The Foundational Learners team spent most of last semester asking questions in a variety of ways, striving to get to know our population better.

To understand this process better, we first must define what a foundational learner is. The easy answer is “freshmen” but something we learned from our focus groups is that all freshman are not on the same page when it comes to research. Some have a great deal more experience (and similar amounts of overconfidence) while others have only completed the most basic of research assignments before.  If foundational learners are students who are new to the type of research demanded of them at Penn State, it does likely mean all freshmen, but it also includes transfer students, ESL students, and even higher level students who have slipped through the cracks in some way.

Definition in hand, we began exploring the ways we reach out to these foundational students, completing an inventory that gathered together all of the places where LLS provided instruction. While we by far reached the most students through ENGL15, it was interesting to note that we reached 100% of ESL students. But the question was, looking at this document, is this the best usage of our time. Teaching, both in person and online, takes a significant amount of time and the question was, is this time well spent, or should we come up with an alternative.

This led us to complete a series of focus groups with ENGL15 students. Because of the Reboot, none of them had received in person library instruction. When asked if anyone had ever  explained research to them in a way that stuck, most students said no. While we would like to complete another focus group, one of students that had received library instructions, it is easy to make the assumption that if these students had attended a library session, they would understand research in a more in depth way.

In order to check this understanding, we reviewed and revitalized our faculty and student evaluations, mapping them to the learning outcomes that our librarians are teaching to. Instead of sending them out at the end of the semester as we have in the past, these assessments will be done at the end of class in order to get a fresh perspective.

So that left us with opportunities with students, but students are not the only variable in the classroom. Faculty buy-in, whether it’s in person or online, is vital to students’ commitment to learning. The Foundational Learners team took time to use a form created by the Instructional Steering committee to review instructional partnerships. This, combined with meetings with ENGL15 administrators let us know that the buy-in from ENGL15 instructors is comparably strong, and a good use of our time and energy.

There is still much work to do. Assessment is likely to need some tweaking as we push forward with the new time frame. There are many models of teaching, in person, badges, Credo modules, that our instructional partners may want, and navigating these different opportunities will require finesse. The reboot was just the start of our work, but it was a start that gave us both direction and drive as we make our way forward.

As the Foundational Learners Team approaches the learning experience of our students, we are focusing on the learning environments we currently create. We are exploring how we can adjust them  to be more learner centered, more knowledge centered, and more assessment centered, three concepts from the 2000 book, How People Learn, which Library Learning Services is currently reading as a unit.

 (chart from page 134)

In short, learner centered environments are those that pay attention to the prior knowledge, attitudes, and culture students bring with them to the educational setting (133), knowledge centered environments focus on the way students become knowledgeable (136) and assessment centered environments foster opportunities for feedback and revision (140). As you might guess, ideal learning environments contain all three.

One of our core projects this semester addresses learner centered environments: we are doing a series of focus groups with ENGL 15 students. In these focus groups, taking place later this week, we will investigate the most ideal learning atmospheres for students, as well as their attitudes and approaches to research. Through the knowledge gained in these encounters, we will make recommendations as to when and how library sessions should take place. It will also give LLS a general idea of where students are at educationally, culturally, etc, so we meet them where they are.

Knowledge centered environments are often guided by learning outcomes, and we are surveying the librarians in LLS, to see what learning outcomes they are teaching the most often, which will then guide our discussion of foundational instruction when our groups reconvene in May.

To address assessment centered environments, we are working on three projects. The first is mapping our learning outcomes to our student and faculty evaluations, making it easier to tailor assessment to what has been taught in class. The second project is a assessment guide, giving librarians ideas for formative and summative assessment which can be done in the classroom. Finally, more broadly we are looking at the Instruction Steering Committee’s document Evaluating Library Instruction Partnerships in General Education Courses as a rubric to approach both future and current partnerships.

The Foundational Learners group hopes to leave the Instruction Reboot with new ideas about the state of our learners, the best ways to share our content, and techniques that will lead us to assess our teaching and our programs. We’re well on our way!

National Research Council 2000. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9853.

The group tasked to dive into our relationships with Foundational Learners consists of Amanda Clossen, Glenn Masuchika, Rebecca Peterson, Rebecca Waltz, and Amy White. This group is working to explore our department’s relationship with foundational learners, both currently and in the future.

Our goals for this group are as follows:

• Assess the needs of our foundational user groups.
• Review the strengths and weaknesses of current and past approaches to foundational instructions.
• Complete an analysis of teaching models.
• Articulate a scaled way forward for foundational instruction.

To that end, the group’s first task is to create an inventory of all instructional situations Library Learning Services engages in. We are exploring not just the numbers of instructional interactions, but our relationships with course coordinators and comparing commonalities in syllabi for the courses that we have both interacted with in the past as well as those we hope to interact with in the future.

We also have plans to meet with Assessment to discuss the possibility of focus groups of both foundational students as well as instructors. Through this sort of investigation, we hope to gain a better picture of what our students need and our instructors want.

Any questions about this group can be sent to Amanda Clossen at asc17@psu.edu.