Using a Flipped Lesson to Improve Information Literacy Outcomes in a First-year Design Class

Does the presentation style of an information literacy assignment affect students’ use of scholarly and authoritative sources in the completion of an engineering design project? During spring semester 2017, the information literacy team at the Colorado School of Mines piloted a flipped lesson on evaluating sources for the university’s first year engineering design course. Initial feedback on the pilot session was favorable and the team analyzed detailed data to determine if students retained the needed information on evaluating sources through the semester. Student work, specifically bibliographies from team design proposals and final reports, was used to evaluate if changing the style of the information literacy session positively impacted students’ use of scholarly and authoritative sources throughout the semester. The “Evaluating Sources” lesson for fall 2016, modeled on previous years, was comprised of a traditional, oneshot session with an activity in the classroom with librarians. Incorporating feedback from teaching faculty, the instruction team piloted a flipped approach for the spring 2017 lesson. The new lesson required design teams to review videos and other information online, take an online quiz, and then meet in person with a librarian. During the course of one week, 93 student teams met with one of 7 librarians. Teams were prompted to bring questions about scholarly and authoritative sources for their specific problem statement. The meeting also provided the opportunity for students to discuss their initial design ideas and brainstorm sources with a librarian. This paper describes the rubric used for evaluation of the student bibliographies and the results of the study. It also discusses the lessons learned from flipping a single class session and aspects to consider when flipping information literacy content.