In this workshop, we’re going to think about the big picture — the cognitive, affective, and practical conditions that affect how our students approach research and inquiry and the cognitive, affective and practical skills they need to be successful with those assignments.

You may be familiar with the old story about a group of blind men trying to identify an elephant? Each person in the story can only ‘see’ a small part of the whole. And each one tries, and fails, to extrapolate from that limited perspective to the big picture. Sometimes, this is what information literacy instruction feels like. Learning how to learn from information, to stay open to new ideas and to use information to solve problems and make decisions — this is a big picture that is hugely complex, doesn’t happen all at once, and doesn’t just happen in the library. Librarians, classroom faculty, technologists and students all share this goal, but none of us control the whole picture.

In this workshop, we’re going to think about the big picture — the cognitive, affective, and practical conditions that affect how our students approach research and inquiry and the cognitive, affective and practical skills they need to be successful with those assignments. We will work together to design activities that consider the whole student, and the complex information landscape they have to navigate.

• 13:30—15:00. Designing Effective Research Assignments
• 15:00—15:30. Break and Reflection.
• 15:30—16:30. Encouraging Curiosity and Creativity in the Research Process.