Accommodating Faculty Requests and Staying True to Your Pedagogical Ideals in the 1-Shot Information Literacy Session

Librarians are frequently asked to “teach” several databases in a 1-shot session, despite findings suggesting that such database demonstrations do not lead to optimal student outcomes. The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education highlights the concepts of metaliteracy and metacognition. This paper investigates ways in which I leveraged both of these concepts to reconcile my pedagogical ideals with an attempt to honor a faculty member’s request. By demonstrating question posing and making my own metacognitive processes transparent to students, I found that I could honor a faculty request for specific database demonstration while helping learners comprehend and see beyond the constructs of platform and format.