Kim Pittman

In 2019, University of Minnesota Duluth librarians developed Framework-inspired essential questions to define our pedagogical agenda. Wiggins and McTighe define essential questions as “provocative questions that foster inquiry, understanding, and transfer of learning.” These questions reveal our information literacy priorities, inform instructional design, and facilitate ongoing engagement with key ideas.

Slides from a lesson plan focused on developing curiosity and formulating questions. Students complete a curiosity self-assessment developed by librarians at Oregon State University, discuss what curiosity looks like in their academic and personal lives, and practice developing questions about essays they've read in class using the Question Formulation Technique. The lesson was inspired by this article: Rempel, Hannah Gascho, and Anne-Marie Deitering. "Sparking-curiosity—Librarians’…

Rubric used to score student annotated bibliographies in order to evaluate the learning outcomes "Students will be able to evaluate sources based on information need and the context in which the information will be used" and "Students will be able to identify multiple perspectives on a research topic."

Rubric used to assess student topic proposals in order to evaluate the learning outcome "Students will formulate research questions that are appropriately scaled, facilitate inquiry, and can be supported by available resources." 

In this workshop, students learn about the driving forces behind fake news, reflect on how our opinions impact the way we evaluate information, and discuss and practice using criteria for evaluating news. The workshop includes a brief presentation on fake news and cognitive biases, reflection prompts for students to respond to, and an activity in which students work in groups to evaluate different news articles on a common topic.