Designing Instruction with the IL Taxonomy by Katie

An instructor comes to you with the assignment below asking for support. How could you guide the conversation with them using the taxonomy?

blocksidge_3 — 2025-06-04 11:53:34 UTC

Write a report on your most recent clinical interaction. Summarize the illness, plan of care, current medications, and your evidence-based recommendations for ongoing treatment.

An instructor comes to you with the assignment below asking for support. How could you guide the conversation with them using the taxonomy?

blocksidge_3 — 2025-06-04 11:53:47 UTC

Locate a New York Times article published in the last two years that references a psychological study.

Find the referenced psychological study and compare the information in the study to the information in the newspaper or magazine article.

blocksidge_3 — 2025-06-04 11:55:01 UTC

A process for linking research assignments to the IL taxonomy

primeau8 — 2025-06-04 18:34:20 UTC

Arts & humanities

2025-06-05 16:42:06 UTC

I work primarily with arts and humanities folks. Does anyone have any ideas on how to apply the taxonomy to those disciplines?

2025-06-05 16:42:25 UTC

Honestly, it might be a good idea to teach students about these taxonomies (IL taxonomy and Bloom's). If students can actually see the steps to what they are doing, and if we maybe even do what we just did (list the assignment, and have students shout out what they need to know for the assignment) it could teach them how to think.

FlowChart

2025-06-05 16:43:10 UTC

I'd like to present a flowchart where students could record a research journal in steps outlining choices of databases, search terms, evaluation of relevancy of sources, etc.

2025-06-05 16:43:37 UTC

Using the taxonomy could be a great tool especially for those of us embedded in research classes. As the weeks go on we could introduce skills as needed to complete the assignments that lead to their project due at the end of the term.

IL Taxonomy Handout

primeau8 — 2025-06-05 16:43:42 UTC

I think it would be very beneficial to start an IL instructional session by asking students: List all of the skills you need in order to be successful on this assignment. Their "gaps" would indicate their incompetencies that they aren't even aware of

2025-06-05 16:43:58 UTC

High School Students

2025-06-05 16:44:11 UTC

I primarily work with high school students at a public library. How can I start teaching information literacy to these students so that they are prepared for college?

sarah hood

sarahhood2 — 2025-06-05 16:44:46 UTC

first of all Remember: students need to know that a database w access to NYT exists. Then Understand: students need to know how to search in that DB (limit to NYT, limit to pub date.

2025-06-05 16:44:47 UTC

(Long winded word salad ahead! )I would need to explain that NYT is available electronically (probably through a library database, at least through the NYT website) and that they need to do a search with good keywords, that browsing will be laborious. They may also need to know that newspapers are writing about scientific articles, not writing the original research, and that it's always best to go to the original source if possible. They might also need to know about interlibrary loan, accessing full text, how to find out if their library has access.

2025-06-05 16:44:53 UTC

Ask the student to describe for me the assignment so I can gauge to what degree they UNDERSTAND the assignment.

Creating Workshops

2025-06-05 16:45:23 UTC

In the context of my Community College, I could see coming up with various workshops that address each level of the Information Literacy Pyramid, so students can practice each level of learning and scaffold that next part of the learning process.

Response to Psych assignment

2025-06-05 16:45:36 UTC

Sounds interesting! This assignment will require students to do a number of tasks related to analyzing, applying, understanding, and remembering information. If you'd like, we could talk about what components are most essential to your learning objectives? For example, if you don't think it's valuable for them to learn to search the NYTimes, I (the librarian) could create a list of articles that they could use for this assignment, in addition to giving them the option to find their own. That would give them the ability to dig into the analyzing and understanding portions sooner.

ctemoore — 2025-06-05 16:45:46 UTC

I think this taxonomy is an extremely useful framing device to share with individual instructors in order to realistically co-determine what's feasible to cover in a one-shot.

2025-06-05 16:45:58 UTC

Get students to understand they are not typing 'psychological study' into the NYT search box

Ask students to do group activity listing out the skills and steps they need to do the assignment, then present to the class as a whole. You can then identify which skills you need to review with them.

2025-06-05 16:46:40 UTC

Subscription?

2025-06-05 16:47:05 UTC

Many students will go to the NYTimes website first, rather than the library database. One, they need a subscription to access the article. Two, some colleges may not have access to the NYTimes in a database.

2025-06-05 16:47:07 UTC

After getting them to the database, allowing them to explore first. See how the website is designed and what kinds of content is available.

I'm curious how students would respond if they were surveyed about what skills they thought were on the taxonomy and where they would place them. They would need an introduction to the taxonomy first, but having them fill it out would be very revealing of the type of skills they already feel comfortable with and the type of skills they struggle with.

2025-06-05 16:47:10 UTC

hedreenr1 — 2025-06-05 16:47:18 UTC

I've done this one, but for health sciences. It's been great for taking students from the context that they normally see information (news, social media) to the research behind those stories - and where things go wrong in the popular writing and interpretation. I think the way I've done it is moving students from the Remember stage (recognizing that research is presented in different contexts) to Understand (realizing that those different contexts include different information), with a bit of Apply (searching) and Analyze (interpreting the research and comparing the two write-ups).

2025-06-05 16:47:41 UTC

I'd start with what kind of psychology they are interested in. if they find a study they're interested in, it will go a long way. Brainstorm what terms might be used to report a psych study in a newspaper. With the comparison - I'd think about notetaking skills - maybe a spreadsheet for comparing on different facets.

I'd also have them think through what they think the steps would be - find out what they know and reinforce the skills they already have.

Create

2025-06-05 16:47:43 UTC

Create evidence based recommendations based on high-quality research. Understand what the medical field values as high -quality research. Understand where to look for medical research.

Annotated bib

2025-06-05 16:47:52 UTC

I already felt like our 8-week annotated bibliography (of a newspaper, reference source, book, scholarly article, etc.) assignments were falling short, and this has reinforced that.

2025-06-05 16:48:03 UTC

I would ask if they have been using the NYT in their class...if not, they will likely need to know what it is and what it does in the info landscape.

Depending on the answer, I would suggest a demo of NYT online….how to limit to a specific timeframe.

I would also suggest a demo of how to perform a title search in our WorldCat database.

Ideas

2025-06-05 16:48:23 UTC

I work as a smaller satellite intructional site for a mid sized university. Our campus population mostly has commuting graduate students and last year opened up to undergraduates. As a library we're working on how to get ourselves into classrooms more, how can we market the IL to professors so we can offer classes?

Excel sheet

2025-06-05 16:48:24 UTC

in a recent systematic search class with 1st year kinesiology graduate students, I have used excel sheet, with rows lists "Research topic -> Concept -> Subject Headings OR keywords]" to guide the students how to build up their search strategy.

Start with something of interest

2025-06-05 16:48:26 UTC

Let students work on an assignment that is based on their own personal interest. When they are fully engaged and able to easily ask questions they are more likely to absorb and and eagerly/willingly make it to the next level.

2025-06-05 16:48:26 UTC

I've done an assignment like this. The key elements seem to be:

how to access NYT
how to ID a relevant article
how to find elements in the NYT article that you need in order to find the original research article - sometimes the full article is behind a paywall, which means using library databases to get full text even if NYT provides a link

I usually flip it, though, and start with the NYT article, and ask them "what questions do you still have about this research study, after reading the NYT article? what else would you need to know in order to feel confident in your understanding of the topic/issue?" This starts the inquiry process and gets them to include the "analyze" stage right at the beginning, even though they might otherwise be stuck at the "understand" or "remember".

2025-06-05 16:48:51 UTC

How long do students have to work through this assignment?

sarahhood2 — 2025-06-05 16:48:58 UTC

Apply: students also need to be able to apply knowledge and understanding of DBs to know that theycan and should c&p the title of the referenced study and plug it into the library's Discovery box (federated search) to search thru all DBs at once, bc they have no idea IF the library has access to it, much less what DB it would be in. Analyze: they need to be able to compare the info/content in both articles and evaluate similarities and differences.

Implementing with Rise 360

2025-06-05 16:49:43 UTC

A lot of my work involves create short, interactive learning objects to be embedded in various first-year courses. I usually use Rise 360, which is great for interactivity and engagement. This is a format that lends itself much more to formative assessments that focus on the lower Bloom's levels, like Remember and Understand. This was a very helpful way to start thinking in terms of what's most realistic to include, by mapping IL concepts to Blooms. That being said, I'm wondering which concepts are best to focus on with brief formative assessments.

2025-06-05 16:49:54 UTC

I would frame the taxonomy skills as a spiderweb map instead - to help students identify that these are interconnected processes/skills.

1) Remember some information about the clinical trials. What is it about? From who, where?

2025-06-05 16:51:52 UTC

2) Understand how to use available database to get quality information on reporting clinical information.

3) Apply: Evaluate the information, filter it and analyse

2025-06-05 16:53:46 UTC

Understand that there are different (valid) research studies that have different results in health sciences. Given that, Analyze research studies to determine which would be most relevant for Applying to this particular patient