Patterns in Information Literacy
Instruction: What’s Really Going on
in Our Classrooms?
Pearl Herscovitch, Margy MacMillan, and Sara Sharun

As academic libraries articulate the value of their contribution to students’ educational experience, we are
all seeking ways to capture information about our instructional activities. Librarians at Mount Royal University have embarked on a year-long project to map
what is actually being taught in the more than 600
course-integrated information literacy (IL) classes we
provide every year. With the cooperation of all librarians we developed a form to record the complexities
of IL instruction.1 Data from the project is critical in
planning for IL programming as we develop a more
strategic program-integrated curriculum that makes
better use of librarians’ expertise. We are gaining insights on areas of duplication and opportunities to
develop higher-level IL sessions to address more advanced use of information. The results are already
informing our work in the classroom and larger curriculum review projects across the institution. The information we are gathering will also guide librarians
and the chair in balancing workload across the library.
There is very little published research describing
the use of quantitative data gathered from librarians
on the content of IL sessions. There is evidence that
this kind of data is being collected at various academic
libraries in an effort to ensure ILI programs are effective and efficient, but as yet this information does not
appear to have been published in the academic literature.2 With few exceptions, program-level evaluation
in the literature reports on data gathered primarily

from students, generally through skill-based assessments or questionnaires. The content of IL sessions
can be gleaned from what students report as ‘most
helpful’ or ‘still unclear’ in these surveys, but students
do not tell us what was actually taught. Assessing student learning outcomes alone cannot provide us with
a complete or accurate view of a library instruction
program, and yet most assessment research focuses
on student outcomes as the only measure of IL program effectiveness. We can agree with Julien & Boon
who state that “[a]n emphasis on such outcomes is essential if librarians are to justify devoting institutional
resources to instructional activities”3 but a detailed
examination of what we actually do to help students
achieve those outcomes is equally important and has
the potential to provide more direct and actionable
evidence that can impact practice.
In addition to data gathered from students, assessment data is also often provided by disciplinary
faculty, in the form of focus groups, surveys, interviews or questionnaires. Librarian-generated data,
in the relatively rare instances when it is gathered,
is usually acquired in the form of peer-evaluation
or self-reflection writing.4 However, there are a few
recent studies which demonstrate the value of data
derived from the content of library sessions. Kessinger described a project to define how a community college’s library instruction program addressed
IL skill levels throughout the curriculum by mapping

Pearl Herscovitch is Associate Professor/Chair, Mount Royal University Library, e-mail: pherscovitch@mtroyal.ca; Margy
MacMillan is Professor/Communications Librarian, Mount Royal University Library, e-mail: mmacmillan@mtroyal.ca; Sara
Sharun is Assistant Professor/Librarian, Mount Royal University Library, e-mail: ssharun@mtroyal.ca
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Patterns in Information Literacy Instruction: What’s Really Going on in Our Classrooms?
IL objectives to course-specific and institution-wide
outcomes. This allowed librarians to communicate
more clearly with disciplinary faculty about IL, and
to support their arguments for “developmentally appropriate IL instruction for particular courses” and
scaffolding IL concepts throughout the curriculum.5
Gewirtz described an instruction program evaluation
that was created to inform and improve individual
librarians’ approach to instruction and to determine
if all first year students were receiving the same type
of information in their IL sessions. A realization that
there was a high level of consistency among content
covered across first-year courses resulted in the development of first year learning goals. These goals
were then used to communicate with faculty teaching upper year courses about what skills could be expected in their students, and where more integration
of IL teaching could take place across the curriculum.6
Similar to what these two studies found, we plan to
use our findings to communicate with faculty more
effectively, for example by providing faculty with
evidence of gaps or duplication, and providing them
with ideas for IL instruction and assessment activities
that stretch students’ skills at higher levels, rather than
simply reviewing or reminding them of existing skills.
The existing body of assessment literature, which
aims primarily to provide evidence of the library’s value and contribution to achieving campus wide learning outcomes, has focused on data gathered from
students and faculty, and has overlooked the importance of data about librarians’ instructional practices
and ILI session content. Data generated by librarians
about what actually is and is not addressed in instruction sessions can provide a program-level view of instruction. This can be applied to program assessment,
workload planning, strategic planning, and communication and outreach strategies, in addition to contributing to broader, externally-focussed reporting.
Our current study demonstrates how such data can
be gathered and the kinds of trends it can describe.
Mount Royal University (MRU) librarians are actively engaged in course and program-integrated ILI,
in an institution that has declared IL to be a campus

wide aim. All 17 librarians teach, and the library provides approximately 600 classes a year across most disciplines, in all levels of courses. MRU is a teaching-focused undergraduate institution; librarians are faculty
and are deeply involved with committees, professional
development and program and curricular reviews.
Strategic planning work in the MRU library identified a need for more data. A survey of faculty had
identified interesting patterns around what faculty felt
students needed to know and about what they invited
librarians to teach,7 which raised the question “What
exactly were we teaching?” We had done a smaller
scale study of what we taught in General Education
courses, and liaison librarians were aware of what
they were teaching in their own areas, but we had
little sense of the overall picture. Having developed
programmatic guidelines for instruction, we were also
curious to see whether what we were doing matched
the intentions we had laid out in that document.8 After searching unsuccessfully for a tool we could adapt
to our needs, we developed our own form to capture
a wide range of both qualitative and quantitative data.
The form had fields for basic data about the class, an
extensive checklist of types of content and level of
instruction (Introduction, Review, Advanced), and
text boxes for gathering information on collaboration
with faculty, preparation activities, assessment strategies, and reflection. We developed the form as a Word
document as some librarians expressed a preference
for something they could write on quickly, while others wanted to complete it online.
In the fall of 2013, all librarians agreed to record
data for every class they taught between September
30 and October 7. We reviewed the data, and more
essentially, the form with librarians in December, and
revised the form based on librarian feedback. Revisions included clarifying some definitions, adding
more content options, and allowing for librarians
to indicate the difference between content that was
planned, and what was actually taught.
We piloted the revised form for three weeks in the
winter semester. Among other things this was intended to give librarians some experience with completing

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the forms. Again, at the end of the semester, we reviewed the data, gathered more feedback on the form
and the process, and formally declared that we would
run the study for an entire academic year. Revisions at
this stage included alterations to the form to make it
easier to complete, the addition of a ‘Mentioned’ column in the checklist to cover those occasions where a
skill, concept, or resource is noted but not really introduced, and a textbox where librarians could record information related to the emerging ACRL Framework
for Information Literacy.
In reviewing data from the pilots it was clear that
the form would provide information on what we were
teaching at which level to which students, and identify
areas of overlap, gaps, and patterns in what we taught.
Immediately evident, even at that stage was the sheer
number of skills, concepts and resources we were trying to fit into some classes.
We received Human Research Ethics Board
(HREB) approval for the project but in order to stay
within ethical, non-coercive constraints, we were allowed access to only a subset of the data from the fall
semester, anonymized so that we could not tell which
librarians consented to be included. In April, we will
have access to all of the data for planning purposes.
In the fall of 2014, all librarians agreed to complete the forms for all classes, acknowledging the value of examining what we were teaching. Some librarians were already using their own tracking forms even
beyond the pilot period to analyse their work and
several remarked on the process as useful for prompting reflection and analysis. Members of the research
team found completing the forms relatively straightforward, but time consuming, especially the qualitative sections. Staff members entered the data into a
spreadsheet, and created a second spreadsheet that
included only the HREB-sanctioned research data.

Results
In January we reviewed data from the fall semester.
All 17 librarians consented to have their data included
and we have information on 302 of the 363 classes that
were taught this semester. While we had asked that liACRL 2015

brarians complete tracking forms for every class, this
was not enforced.
Instruction on how to find various types of resources was the main topic of our ILI sessions, included 553 times at all skill levels across 302 sessions in
the fall semester (many sessions included instruction
on more than one type of resource). Articles were the
most frequently mentioned resource, accounting for
54% of instruction on how to find resources. Books
accounted for 36% of resource instruction, followed
by data and government documents (7%) and images and A/V materials (3%). With regard to trends
across course level, figure 1 shows that while the number of instances of instruction on finding both books
and articles decreases at higher course levels, articles
represent an increasing proportion of our instruction
activities from 1000-level to 4000-level courses, while
instruction on finding books decreases.
The majority of our instruction on finding resources focused on articles, and the data on the forms
indicate that the majority of this instruction privileged databases over Google Scholar or Summon, our
discovery layer, as the primary means of accessing articles. The relative proportion of instruction on various tools for finding articles is presented in figure 2.
Instruction on identifying, describing and evaluating different resource types was the most frequently
taught topic after finding sources (addressed in 175
sessions, or 58% of our total sessions). In 77% of these
sessions, the topic was addressed at the introductory
FIGURE 1
Trends in Instruction on Finding Books and
Articles through Various Tools, by Course Level
(Includes ebooks)

Patterns in Information Literacy Instruction: What’s Really Going on in Our Classrooms?
FIGURE 2
Percentage of Instruction on Finding Articles
Using Different Tools at All Levels of Instruction
(n=299)

skill level. Figure 3 shows the breakdown of skill level
addressed at each course level.
Evaluating information was also very frequently
taught in our sessions, and was addressed at some
level in 58% of the total sessions taught (see figure 4).
Of these sessions, 74% addressed it at an introductory
level (see figure 5).

The majority of our instruction is at the introductory skill level. This is in part because the majority of
our instruction focuses on introducing skills, tools
and concepts, and takes place in 1000-level courses.
However, this data suggests the existence of a significant amount of duplication of lower-level content in
higher level courses. These results may be due to the
type of assignments and/or the requirements of course
instructors. While the specific content of our sessions
may also depend on disciplinary context (data which
we could not examine in this study), our preliminary
analysis suggests there may be opportunities for instruction that stretches these skills in upper-level
courses, instead of re-introducing topics to students.
In reviewing the relationship between research
assignments and the topics addressed in corresponding library classes, we found it useful to divide the assignments into three categories:
A. complete research papers or outputs like
posters and essays,

FIGURE 3
Identifying, Describing and Evaluating Different Resource Types in IL Sessions at Each Course Level
(n=175)

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FIGURE 4
Evaluation Skills and Concepts in IL Sessions at Each Course Level (n=171)

B. assignments based on parts of the research
process, like annotated bibliographies or research proposals,
C. standalone in-class assignments or activities.
In some cases it was difficult to determine what
kind of assignment, if any, was the focus of the instruction. Category A tended to have more topics taught
per session than B which in turn had more than C.
In category A, the Summon discovery tool was taught
more frequently for both articles and books. This category also had the highest frequency of teaching limiters as part of focused searching. In contrast, category
B, where most of the assignments were annotated bibliographies, librarians more frequently taught distinct
tools such as the catalogue, and article databases, and
much more frequently included instruction on Boolean operators. This category also had markedly higher
rates of teaching around citations and ethical use of
information, likely because annotated bibliography
assignments are often used in part to build student
familiarity with particular citation styles. The only aspect where category C showed higher frequencies was
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related to discipline-specific materials and patterns in
publishing, possibly related to the concentration on
specific resources for in-class assignments.

Limitations
In compiling the data we note a number of limitations,
predictable in this kind of exercise. As much as we
discussed definitions of Mention/Introduce/Review/
Advanced as a group, it is likely that different librarians may have different conceptions of these categories. Along this line, notes on the kind of assignments
IL sessions were supporting were also often difficult
to categorize. ‘Research assignment’, ‘essay’, ‘research
paper’, or ‘paper’ may mean the same sort of research
exercise or quite different ones, so we cannot be entirely confident about patterns of instruction related
to assignments. While we may not have data for every single class librarians taught, we have a sufficient
number, submitted by all the librarians, that we can
assume that our data accurately represents the work
of librarians across disciplines. There are also some
patterns in the data that we think are attributable to

Patterns in Information Literacy Instruction: What’s Really Going on in Our Classrooms?
FIGURE 5
Percentage of Each Level at Which Evaluation
Was Addressed in IL Sessions (n=171)

advanced
3%
review
11%

menon
12%

introduce
74%

particular assignments but this is difficult to verify
without access to course or discipline specific data.
For example, the frequency of assignment-based sessions (category C) that focussed on reference sources
may be due to a large number of chemistry sessions
that use specific tools. A final limitation is that while
the fall semester may be our busiest time for instruction, it has a proportionately higher number of introductory sessions, while the winter semester which is
not captured in this data, has a higher proportion of
capstone or senior courses.

Using the Data
This paper addresses the first part of a two-step data
collection process. The quality assurance project will
involve an analysis of more detailed data representing the entire academic year. This detailed analysis
will inform a revision of our programmatic instruction guidelines for information literacy instruction
at MRU, originally developed in 2010, based on the
2000 ACRL Standards.9 Our guidelines frame library

instruction in four broad categories: location, use/
evaluation, reflection and understanding. Predictably, using the current data to map these categories
to the topics listed on the tracking form reveals that
most of our instruction falls under location and
use/evaluation. A previous survey of MRU faculty
identified an expectation that first and second year
students be able to read and understand scholarly
articles.10 In our library classes we address the portion of research assignments that require students
to locate and evaluate scholarly sources. Librarians
have made a concerted effort to incorporate reflection and understanding of sources in their teaching,
and the current data suggests that 13% of our instruction addresses these skills. Through further analysis,
we hope to determine the degree to which we need
to reduce duplication to focus on scaffolding more
complex instruction that builds on the introduction
of these basic concepts. A planned survey of students
registered in capstone courses, together with the current data will enable us to revise our programmatic
instruction guidelines to more accurately reflect students’ advanced information literacy needs and program outcomes.
Mount Royal University has recently released a
strategic plan which includes a commitment to providing every student with the opportunity to participate “in at least one senior level research or capstone
project through individual or group work, or directly
engaged with faculty.”11 The library’s capacity to support this commitment may require a different balance
between instruction at the introductory level and instruction at more advanced levels. Our overall goal is
to integrate our previous faculty survey with current
research and the results of a survey of students in capstone courses to align the library’s programmatic instruction with university goals. This will provide new
and continuing library faculty with improved tools
for communicating with faculty colleagues outside
the library and a more evidence-based approach to
addressing gaps in our instruction program. A report
based on combined data will also help us develop future directions for teaching and research.

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Notes

1. Mount Royal University Library, “Library Instruction
Tracking Form.” Available at http://libguides.mtroyal.ca/
ld.php?content_id=8571769
2. See for example: University of Texas Libraries, “Library
Instruction Services Assessment Plan.“ Available at http://
www.lib.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/services/instruction/
LIS%20Assessment%20Plan_May%202013.pdf; University
Libraries, University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne,
“Unit Plan for Assessing and Improving Student Learning.”
Available at http://www.library.illinois.edu/infolit/unitplan.
html; University of Toronto Libraries, “Guide for Teaching
Librarians.” Available at http://guides.library.utoronto.ca/
content.php?pid=435532
&sid=5050120
3. Heidi Julien and Stuart Boon, “Assessing instructional outcomes in Canadian academic libraries.” Library & Information Science Research 26, no. 2 (2004): 121-139.
4. See for example: Elizabeth Spackman Hopkins & Suzanne
Julian, “An Evaluation of an Upper-Division, General
Education Information Literacy Program,” Communications in Information Literacy 2, no. 2 (2008): 67-83; Meggan
Houlihan & Amanda Click, “Teaching Literacy: Methods
for Studying and Improving Library Instruction,” Evidence
Based Library and Information Practice 7, no. 4 (2012): 3551; Pamela Kessinger, “Integrated Instruction Framework
for Information Literacy.” Journal of Information Literacy 7,
no. 2 (2013): 33-59.
5. Kessinger, “Integrated Instruction Framework, ” p. 33.
6. Sarah R. Gewirtz.. “Evaluating an Instruction Program with
Various Assessment Measures.” Reference Services Review
42, no. 1 (2014): 16-33.
7. Brian Jackson, Margy MacMillan, and Michelle Sinotte.
“Great Expectations: Results from a Faculty Survey of
Students’ Information Literacy Proficiency.” Paper presented
at IATUL Conference Helsinki, Finland. 2-5 June, 2014.
Available at http://docs.lib.purdue.edu
/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2036&context=iatul
8. Mount Royal University Library.” Programmatic Instruction—Guidelines for Information Literacy Instruction at
Mount Royal University.” Available at http://www.mtroyal.
ca/Library/Faculty/InstructionalServices/programmmatic_
instruction
9. Association of College & Research Libraries, Information
Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.
(Chicago: American Library Association, 2000). Available at
http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency
10. Jackson, MacMillan and Sinotte. “Great Expectations.”
11. Mount Royal University. “Learning Together, Leading Together Mount Royal University’s Strategic Plan 2025.” Available at http://intranet.mtroyal.ca/StrategicPlanningProcess/
ssLINK/strategicplan2025.pdf, p.12; Mount Royal University Library.” Programmatic Instruction—Guidelines for
Information Literacy Instruction at Mount Royal University.” Available at http://www.mtroyal.ca/Library/Faculty/
InstructionalServices/programmmatic_instruction

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