Whether you are facilitating subject-specific instruction, or library and information literacy, one of the simple ways that instructors can bring equity into the classroom is through the use of online asynchronous tutorials (Webb & Hoover, 2017).

The 2020 COVID pandemic sent the majority of campuses to an online learning format, but many were unprepared for the stress and hardship that caused both instructors and student communities (Shin, 2021). Many instructors and librarians had little to no prior experience with digital pedagogy (Garber-Pearson & Chin Roemer, 2017) or transitioning learning outcomes and active learning from an in-person environment to online. As a result, classroom equity risked being overshadowed in the sheer effort of getting up to date with online instruction platforms, tools, programs while also adjusting to life under quarantine.

Using tutorials as pre-class preparation gives all the students in the class an opportunity to be introduced to foundational information literacy topics before coming together to apply them in active learning exercises or across their course assignments. Additionally, using a tutorial will help to decrease learner anxiety when faced with challenging topics such as Boolean logic in limited one-shot library instruction sessions.

Planning and creating online asynchronous tutorials may best be implemented through the scope of Universal Design for Learning also known as UDL (CAST, 2018) in order to engage students’ critical thinking skills while optimizing a deeper recognition of patterns, concepts and importantly, the application of skills through a varied means of learning media such as visual, auditory, written, matching, and reflective activities.

Example Tutorials

A good example of this is The Claremont Colleges Library’s Search Strategies online tutorial where students learn about basic search strategies and logic. I assign this tutorial for first generation, first year and first year graduate students prior to any of my one-shot library instruction sessions. The tutorial is delivered online, is self-paced, takes approximately 15 minutes to complete and allows students to complete multiple times.

Assigning the tutorial is a step forward in ensuring that all students in the classroom, regardless of learning style, prior exposure to information literacy concepts or experience interacting with librarians or libraries, will be equally informed of foundational information literacy topics and skills, and therefore, come to class better equipped to complete the learning activities.

The specific foundational learning outcomes from the example tutorial (seen below), are based on the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education, Research as Inquiry and Searching as Strategic Exploration (ACRL, 2015). These outcomes state that by the end of the tutorial, the students will be able to: 

• Explain why search strategies are necessary
• Describe key search strategies
• Break a topic down into keywords
• Describe how to apply the operators AND, OR, NOT, asterisk, and quotation marks in searches to produce targeted results
• Revise searches based on the results

Students are required to earn 85% on the tutorial in order to obtain a certificate of completion (Figure 1). This means that they can go back into the tutorial and continue to work through the content as long as they need to get to that passing percentage. The certificate of completion is printable in PDF format, which I ask to be uploaded to their course assignments module that I have already prepared in the LMS. The librarian or instructor may also ask students to email the PDF to them directly for proof of completion. I have also often seen students take a screenshot or download as a photo because they are not familiar with using the free Adobe Reader program or how to print a web document as a PDF.

Student Feedback

When I started assigning tutorials as pre-class work to scaffold student learning, I had a difficult time getting students to see the value in completing the tutorial. As a result, I work with the instructor to make the tutorial a required assignment or at least required for participation credit.

I have assigned online asynchronous tutorials (OATs) to first generation, undergraduates and graduate level students and the most common feedback is that they wished they had learned these concepts sooner in their academic career. Or, that they never realized how, as one student put it, “basic” their search strategies were before learning about concept mapping, Boolean, truncation and exact phrase searching.

It’s clear that students see value in this information and that it improves their searches and makes searching in databases less frustrating or mysterious. The challenge is often convincing them to complete it before the class, if at all. 

Because of this, I always open our synchronous session (either online or in-person) with an assessment moment where I ask those who completed the tutorial to either share one new thing they learned from it, or share something that confused or frustrated them. This allows the other students who may not have taken the tutorial to hear the value of the content from their classmates from a students’ perspective. This means that students who may not have completed it prior to the class may return later to complete it because they heard from other students how helpful it was.

When applying the techniques from the tutorial to in-class activities, it will be crucial to affirm that applying the search techniques will become easier over time and to feel free to ask questions as the class moves through the activities. 

Collaborating with Faculty/Instructors

Along the way, I’ve learned that it may be difficult to get instructors to buy into the idea of assigning any pre-class on top of a library session, out of fear of overloading the students. In those cases, I gently remind instructors that assigning the tutorial would be a way to introduce equitable learning so that the students all start their library session (or other coursework) with the same foundational information literacy knowledge. I also note that students who are better equipped to critically think about searching will also be better prepared to locate and use credible and relevant sources for assignments; hopefully making for easier reading for the instructors. 

If instructors are still wary of assigning a tutorial prior to a one-shot session, I embed the tutorial in the LMS and recommend it to students to take at their leisure. Alternatively, if instructors are unable to accommodate a library one-shot, I recommend that they assign the tutorial in place of that session.

In the LMS classroom, I create a library learning module (Figure 2) where I introduce myself, embed the tutorial, create an assignment for them to upload their certificate of completion, then facilitate an asynchronous discussion post about what they learned with self-assessment.

The discussion post (Figure 3) may be as simple as asking the students to conduct a search using boolean in an assigned database then discuss their search process and what they learned about natural language searching vs Boolean searching. Or, it could be as complex as asking students to map out their topic, create a keyword list, select a database on their own and apply a search, then discuss what they found and why they think it’s relevant/credible. In the discussion board, students can ask questions of the librarian, reflect on classmate’s search processes and learn from their experiences.

If an instructor asks me to cover too many topics in one short session, I also use asynchronous options as a way to meet all the learning objectives and needs so that the synchronous session has more impact. This is broken down in the LMS modules (Figure 2) with pre-class work assigned as well as additional information that may help students to be prepared for the synchronous session work. 

Conclusion

In summary, it’s important for educators to be mindful of their own expectations and biases about the higher education learner’s ability to critically apply search strategies to find credible and relevant sources. 

Even in the digital era, learners may be most comfortable with applying natural language searching techniques and as a result, will come away feeling frustrated and confused when those same techniques used in search engines are not as effective in a database. The risk is that they may deem the library resources less valuable, too frustrating to use and continue to look for sources on the open web.

This has been most notable to me when I ask students where they started their search and the most common response is, “Google Scholar.” Unlike most subscription databases, Google Scholar is familiar as it looks and feels like the standard Google search. It allows predictive text and responds to natural language sentence structures and questions. I use this comfort factor to demonstrate to students how advanced search techniques such as Boolean logic, truncation and exact phrase searching are nearly universal in that they can be applied to their favorite search engines, Google Scholar and library databases. 

Beyond scaffolding learning and helping learners to become more comfortable with advanced search techniques in databases and search engines, assigning tutorials ultimately levels the playing field for students and prepares them for sustained success in their coursework. 

First generation and first year students may not have learned these concepts early in their education. Graduate students may have been scraping by for years, being self-sufficient while juggling work, family and school, and adult re-entry students may be returning to a brand new library landscape with minimal experience applying advanced search techniques across digital platforms. 

Assigning asynchronous tutorials are a common sense solution that allows instructors to create equity by building knowledge in foundational information literacy, preparing students for synchronous activities while reducing learner anxiety, scaffolding learning and stretching out coverage of multiple learning outcomes, and accommodating learning differences and styles through a multi-modal approach.

References

ACRL Board of Directors. (2015). Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. The Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association.

CAST. (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. CAST.

Garber-Pearson, R., & Chin Roemer, R. (2017, April 26). Keeping Up with… Digital Pedagogy. Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL).

Shin, Y. (2021). Change and Impact of Library Instruction Classes During COVID-19. Texas Library Journal, 97(2), 203–209.

Webb, K. K., & Hoover, J. (2017). Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the Academic Library: A Methodology for Mapping Multiple Means of Representation in Library Tutorials. Webb College & Research Libraries.

Kimberly Jackson, STEM Librarian, The Claremont Colleges

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