Building on the success of the inaugural year of the University Libraries’ Information Literacy Development Grants, we are excited to announce an innovative new program: The OER & Information Literacy Development Grants. These grants were created to build a community of practice for faculty looking to create open educational resources (OER) textbooks and learning materials for their courses, with the added benefit of embedding information literacy content into those resources. This is the first grant of its kind that combines the creation of OERs with the critical thinking resources endemic to information literacy efforts. The development grant program will showcase the strength of faculty-librarian partnerships to truly transform curriculum. Through a series of guided workshops, facilitated discussions, and community discussions, the development grants will allow each project team to engage in a year-long project to build an information literacy infused OER textbook for a specific course at Texas A&M University in a supportive environment with peers who are learning together.
Information literacy is a set of skills and knowledge that helps students with “reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning.” The development grants program will engage faculty and key stakeholders from multiple disciplines and librarians in rethinking the value of OERS, not only as a tool for saving students money, but also as a tool to rethink pedagogical approaches to courses that engage students in new ways of thinking about and engaging with the creation and dissemination of knowledge. The development grants will target courses that include a researched writing component, as they best provide the opportunity to address information literacy skills in a complex information landscape.
"Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education", American Library Association, February 9, 2015.
Faculty, instructors, and librarians of any rank are encouraged to submit a proposal. In order to be eligible, projects must include an instructor-librarian collaboration and submit a clearly scoped OER textbook that includes embedded information literacy content, assignments, or learning activities that will be developed during the 2021/2022 academic year and implemented during the 2022/2023 academic year. The Coordinator for First Year Programs, Director of Learning and Outreach, and Graduate Studies Librarian for the University Libraries are responsible for the review and selection of the grants. The following criteria questions will be used to evaluate proposals.
In its inaugural year, there will be 4 projects awarded at $3,000 maximum each.
Questions? Please contact Stephanie Graves, Director of Learning and Outreach; stephaniegraves@tamu.edu
Professor Frank North and Dr. Theresa Ofili, Pharmacy Practice
Christina Seeger, University Libraries
Project Description: This project will create an openly accessible guidebook to address contemporary issues of cultural and systemic factors on health and treatment decisions in patient-centered care. Using the JEDI (justice, equity, diversity and inclusion) and social determinants of health lens, this guidebook will be adaptable as new information becomes available. Use of the guidebook will allow deeper discussion and critical contextual evaluation of these topics and enhance the incorporation of information literacy in the Doctor of Pharmacy degree curriculum, the Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences, as well as be adaptable to other healthcare related programs such as medicine, dentistry, and nursing.
Dr. Elizabeth Wells-Beede, College of Nursing
Cathy Pepper and T. Derek Halling, University Libraries
Project Description: Our goal is to provide an Open Educational Resource (OER) using evidence-based practice in nursing, virtual reality, and interactive teaching modules to support the education of undergraduate nursing students. This initiative will support the success of all current nursing students through immediate and ongoing access to resources, development of a competency focused curriculum tailored to student needs, and encourage recruitment of disadvantaged students to this profession of high demand.
Dr. Rich Cooper, Dr. Claire Carly-Miles, and Dr. Kalani Pattison, English Department
Professor Jeremy Brett, University Libraries
This OER supports the English department’s mission to build a minor in science fiction (sf) & fantasy. Every student who completes the minor will become familiar with the OER since it will be used in a wide array of courses, including young adult literature, fantasy literature, utopian literature, and, of course, science fiction. While emphasizing traditional research methods, this OER will also highlight archival research methods. Students will learn how to handle and cite objects and artifacts, which is especially pertinent when studying science fiction and fantasy in all of its forms. From movie posters to films, commercials, video games, & action figures, our students would learn the information literacy skills necessary to researching and writing about archival materials.
Acknowledgement: Thank you to the Friends of the Texas A&M University Libraries for helping fund the 2021 OER Information Literacy Grants.
Dr. Holli Leggette, Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communications
Carolyn Jackson, University Libraries
Project Description: The public has access to more information now than they ever have and are continuous targets for notifications from their easy-to-access smartphones. On the other end of those notifications are often science communicators sifting through mass amounts of information to make sense of information for a consumer who is inundated with information and make decisions about the information to disseminate. Yet, in a world where information is key, many science communicators lack information literacy skills. The goal of this project is to develop a rigorous instructional unit for teaching information literacy within the context of science communication and implement the instructional unit into Agricultural Media Writing I. The impacts and outcomes of the project will be measured using the following three target objectives: 1) Increase students’ knowledge about information literacy in the context of science communication, 2) Improve students’ ability to make sense of information for mass consumption, and 3) Identify and deliver information literacy tools for students’ use.
Dr. Beth Netherland, Department of Health and Kinesiology
Paria Tajallipour, University Libraries
Project Description: This project implements critical evaluation and effective searching in two hybrid courses with an approximate enrollment of 5,000 students every academic year in the Department of Health and Kinesiology. Through online tutorials, quizzes, and an interactive drag and drop activity, students will learn search strategies to help them research a topic on complementary health approaches (CHA). With successful completion of the guided practice, students will select a CHA to research. Based on their search results, students will evaluate the quality of the studies, the strength of the evidence, and the research methods used, allowing them to become critical consumers of CHAs and make informed selections.
Sarah LeMire, University Libraries
Dr. Claire Carly-Miles, Department of English
Dr. Kathy Anders, University Libraries
Dr. Kalani Pattison, Department of English
Dr. Matt McKinney, Department of English
Project Description: Collaborators from the University Libraries and Department of English will revise the curriculum and textbook for ENGL 210: Technical Business Writing to incorporate information literacy. The ENGL 210 curriculum will integrate information literacy into multiple course assignments, including course materials, assignment prompts, and grading rubrics. The project team will also lead efforts to adapt an OER textbook for ENGL 210 which will be piloted in Fall 2020. This OER textbook will integrate adapted and original informational literacy content alongside writing content in order to support an integrated information literacy-writing model.
Dr. Sharon Matthews, Teaching, Learning and Culture
Dr. Ashlynn Kogut, University Libraries
Project Description: Preservice teachers must be adept at grounding their future practice by analyzing and aligning sources to form a coherent argument that considers alternative opinions. By studying an authentic problem of practice related to disciplinary literacy integration, students in RDNG 372, Reading and Writing Across the Middle Grades Curriculum, will identify, research, and synthesize information in order to recommend strategies to address the problem. The goals for this project are to develop students’ ability to articulate a coherently grounded argument by critically evaluating different types of sources and to use evidence to create a persuasive infographic that is accessible to multiple stakeholders. Students will utilize the skills developed throughout the project to judge and provide constructive formative feedback on the strength of their peers’ arguments.
Dr. Heidi Craig, Department of English
Kevin O’Sullivan, University Libraries
Project Description: This project addressed the learning needs for ENGL 603: Bibliography and Literary Research Methods. This is a mandatory course for humanities graduate students early in their course of study, which is designed to introduce students to the research methods, skills, habits, and knowledge bases of successful humanities researchers, setting them up for student success. The curriculum was redesigned to deliberately scaffold instruction, readings, and course deliverables to foster students’ understanding and ability to critically evaluate texts and archives from a variety of social and historical contexts.
