In this presentation, we will outline our experiences crafting new credit-bearing courses that integrate information literacy skills using non-traditional materials. Through the use of fiction and films based on real women, science fiction, and popular nonfiction, we will share how we built courses that satisfy university information literacy curriculum requirements.
One challenge of credit-bearing information literacy courses can be providing authentic context for students. Students may not understand how skills transfer outside of the artificial contexts provided. We will address ways course content can be used to provide authentic context by asking students to use non-traditional materials to consider research. We will demonstrate the way that course content has impacted our design decisions, assessment, and instructional activities while adhering to common objectives.
Course A uses fictional depictions of real women in fiction and film to engage students in discussions of authority. Students research the real women whose stories are told fictionally. This research forces them to grapple with what authority means in both fictional and non-fictional contexts.
Course B uses science fiction to understand complex, technical science concepts. By combining active learning with science fiction stories and films, students can identify the role of science in a story, problems and solutions in modern science, and pseudoscience. Science fiction helps students communicate scientific concepts clearly, value forms of science journalism, and explore “forbidden knowledge,” the scientific method, transparency, and peer review.
Course C uses popular nonfiction to consider scholarship as a conversation. Using Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari, students are asked to consider the larger conversation that Ansari is part of. By considering the book’s research, students consider academic privilege and how we determine authority. Through stand-up comedy and Ansari’s Netflix show students evaluate how purpose impacts production and product, and how conversations are constructed as accessible or inaccessible.