From Research to Action: Pairing Information Literacy and Service-Learning

Thanks to those of you who may be visiting this blog because you attended the session "From research to action: Pairing Information Literacy and Service-learning" at the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) conference last week.   My co-presenters (Dr. Maggie Stevens, Executive Director, Indiana Campus Compact; Jennifer Nutefall, University Librarian at Santa Clara University and Dr. Sarah Twill, Associate Professor of Social Work at Wright State University) and I were thrilled to have such an engaged audience with good questions and general enthusiasm for service-learning opportunities. Dr. Stevens provided an overview of Campus Compact, defined service-learning and described its importance in higher education.  We then described four case studies in which Jennifer and I have worked with faculty to pair information literacy and service-learning.  (You can see the handout linked below) to read more about 3 of the 4 case studies.  Finally, we invited the audience to participate in a think-pair-share activity.  The following questions were included as possible topics of discussion amongst attendees: 1.  John Riddle wrote an article in 2003 "Where's the library in service-learning?"  He explores how information literacy and service-learning have gone along parallel to one another with similar goals (educated citizenry, for example) seemingly unknowingly of one another.  What similarities and differences do you see between IL & SL?  Is there an opportunity to make a more formal connection between the two? 2.  What institutional barriers exist that could make it difficult to pair IL & SL?  How might you creatively negotiate those differences? 3.  What faculty members do you think you could approach when you return to your campus?  Why do their classes seem like a good fit? 4.  What are the "selling points" for your involvement in service-learning? A copy of our handout can be found at this link. A copy of our presentation (Prezi) can be found at this link. The twitter hashtag for our presentation was:  #acrls-l Please let me know if you have further questions or you'd like to talk through some ideas regarding service-learning and how libraries, librarians and/or information can play a role.  I'm happy to help!  Of course, you could also explore this blog for examples, as well.