This case study describes the use of flipped teaching for information literacy instruction in a new course, Drill, Blast, and Excavate GeoE 498, within the mining option for geological engineering (GeoE) students. These students will enter the mining industry with less discipline-specific knowledge than a student that graduated with a degree in mining engineering, yet on-the-job training provided by the employer will fill in most of the technical gaps. Engineers in the workplace can connect to information sources online and do not need to rely solely on co-workers, short courses, and conferences for upgrading their knowledge. With this in mind, we developed a flipped teaching assignment to teach students how to effectively and efficiently access electronic information on topics faced by geological engineers in the field. The course included a research project that allowed the students to practice these information retrieval and evaluation techniques so as to better prepare them for the working world. Student feedback revealed a high level of engagement in the discovery of these research strategies and the instructor noted that these techniques were applied successfully in the students written reports and oral presentations.

This poster was presented at WILU 2014 in London, ON

The purpose of this study was to identify the beliefs of the participants with regards to emergent literacy. Another purpose was to identify literacy practices employed by the participants while teaching preschool children. An additional purpose was to determine if participation in the course entitled ?Emergent Literacy? changed any beliefs of the participants regarding emergent literacy and subsequent literacy practices employed while teaching preschool children. The final purpose of this study was to determine the beliefs of the participants regarding emergent literacy and subsequent literacy practices employed while teaching preschool children, three years after completing the course entitled ?Emergent Literacy.? The results indicated that the initial beliefs of the participants with regard to emergent literacy were not well defined. Moreover, their experience with literacy practices was limited prior to taking the emergent literacy course. Their responses to the Final Guided Questions indicated positive changes in the beliefs of the participants with regard to emergent literacy and the literacy practices employed while teaching preschool children. Further the responses of the participants on the Follow-Up Survey indicated they still employed the literacy practices while teaching preschool, 3 years after completing the emergent literacy course.

Abstract will not copy on to DSpace

Raising scholastic achievement of diverse and struggling students as well as narrowing the academic achievement gap between students from mainstream and diverse backgrounds seems to be essentially dependent on educators’ personal knowledge, perspectives, and definitions regarding the terms multicultural education and equity pedagogy. Research studies confirm that addressing student’s culture, language, and social status with appreciation, inclusion, and sensitivity increases their academic successes. In classrooms, negative perceptions often maintained by educators about students perpetuate the false belief that diverse learners are unable to or struggle to grasp new learning. This ten-week qualitative study examined teachers’ perceptions as well as implementations of multicultural education and culturally responsive instructional practices as a means of addressing the literacy learning needs of diverse and struggling students in two primary classrooms in an urban Southeastern elementary school. Reading instruction observations provided insight into teachers’ self-descriptive beliefs and attitudes of multicultural education, how their perceptions of multicultural education differ from observed culturally responsive instructional practices, and how observed culturally responsive pedagogy align with multicultural education theories outlined by prominent researchers. All teachers and students come to school with personal backgrounds, languages, and attitudes concerning cultures and ethnicities. Their perceptions are formed by family members, prior experiences, and mainstream society. Frequently, teachers do not realize that personal and institutionalized perceptions, expectations, pedagogies, learning environments, curriculum and materials, grouping strategies, and assessment methods are at odds with learning needs of many students from diverse backgrounds. Findings of this study suggest that educators’ academic goals are often at odds with instructional policies and practices, as demonstrated by the persistent academic achievement gap. Tragically, many students perceive that learning struggles and failures are their fault. They may experience marginalization and develop feelings of inadequacy. Consequently, many students from diverse backgrounds express feelings of anger and frustration that may be exhibited by undesirable behavior. They may give up, drop out, abandon opportunities for citizenship participation and responsibility, or surrender to jobs in adulthood that are less than those they dreamt of. Finally, study findings suggest that teachers’ lack of cultural awareness, understanding of multicultural education, and knowledge of equity pedagogy prevent them from recognizing several negative personal perceptions and biases. As a result, they implement self-selected, school, and district policies and practices completely unaware that they are unintentionally posing learning obstructions and academic success limitations as well as fostering students’ frustrations. Demographics indicate that the predominantly Caucasian middle-class teaching population requires high levels of cultural awareness and extensive knowledge concerning multicultural education, equity pedagogy, and cultural awareness in order to address the literacy-learning needs of the increasingly diverse student population effectively.

Distributed learning is becoming an increasingly common method of further education in post-secondary institutions and programs across Canada and internationally. Academic libraries are not immune to this trend, and many are reviewing and revising their teaching methodology. All learners require information literacy instruction that is relevant, engaging, and embedded in curriculum; in a distributed learning environment, however, the design and delivery of that instruction may need to be adapted to respond to the challenges of instruction to distributed learners. Through a literature review of distributed learning models in academic libraries and consultation with faculty and librarians at the University of Saskatchewan, this research will assist in determining distributed learning models and instructional design best suited for the provision of information literacy instruction within this environment. Although this research focused on academic libraries, this session will be relevant to anyone who is interested in providing instruction outside of a classroom. / Slides from a presentation at the Saskatchewan Library Association annual conference in Saskatoon, SK, in May 2013. Notes from the presentation are included on the slides which were not part of the original presentation.

Distributed learning is becoming an increasingly common method of further education in post-secondary institutions and programs across Canada and internationally. Academic libraries are not immune to this trend, and many are reviewing and revising their teaching methodology. All learners require information literacy instruction that is relevant, engaging, and embedded in curriculum; in a distributed learning environment, however, the design and delivery of that instruction may need to be adapted to respond to the challenges of instruction to distributed learners. Through a literature review of distributed learning models in academic libraries and consultation with faculty and librarians at the University of Saskatchewan, this research will assist in determining distributed learning models and instructional design best suited for the provision of information literacy instruction within this environment, with a specific focus on reaching out to rural communities with emerging technological infrastructure. / This is a preprint of an article submitted for consideration in the Journal of Library and Information Services in Distance Learning, 2013, Tasha Maddison; Journal of Library of Information Services in Distance Learning is available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wlis20#.VJRmTwIYE.

There is evidence that ineffective classroom instruction, particularly in the early primary grades, is a major contributor to the high incidence of reading problems in the United States. Researchers attribute poor classroom instruction to a lack of teachers’ basic understanding of the concepts related to the English language that are necessary to teach literacy. Is there a similar contributing factor related to the low literacy levels of young English language learners (ELLs) who are approaching a new language at the same time they are learning to read? The purpose of this study is to determine what elementary school teachers of ELLs perceive and know about evidence-based literacy instructional practices and their perceived ability to teach ELLs using the literacy constructs and skills necessary for reading. To measure elementary school teachers’ knowledge and perception of their own abilities, a survey was developed with 76 items refined from multiples resources. These resources were selected due to the reliability of the items and their target investigations of studying perceptions and knowledge of basic literacy constructs. Reliability for the scores on the survey was high at 0.982. Descriptive statistics provided insight into the average and variance in performance on each item of the survey, as well as groups of items on the survey. The results show that teachers’ perceptions of their knowledge of specific literacy constructs did not correlate positively with their performance on the items related to the knowledge of specific literacy construct areas nor with the number of years of teaching experience. This dissertation discusses survey and performance results, along with implications for improved teacher preparation.

This experimental research study examined the effects of the Question-Answer Relationships (QAR) taxonomy on ninth-grade students’ ability to answer comprehension questions. Participants included 32 incoming ninth-grade students who were required to attend summer school due to poor attendance, grades, and/or standardized test scores. Participants were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Experimental group participants received one week of initial strategy instruction followed by three weeks of maintenance activities. Results indicated that the strategy had a negative effect on students’ question-answering ability and raised questions regarding comprehension instruction, length of interventions, and the role of scaffolded support for a target population of adolescent readers. Discussion of the results revolves around interventions, QAR instruction, reading ability, and motivation of the participants.

No description available.