecting on these issues of agency and kairos has helped us to recognize the cultural factors related to IL at our institution that have influenced our work so far and how we can advance those efforts. At our university, a rural, regional school of nearly 3000 on-campus students with a strong union presence and orientation towards shared governance, that means shaping an institutional IL initiative that is driven by the faculty and integrated throughout the curriculum.

In this chapter we will describe what we mean by “institutional” IL, overview the issues of agency related to IL, and describe the exigencies leading to our institution’s focus on IL. We will examine how these practical and theoretical considerations relevant to our institution’s perspective ultimately led to the curriculum model our university adopted. Finally, we will describe the lessons learned and next steps in pursuing an IL initiative at our university.

Recognizing an “Institutional” Model of IL

At many universities, currently including ours, a standard model for IL often consists of the on-demand (Curzon, 2004), one-shot “inoculation” (Jacobs & Jacobs, 2009, p. 75) approach, or what William Badke (2010) terms “short-term remedial” (p. 130). This approach, while helpful to individual faculty, students, and classes, does not lead to fully developed IL skills and understanding. As Barbara Fister (2008) asserts, the one-shot model makes it “difficult to build a systematic program for developing sophisticated information literacy skills” (p. 94). Describing findings from a case study of a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) project centered on IL at Trinity College, Anne E. Zald and Michelle Millett (2012) also draw this conclusion: “Ultimately, a library instruction program built entirely upon course-level partnerships is not sustainable and cannot support consistent student achievement of institutional learning outcomes” (p. 127). While we do not discount the value of individual or course-level collaborations, the goal of producing information literate students cannot be sustained by that model alone.

Recognizing the limitations of the one-shot model, Susan Carol Curzon (2004) and Stephanie Sterling Brasley (2008) describe eight additional models for delivering IL ranging from an introduction model, in which baseline IL skills are taught in perhaps several sessions, to credit-bearing courses taught by librarians. A model often illustrated in the literature involves programs working with librarians to develop program-specific IL (see examples in Brasley, 2008; D’Angelo & Maid, 2004a, 2004b; Peele, Keith, & Seely, 2013; Winterman, Donovan, & Slough, 2011). Exemplifying an approach that helps students to develop foundational skills within their discipline, Alison S. Gregory and Betty L. McCall McClain’s chapter in this collection (2016) describes the vertical curriculum in the Sociology-Anthropology program at their institution. Programmatic IL efforts such as this are important endeavors that contribute to the broader work of developing IL.

As Curzon (2004) notes, a comprehensive IL initiative would consist of several models of IL blended together (p. 43) in order to ensure that all students are meeting IL outcomes at all stages of their higher education experience. We call this an “institutional” model of IL. This institutional model approach would build from the four qualities necessary, according to Patricia Senn Breivik (2004), for developing a successful IL initiative:

• sharing responsibility for IL learning across faculty and beyond the library;
• close working relationships between faculty and librarians at the curriculum design and delivery levels;
• assessing IL based on “campus-determined” IL outcomes;
• and ensuring that IL is “institutionalized across the curriculum” through “departmental or college-wide planning for strategic integration of learning initiatives.” (p. xiii)

Much like the matrix model described by William Miller and Steven Bell (2005), an institutional model, then, includes existing collaborations but moves beyond individual faculty or program collaboration to take a university-wide, collective approach of embedding and assessing IL throughout the curriculum. This institutional model thus aligns with the Framework for IL. The Framework for IL acknowledges the “information ecosystem” in which IL should be grounded. It advocates that IL should be contextualized to an institution and “developmentally and systematically integrated into the student’s academic program at various levels” (2015, p. 10).

The Need for Collective IL Agency

Moving to an institutional model of collaboration requires acknowledging and, likely, challenging existing notions of agency and ownership of IL found on a campus. Historically, librarians have been the traditional agents in the IL movement, an outgrowth from their work in bibliographic instruction that took root in the 1960s (Hardesty, 1995, p. 340). A review of the literature indicates that the majority of IL writing and research is published in the realm of library publications. As Badke (2010) notes, the limited publication of IL-related material outside of a library audience creates a “library silo” effect (p. 138), making it more difficult to raise awareness of IL and to influence other academic areas’ practices.

Broader faculty culture also contributes to the traditional view of librarian ownership of IL. Larry Hardesty’s (1995) study about bibliographic instruction indicated limited faculty acceptance of library instruction sessions. Curzon (2004) notes that because IL seems basic to faculty and “so much a part of the fabric of their academic life that they take it for granted” (pp. 32-33), that they often do not recognize or prioritize the need to participate in institutional IL efforts. Even within Rhetoric and Writing Studies, a discipline that has a marked interest in IL, faculty do not usually take an institutional perspective as they address IL within their programs. For example, Margaret Artman, Erica Frisicaro-Pawlowski, and Robert Monge (2010) note that within first-year writing programs, “it is still common practice to either disregard the expertise our librarian colleagues may lend to IL instruction or, conversely, to ‘farm out’ lessons in IL to one-shot library instruction sessions” (p. 96). These studies and comments indicate a reluctance to include librarians in a systematic way with IL skills instruction. In broad terms, faculty either teach it, don’t think they need to teach it, or won’t give the time (Van Cleave, 2007, p. 179).

Librarian culture certainly plays a role in limiting the expansion of IL as well, as numerous researchers have shown and as Rolf Norgaard and Caroline Sinkinson discuss in this collection (Chapter 1). Courtney Bruch and Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson (2012) explain how some librarians are caught “between the traditional librarian dharma emphasizing service preeminence, and new librarian dharma emphasizing educator responsibilities” (p. 17). Breivik (2004) and Kendra Van Cleave (2007) state that it may be difficult for librarians to share responsibility or collaborate. Nancy H. Seamans (2012), writing to librarians, notes “one of the most important components of sustaining an information literacy initiative is also one that we find most difficult, and that is the willingness to give primary responsibility to others if that’s what will ensure the program’s success “ (p. 227). Even when librarians attempt to lead institutional IL efforts, they often have difficulty making headway due to traditional academic hierarchies and structures, such as the lack of faculty status or teaching department or program structure, which can keep librarians from having a direct impact on curriculum development (D’Angelo & Maid, 2004b).

What we have found in trying to move to an institutional model of IL is that these traditional concepts and structures related to IL agency constrict what might be possible to achieve. Van Cleave noted the same roadblock in 2007, stating that “Often the biggest stumbling blocks are a lack of an institution-wide focus on information literacy, as well as territorialism over curriculum and classroom control” (p. 179). Francia Kissel et al. (Chapter 20, this collection) further explore the issues related to faculty-librarian collaboration in their chapter in this collection. Ultimately, librarians and faculty “must have a mutual interest ... and see a mutual benefit” to IL (Curzon, 2004, p. 29). When IL is seen only as the purview of the library and librarians, or when faculty are dismissive of working with IL, it is more difficult to attain an institutional model of IL. What is needed instead is a collective IL agency, one in which both the faculty and librarians have a full understanding of IL and how it is infused in the curriculum. Faculty and librarians act in concert; they understand what IL is, where it is in the curriculum, how it can be taught, who will teach it, and how it will be assessed. This collective version of IL agency can only succeed if aided by a structural framework that supports it. This is similar to what Zald and Millett (2012) term “curricular integration” (p. 127). Such integration can only happen when IL becomes the responsibility of faculty as well as librarians, and not only within courses or programs, but across the institution. A collective sense of purpose and ownership of IL extends beyond individuals who might be in charge and resonates throughout the faculty and curriculum.

Examples of institutional IL do exist and more are emerging, with some being published beyond traditional library literature and in interdisciplinary venues (see Black, Crest, & Volland, 2001; Brasley’s 2008 description of Wartburg College; Lindstrom & Shonrock, 2006; Winterman, Donovan, & Slough, 2011; Zald & Millett, 2012). The shifting perspective on agency can also be found in the LILAC Project’s research design involving faculty, librarians, and students (Walker & Cox, 2013) as well as the revision process of the ACRL standards, which began in 2011 in an effort to update the standards first published in 2000. The organization reached beyond library professionals to include “non-librarians from university departments, higher education organizations, and an accreditor” as task force members (Bell, 2013, para. 5).

While “the autonomous culture of academia can enable resistance to collaboration,” (Van Cleave, 2007, p. 179), institutions need to consider how agency and ownership of IL is structured or implicit on their campus. At our university, we are moving away from traditional, library-only ownership to a collective agency. Through a series of events, we are beginning to craft an institutional framework that infuses IL into the curriculum, regardless of who teaches it.

Acknowledging Kairos in the Move to Institutional IL

Moving to an institutional IL approach, however, has not come easily or quickly, and, looking back, could not have even been put in motion without the key mix of elements and timing that occurred. Rhetoricians refer to the blend of circumstances and timing as kairos, “a situational kind of time” (Crowley & Hawhee, 2004, p. 37) that creates an advantageous moment in which to act. When we consider how changes occur in academic institutions, usually they do not come unexpectedly but are in response to some kind of initial stimulus or dialogue. These might be national trends, accreditation criteria, professional organizations’ push for different practices, or research studies which provide a rationale for change, which could be espoused by accreditors or new administrators or faculty; all of these factors take place in a given time and context that come together to create the opportunity for change. This unique blend of time, place, and influences produces a kairotic moment.

However, we must keep in mind that kairos is not the same as chronological time: “the temporal dimension of kairos can indicate anything from a lengthy time to a brief, fleeting moment” (Crowley & Hawhee, 2004, p. 37). On a university campus, a kairotic moment might happen when, for example, a new provost institutes an innovative program and provides a strategic and well-funded immediate plan of action. However, many university initiatives are not that neat and tidy, and the kairotic moment is not so much a single moment in chronological time as a series of moments, each contributing to the overall attainment of a larger goal.

This is particularly true of institutional IL movements, which take ongoing effort. For example, the creation of a community of practice as described in Kissel et al. (Chapter 20, this collection) in this collection started with a faculty member’s concern about students’ IL needs. The chapter describes how the resulting dialogue and partnerships are contributing to enhanced awareness of IL. Austin Booth and Carole Ann Fabian (2002) highlight the kairotic blend of factors and time that it takes to move an IL program forward, stating, “Initiation of campus-wide curriculum-based information literacy programs is a multi-layered, incremental, repetitive process” (p. 127). While something might occur to spark an institutional IL movement, persistence is needed to ensure that the full IL initiative comes into being. In other words, the larger kairotic event culminating in institutional IL might actually consist of a number of smaller kairotic moments spread over time.

Recognizing these moments can aid an institution in moving its efforts forward. By identifying the factors and moments that have been key in bringing IL into focus, institutions can ensure that the IL initiatives do not drop off or fade away. In other words, it is useful to look back in order to move ahead. In Eleanor Mitchell’s (2007) chapter entitled “Readiness and Rhythm: Timing for Information Literacy,” she reviews the kinds of external and institutional factors and “rhythms and pulses” (p. 77) that must be considered in planning a successful IL program. While Mitchell is generally focused on identifying the best time to “launch” a program, attention to timing is useful in reflecting back on the progress of IL at an institution. We see different kairotic points that have led to the place we are today; this helps us become aware of how those kairotic moments are taking shape now, so that we can refine the processes and framework needed to sustain institutional IL at our university.

Creating an Institutional Framework for IL: Looking Back to Move Ahead

A kairotic lens helps us to identify the convergences of who was involved and what circumstances or influential moments have shaped our institution’s IL efforts. Our university’s engagement with institutional IL began in 2004 when an external accreditation review indicated our Liberal Arts Curriculum (LAC), our general education equivalent, required an overhaul. IL itself was not directly noted in the accreditation review; however, the general education revision process provided the opening for IL to take root. In retrospect, the natural fit of IL coming into the process at this time makes sense. As noted by Ilene F. Rockman (2004), the national IL movement, having kicked off in 1989, had established itself with the 2000 release of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (IL Standards); this was followed in 2004 by Rockman’s prominent publication titled Integrating Information Literacy into the Higher Education Curriculum. At the time of our accreditation review, IL was certainly on the minds of our librarians, who were by then aware of the new standards. Together with the IL Standards coming into being, an “instruction paradigm” shifted to a “learning paradigm” in libraries (Bruch & Wilkinson, 2012, pp. 5-6). This paradigm shift was occurring at the same time that accrediting agencies were emphasizing learning outcomes and assessment. The need to focus on learning outcomes and develop an LAC assessment plan based on those outcomes was paramount in our institution’s accreditation review. Our university, though reaffirmed for 10 more years of accreditation, had to submit a progress report regarding general education to the accrediting agency.

This required our union-oriented faculty to closely examine and revamp the core of our institution’s educational programming. Our institution is known for its strong faculty presence and the faculty’s insistence, per the union contract, on being responsible for curriculum matters. The administration offered support but did not dictate any part of the process. As Lynn D. Lampert (2007) notes, “the curricular reform typically involved in overhauling general education programs is messy business fraught with campus politics and academic departments jockeying for position within the structure of course offerings to guarantee necessary enrollment levels” (p. 106). Our college’s experience affirms that statement. The revision of the LAC was set up in stages, beginning with identification of liberal education outcomes, followed by objectives for each. A broad curriculum design was then initially established, and finally creation and approval of courses that met the outcomes took place. The initial process of developing and agreeing upon the outcomes and objectives spanned over a five-year timeframe with numerous meetings, brainstorming sessions, and discussions among faculty. It was time-consuming and at times exhausting work, but the faculty took the charge to revise the curriculum seriously.

An early step in the process was the establishment of a LAC Transformation Committee. The nine-member committee was comprised of seven faculty members, a staff member who belonged to a different union of “administrative and service faculty” representing student services, and the associate provost assigned to represent the administration and charged with writing the follow-up progress report to the accrediting agency. Of the seven faculty members, one was a faculty librarian. At our institution, a faculty librarian (4-5 full-time faculty librarians were on staff during this time out of approximately 130 full-time university faculty) has historically served on all of the major committees on campus. Having a librarian on this high-profile, high-impact committee was the first step in IL gaining a foothold in the new curriculum. As noted in Lampert’s quote above, politics and departmental jockeying can greatly impact the institutional dialogue; however, the librarian on the committee held an institutional view rather than a territorial perspective on protecting credits and courses. She was able to prompt conversations about IL within the committee, as well as at departmental meetings, to ensure others were on board and the topic of IL did not remain only in the library realm; she was actively pursuing buy-in. As Curzon (2004) indicates, “Most information literacy programs fail because they are parochial and eventually come to be seen as only a library effort. To prevent this, savvy librarians will deploy a strategy that makes the information literacy program part of the educational strategy of the university, not just part of the service program of the library” (p. 35). We have little doubt that the strong and consistent library voice on the committee made an impact on the development of the revised outcomes.

That being said, the librarian on the committee was not solely responsible for the inclusion of IL concepts in the new outcomes. While the librarian was carrying forward the ACRL IL Standards, fortuitously, a number of departments on campus were also working with IL concepts, though they would not necessarily have called them that by name: 1) The English Department had been conceptualizing a new first-year writing program in order to align with the Council of Writing Program Administrators’ Outcomes Statement for First Year Composition, first published in 1999 and formally adopted by Council in 2000. Several of the outcomes shared commonalities with the IL Standards (see Corso, Weiss, & McGregor, 2010, for a description of the overlaps). 2) Faculty in the sciences had identified a lack of research and writing skills in their senior students and had revised their lower-level curriculum to address this concern. 3) During both the outcomes development phase as well as later during the curriculum design phase, the Philosophy Department engaged the faculty community in a consideration of the national dialogue on critical thinking and the best approach for representing it in the curriculum. All of these various efforts were ongoing at the same time as the general education program revision and in essence represent shared concerns about IL. This institutional conversation filtered back to the transformation committee, which was itself engaged in researching national standards, including partnering with the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College. Together, these concurrent efforts were focused on helping our students develop IL skills, even though the different entities involved might not have labeled them as such. Looking back, we see how IL was starting to shift from the focus of the library to departments and across the institution as the transformation committee developed the first draft of what came to be called the Liberal Education Program (LEP) outcomes.

Throughout the LEP revision process, the transformation committee was vigilant in reporting to the full faculty body at union meetings. (Our union meetings replace a traditional faculty senate structure found elsewhere; our faculty union is responsible for all curriculum decisions as well as the kind of labor considerations more typically associated with union governance.) A majority of the full faculty were equally vigilant in attending open forums, drafting components of the new LEP outcomes and objectives, and commenting on proposed curriculum design.

Ten LEP outcomes were approved by faculty in 2007. Another year was spent developing the specific objectives to support each outcome. Along the way, faculty agreed that IL was an important component; they included IL-related objectives within two of the LEP outcomes, accepted an IL rubric, and listed IL as one of three core skills (along with communication and critical thinking) common to all areas of the LEP (see Table 16.1 SMSU Core Skills, LEP Outcomes, and Related IL Objectives). Because of union processes and transparency, the majority of faculty were thus involved in the inclusion of IL in the new LEP. Though the concept of IL was initially led by a librarian, by the conclusion of the revision of the LEP outcomes and objectives, all faculty had been exposed to and agreed to the importance of IL. In this manner, our faculty demonstrated their collective belief that “developing students’ IL is an important aspect of their school’s academic mission and programs,” a factor emphasized by Arthur H. Sterngold (2008, p. 86) as vital to IL success.

Table 16.1. SMSU core skills, LEP outcomes, and related IL objectives

Following the passage of the outcomes and objectives, the difficult work of actually constructing a curriculum took place over the next academic year. Again, looking back, we see a number of factors that affected the eventual curricular design. While requiring credit-bearing IL courses is a model that some universities employ, this was not an option. During the curriculum design process, the state had decreed that all universities must reduce the number of credit hours to graduate from 128 to 120. This put pressure on several programs whose members lobbied that the LEP not grow much beyond 40 credits. In addition, there simply were not enough faculty librarians to handle such a load, and tensions already existed on campus regarding hires in other areas during difficult budget years. Other factors that possibly affected the curriculum design related to library personnel issues. Regrettably, shortly before the course design phase, the University Librarian unexpectedly passed away. During the design phase another instruction librarian retired and her position was not immediately filled. These factors, though not all explicitly discussed in the faculty debate about curriculum design, can in retrospect be understood as having affected the form IL took in the revised curriculum.

Over the course of the discussion about outcomes and objectives, the faculty had determined that the new LEP should guide our students over the full four years at the university, and not only for the first two years of general education. The result was the creation of interdisciplinary first and senior year LEP classes, both of which are to incorporate IL as one of the core skills. IL is also designated in the curriculum as one of the core skills to be revisited in a required sophomore-level or above writing-focused course and in a core skills course that each major program has to designate in their requirements. (See Table 16.2 SMSU LEP Curriculum Framework.) This aligns with an underpinning of the IL Standards (ACRL, 2000): “Achieving competency in information literacy requires an understanding that this cluster of abilities is not extraneous to the curriculum but is woven into the curriculum’s content, structure, and sequence” (p. 5). The new LEP design thus provides a curricular framework upon which institutional IL can be built. Further, although unknown at the time of its initial development, the scaffolded design should align well with the newer Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (ACRL, 2015) model based on threshold concepts and moving individuals from novice to expert. The scaffolded design allows for students to develop IL skills over the whole of their time at the university, a developmental approach akin to “the way many other knowledge-based skills develop—from a combination of instruction and practice over a period of time” (Badke, 2010, p. 132).

The foundation of our redesigned framework is the first year LEP course, First Year Seminar (FYS):“The purpose of FYS is to encourage critical thinking, introduce information literacy, and involve students in the SMSU Liberal Education Program” (Southwest, 2013, p. 2). This course, then, was designed to introduce IL as one learning outcome of the class. FYS, a theme-based course, is taught by faculty from all disciplines with the understanding that they will work to meet the course objectives, including an introduction to IL. Requiring IL in FYS provides an exigency for librarians and faculty to identify together how to meet the IL learning outcome. For us, “[l]ibrarians would create the foundation that supports faculty, and enables them to integrate information literacy effectively into their own courses” (Miller & Bell, 2005, p. 3). In addition, having faculty from all areas addressing IL in FYS also makes them more conscious of integrating IL in their major courses. The FYS course requirement is a foundational element of our institutional Framework for IL, and the joint work of the librarians and faculty furthers the collective agency necessary for sustainable institutional IL.

Table 16.2. SMSU LEP curriculum framework

Note: Not all ten LEP outcomes were associated directly with a course. In addition, courses chosen by students must meet Minnesota transfer curriculum requirements and total 40 credits.

Advancing Institutional IL: Refining Ongoing Efforts

Even though we approved a curriculum in 2008, teasing out the IL pieces has continued to be that “multi-layered, incremental, repetitive process” that Booth and Fabian described (2007, p. 127). At the time FYS was approved through our faculty assembly, the emphasis during the faculty assembly debate had centered on the critical thinking portion of the class, leaving the IL component an assumption. The other courses besides FYS that are to feature IL in the LEP (ENG 151, COMM 110, sophomore level-or-above writing course, course in the major emphasizing core skills, and LEP 400) have been created or identified; course proposals were vetted by the LEP Committee. However, the IL component in this process was included broadly, requiring only a description of what research and writing would be incorporated in the course. Different instructors and programs have approached the inclusion of IL in a variety of ways. Looking back, we can see that while the verbiage of IL had been inserted into the outcomes and core skills language for the LEP, there was not enough specificity provided for how it should be addressed or assessed.

Although IL is named as a core skill and ostensibly taught by faculty from across campus, we continue to define and identify exactly how that is or should be done. After the new LEP curriculum was in place for two years, the LEP Committee reviewed how well LEP 100 FYS was meeting its objectives. Results from a pilot critical thinking assessment and questions from the student senate about the FYS class created the impetus for the review. The committee decided that more specific training in critical thinking as well as a more standardized approach to introducing IL was needed.

The result was an opportunity to address IL in FYS as one component of a workshop held with the course instructors. Prior to the spring 2013 workshop, the three teaching librarians determined that a set of seven IL Standards outcomes would be most appropriate to address in the FYS course. The librarians recognized that in the previous semesters not all FYS faculty had chosen to bring their class to even one library session. However, the librarians described their desire to maintain a presence in the course in order to make contact with students early in their college experience. At the workshop, the librarian from the LEP committee led a session on IL outlining the library skills and specifically the seven IL outcomes to be introduced in FYS (see Appendix A). This introduction was meant to both introduce faculty to the described IL skills as well as foster a librarian and FYS faculty opportunity to “have a shared responsibility in injecting IL into their curriculum,” but “do so meaningfully in close collaboration with the experts in the library” (D’Angelo & Maid, 2004b, p. 216).

The workshop session was a first step in continuing to systematize and scaffold how IL is being delivered. In the first year following the workshop the majority of the faculty teaching FYS preferred to have a librarian lead the IL sessions. However, that could morph as the instructors and librarians continue to develop ways to integrate those baseline IL skills into the course, and further as the institution works to adopt the new threshold concepts and Framework for IL.

Applying our kairotic lens, we now recognize additional avenues for continuing to emphasize and scaffold IL at the university. Assessment and accountability imperatives primarily driven by reaccreditation requirements present an exigency as well as a means for identifying and refining institutional IL efforts. The task at hand is to include IL assessment within the relevant LEP outcomes assessment, which will entail making certain that IL objectives related to critical thinking, communication, and creative thinking are clearly identified, measured, and reported. In addition, several programs have identified gaps between the introductory work done in LEP core classes and the new LEP upper-division communication requirement in their majors. A number of major programs are adding sophomore-level “introduction to the discipline” requirements, including research and writing components. These courses present another platform for scaffolding IL requirements from the LEP through the majors. Further, a faculty-wide conversation regarding academic freedom, assessment, and the contractual limits of standardized curriculum has emerged from the general education assessment team’s initial undertakings; the discussion provides yet another possible kairotic moment to move the collective faculty forward in recognizing the importance and place of IL across the curriculum. We recognize that a kairotic moment is shaping right now; these assessment and curriculum initiatives, as well as integrating the new Framework for IL, provide key opportunities for faculty and librarians to continue their collective IL work.

Looking forward, we can see a number of steps yet to accomplish in order to fully frame out and operationalize institutional IL:

• educating the faculty about the ACRL threshold concepts
• identifying how the concepts are being addressed and developed in courses
• ascertaining which course- and program-specific learning outcomes align with the threshold concepts
• distinguishing how the assessment of those learning objectives might inform the assessment of IL, and
• ensuring that we are not only building “horizontally (across the curriculum)” but also “vertically (with the major)” (Curzon, 2004, p. 17), with the goal of helping to move students from novices to experts over their time at the university.

Having looked back at the kairotic moments that have shaped our university’s efforts so far, we recognize that the embedding of IL concepts within key courses’ learning objectives, scaffolded across the curriculum, creates the possibility of a much more sustainable approach to IL than the on-demand collaborations with individual faculty. We know that moving forward is only likely to happen if librarians and faculty continue to work together, through our union processes and collective recognition of the importance of the efforts.

Conclusion

As has become evident, our institutional approach to IL builds largely upon a blend of the introduction, general education, learning outcomes, and faculty focus models described by Curzon (2004, pp. 38-41). At other universities, an institutional approach might include the use of different models such as an entrance requirement model that Curzon describes or credit-bearing courses (see for example Eland, 2008; Mackey & Jacobson, 2007). Our move away from on-demand, one-shot IL to institutional IL is dependent on our faculty continuing to recognize and embrace their roles in sharing responsibility for IL with the library. Even though we are not approaching IL from the critical literacy standpoint described by James Elmborg (2012), we agree with his description of IL not as a “thing” but as something we “do” (p. 78); ultimately, we want IL to become a natural extension of “what we do here,” a part of what faculty and librarians together expect to and do address, rather than an added-on component or dismissed altogether. As Curzon (2004) asserts, and we believe, “Regardless of the model or models that are chosen to teach information literacy, librarians and faculty must partner to teach students information literacy skills” (p. 44).

Creating an institutional approach to IL is not an activity that can take place in the vacuum of the library; it requires “a complete paradigm shift” ... in order to “foster sustainable consistency and alignment throughout the curriculum” (Bruch & Wilkinson, 2012, pp. 13-14). It has taken our university nearly a decade to recognize, institute, and begin to refine IL. As we look back at how our university has arrived at the place where it is today, we do not see failures or missed opportunities; we see steady progress, dependent on large and small kairotic moments that kept IL in the picture and moved it forward. Perhaps a dearth of published accounts of institutionally based IL is because institutional IL tends to continually evolve and is simply not attainable quickly; it takes time, and not only chronological time, but an understanding of institutional time, the kind of time involved when we view institutional IL from a kairotic perspective. Though we know our experience at our small, public university with a strong faculty union influence will be different from other institutions’ journeys, viewing IL through the lenses of agency and kairos is helping us to be purposeful as we move forward with our institutional approach to IL and perhaps could prove a useful approach for other institutions working to implement the ACRL Framework for IL and threshold concepts.

References

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Appendix A

During the May 2013 all-day workshop for the faculty teaching the First Year Seminar (FYS) course, the instruction librarian presented the following information literacy skills as the minimum to be addressed in the course.

The instruction librarian requested that faculty focus on three primary library/information literacy areas that cover seven of the ACRL outcomes as part of the IL aspect of the course. The broad coverage areas of these three sessions include Article Databases, Online Catalog/Finding Materials, and Source Evaluation. It was explained the session goals were twofold:

1.Concrete skills

a.Introducing seven (7) outcomes from three (3) of the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education

2.Intangibles

a.Relationship building with librarians

b.Comfort level using the aspects of both the online and physical library and asking for assistance

The librarian provided a demonstration of an active learning component for each session. Each instructor could decide whether to offer each session as librarian-led, instructor-led, or as a flipped classroom.

The ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education introduced in FYS:

Standard One: The information literate student determines the nature and extent of the information needed.

Performance Indicator 1: The information literate student defines and articulates the need for information.

Outcome c. Explores general information sources to increase familiarity with the topic.

Performance Indicator 2: The information literate student identifies a variety of types and formats of potential sources for information.

Outcome c. Identifies the value and differences of potential resources in a variety of formats (e.g., multimedia, database, website, data set, audio/visual, book).

Standard Two: The information literate student accesses needed information effectively and efficiently.

Performance Indicator 3: The information literate student retrieves information online or in person using a variety of methods.

Outcome a. Uses various search systems to retrieve information in a variety of formats.

Outcome b. Uses various classification schemes and other systems (e.g., call number systems or indexes) to locate information resources within the library or to identify specific sites for physical exploration.

Performance Indicator 5: The information literate student extracts, records, and manages the information and its sources.

Outcome c. Differentiates between the types of sources cited and understands the elements and correct syntax of a citation for a wide range of resources.

Outcome d. Records all pertinent citation information for future reference.

Standard Three: The information literate student evaluates information and its sources critically and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base and value system.

Performance Indicator 2: The information literate student articulates and applies initial criteria for evaluating both the information and its sources.

Outcome a. Examines and compares information from various sources in order to evaluate reliability, validity, accuracy, authority, timeliness, and point of view or bias.