LOEX 2025

This interactive session examines linguistic diversity and digital accessibility in the postsecondary classroom. Participants will engage in an immersive classroom experience to understand diverse student perspectives and identities. Building on this, the session explores strategies for creating inclusive pedagogical practices, including adapting teaching materials, designing digitally accessible documents, and fostering a culture that values diversity. Through hands-on activities, attendees will gain practical tools to support equitable learning environments and empower all students. Participants will leave with actionable insights to enhance inclusivity and accessibility in their own classrooms, promoting deeper understanding and collaboration among learners.

Participants will learn how to:
1. Develop inclusive pedagogical strategies
2. Create basic accessible digital resources
3. Foster a culture of diversity and inclusion

Looking to create dynamic library programs but unsure where to start? This interactive session will help you turn your own hobbies and skills into meaningful outreach that aligns with community needs. Through guided brainstorming, discussion, and a flexible programming framework, you'll explore ways to design engaging events while addressing common challenges such as resource limitations and institutional outreach. Walk away with a program outline and actionable steps to bring your ideas to life-no matter your library setting.

Participants will be able to:
1) connect how their personal interests can drive program and outreach initiatives.
2) design a program framework for practical application of the program and evaluating its likely success.

In this "post-truth" era, students require more advanced skills in information literacy to succeed, while librarians lack the time and access to personally reach every student through the one-shot model. This interactive workshop will guide attendees in developing and facilitating their own faculty focus groups centered on integrating information literacy instruction into disciplinary coursework through an equity and inclusion lens. These focus groups combine the insight and perspectives of teaching faculty with the information literacy mastery of librarians to develop lesson plans and generate ideas for new library resources to support students.

Participants will:
1. Assess whether faculty focus groups will enhance integrated information literacy instruction in disciplinary coursework at their institution.
2. Design faculty focus groups which recognize different approaches to information literacy instruction based on discipline-specific skills and learning priorities.
3. Facilitate nuanced and specific conversations on equitable and inclusive information literacy instruction with faculty members at their institution.

Community college library faculty from Seattle Central College partnered with Seattle's Black Brilliance Research Project as part of a National Science Foundation grant focused on combating the spread of mis- and disinformation. Data from participatory design sessions with students informed the team's process and the creation of a curriculum toolkit. The toolkit is a group of lessons organized by themes including trust, accountability, identity, and politics & power. This session will actively include attendees in a participatory design process to learn about the team's research, explore the toolkit, solicit feedback, and share ideas on using and adapting the lessons.  

Participants will:
1. consider ways to combat the spread of mis- and disinformation beyond information literacy skills like source evaluation.
2. review toolkit curriculum and envision ways to adapt lessons in their own classes.
3. give feedback to the presenters on strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for the curriculum.

Crafting a future for information literacy instruction requires innovative approaches to student engagement. This workshop will introduce participants to interactive technology tools like Nearpod and Goosechase and demonstrate their potential to foster collaboration, creativity, and active learning during library instruction sessions. Attendees will explore these tools from both the student and instructor perspectives, participate in hands-on activities, and experiment with designing their own interactive lesson. Facilitators will also share practical tips and examples of successful implementations to inspire participants' confident use of these tools in their own teaching practices.

Participants will:
1. explore interactive technology tools in order to identify their potential for fostering active engagement and collaboration in library instruction sessions.

2. evaluate the features and functionality of interactive technology tools in order to determine the best fit for their instructional goals and classroom context.

3. utilize collaborative online platforms and gamification elements in order to create a team-building experience in the classroom and foster a sense of community among students.

In our library classes, we were seeking ways to make database instruction more engaging for our students. Follow our journey as we collaborated to craft and refine a "Race the Librarian" game that includes fun competition and prizes, but more importantly empowers students to be responsible for their own learning as they practice with (and explain!) Boolean operators, key words, and limiters in databases. Experience how you can develop similar activities for your classroom, and come play the game for yourself! (Recommended: Bring a laptop or tablet to play.)

Participants will:
1. Participate in an interactive database-searching activity that helps students understand how to broaden and narrow their topic to generate a specific number of search results.
2. Spark ideas for creating innovative classroom activities in their own libraries.
3. Apply the steps of activity creation to their own library instruction needs.

Join this session to play Research Wizards, a new card game for source evaluation. Wizards must use reliable sources to research incantations for the battle, or their spells will fizzle. Wizards will define a variety of traditional and emerging information formats, discuss their relative reliability, and explore the variation in quality found within each format. Only one will win: could it be you? Attendees will play the game, learn about the process of its design, and go home with a link to use or adapt the deck for educational purposes.

Participants will:
1. learn to play a new card game for teaching source evaluation.
2. consider how they may play or adapt the game for use at their own library.

While librarians often dive quickly into the latest pedagogies and technologies, many of us are experiencing trend fatigue. How can we incorporate artificial intelligence, new source evaluation techniques, and all the other cool things into our increasingly overstuffed instruction sessions, not to mention overstuffed brains? This presentation will take participants through the process of sustainable innovation, our collaborative and low-stress method of responding to emerging trends without losing focus on our core mission. We will highlight a GenAI microcourse and misinformation toolkit illustrating sustainable innovation in action, and participants will develop their own context-specific roadmaps for practical and impactful project implementation.

Participants will:
1. identify key contextual and affective barriers to instructional innovation and assess their impact on sustainable growth and professional morale.
2. Explain the process of sustainable innovation and apply its key tenets to strategic planning and collaboration within information literacy programs.
3. Create a progressive but practical project implementation plan responsive to institutional and individual needs.

As the conscious use of AI tools becomes more prevalent in society so too does the need for the literacy framework to guide people in their exploration of AI. This interactive workshop will guide participants in using a new AI literacy framework to create an information literacy session. Participants will brainstorm information needs related to AI, create learning objectives and a teaching plan using a template to map AI competencies to their identified needs, and build activities to engage their learners.

Participants will:
1. Describe the components of the AI literacy framework
2. Identify the needs of their users related to AI literacy
3. Create a lesson plan to address an information need related to artificial intelligence

A narrative of peer observation and review of librarian teaching often frames the process as a task reluctantly undertaken by all involved. This workshop-based presentation will help cultivate ways for attendees to refresh or revise their libraries' peer review of teaching practice. One avenue of this is learning from the observed librarian colleague through reflection, reframing, and actionable steps, and including both formative and summative assessment. More holistically building a partnership into the work of observation can restore symmetry to the process and benefit everyone, and perhaps make the process better.

Participants will:
1. define and value the different parts of labor among all the shareholders in the process of the peer observation of teaching.
2. construct a plan to synthesize and communicate their learning from the process of observation.
3. construct models that capture the value of different perspectives, skills, and approaches to teaching information literacy

Writers are commonly advised to "kill your darlings," to get rid of superfluous characters, sentences, or plot points in service of a more concise, compelling story. Understandably, these darlings are difficult to cut. Yes, we are talking about one-shots. This interactive workshop will lead librarians desiring change through a ruthless inventory of their instruction program to reimagine pedagogical goals. This workshop is based on efforts currently underway at LaGuardia Community College. We will share qualitative strategies and quantitative tools to aid the process. Participants will leave the session ready to take the first step towards change.

Participants will:
1. reflect on aspects of their instruction program that are successful based on numbers rather than content.
2. customize survey instruments in order to understand what is valued about their one-shot instruction program.

What do you _want_ to teach? What do your colleagues in other departments want to teach? Working across departments on a statement of library teaching goals can help you develop articulate, informed responses to these questions. The resulting shared vision provides a firmer footing for satisfying collaborations with both internal colleagues and external stakeholders. In this workshop, we share how we formed a task force to solicit feedback from seven different teaching departments across three divisions. Participants will reflect on their own motivations as teachers and compose learning outcomes to express their priorities.

Participants will:
1. Develop a feasible collaboration strategy in order to build cohesion among a range of library instruction stakeholders.
2. Consider models for learning goals statements in order to develop user-friendly goal statements for their instructional contexts.
3. Engage colleagues in open-ended reflection in order to discern what they are motivated to teach

"Why do I have to learn this?" is a common refrain of students. James Lang's Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons in the Science of Learning offers strategies to foster meaningful connections, enhancing understanding and retention. This interactive workshop adapts Lang's techniques to one-shot library instruction, offering librarians practical, low-prep strategies to enhance teaching and learning outcomes. Attendees will create an action plan to integrate Small Teaching strategies into an existing lesson plan equipping them to deliver impactful, engaging library instruction despite time constraints. Attendees will leave with actionable ideas to improve student retention of key concepts.

Participants will:
1. Identify key principles from James Lang’s Small Teaching and explain how they apply to one-shot library instruction.
2. Develop practical strategies for incorporating small, research-backed pedagogical techniques to enhance student learning in a limited timeframe.

Citation is a crucial part of academic information use and because of this librarians talk about it a lot, but it can be hard to engage students in conversations about why and what to cite. Editing Wikipedia articles can help students think more critically about finding, using, and sharing information sources and how citations can facilitate a conversation. This workshop will show how librarians can help students make small-scale edits to Wikipedia using activities and frameworks provided on WikiEdu. I'll talk about my experience with the WikiEdu platform and we'll do some activities that help us think about ways to use this in one-shots or longer class collaborations.

Participants will:
1. understand how editing Wikipedia can give students a holistic view of citation and information use.
2. be able to use Wikipedia in short term or long term instruction to help students think critically about citation and information use.

This interactive workshop will outline three learning theory models pertinent to information literacy instruction and invite participants to model what these strategies look like in a one-shot. Three distinct but interrelated models discussed will be: Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT), and Andragogy. We will briefly outline the main traits of each model and how they are similar. We will then break participants into three groups and facilitate a sample one-shot demonstrating elements that can be included to enhance effectiveness and engagement.  

Participants will be able to:
1. describe major elements and similarities between the UDL, CRT, and Andragogy education models
2. provide examples of elements of each model in the information literacy one-shot

A library user takes an active role in searching. Their success not only depends on their knowledge of search strategies, but their tendency to persist and change their strategies on the fly. Successful searchers are those who experiment, explore... and play.

Join in on an exploration of playfulness and information literacy. Learn how the language of play can reframe the vocabulary of the ACRL Framework. See how various librarians have integrated games into library instruction to teach a balance of strategy and flexibility in time-limited classroom settings. Maybe even come up with some game ideas of your own.

Participants will:
1. identify concepts of play and their relationship to teaching, information literacy, and the ACRL Framework.
2. draw connections between learning outcomes and game mechanics, and begin designing educational games
3. discover resources and opportunities for professional development available locally and nationally.

Academic Libraries are responsible for meeting the diverse information needs of many different learners. We often find ourselves teaching similar content across different modalities and at different levels of expertise. This can keep us from focusing on the specialized or specific information needs of our learners. This workshop will introduce approaches to intentional and equitable design of library instruction resources for adaptability and scalability, using examples from several different cases. Participants will have the opportunity to develop their own scalable instruction plans.

Participants will:
1. Understand key questions to consider when scaling and adapting library instruction sessions to meet the diverse information needs of different learners 
2. Identify available resources to help design instruction sessions for scalability  
3. Develop goals and begin drafting plans for scaling instruction sessions 

In response to rising distrust for expertise, the commodification of information and education, and continued lack of information literate behaviors, many librarians are looking for ways to advance critical thinking, but what if over-reliance on critical approaches (in our culture as much as our pedagogy) is part of the problem? What if information literacy sits in balance between skillful doubt and skillful belief?

This collaborative workshop will make the case for a more robust approach to critical thinking, one that engages 'methodological doubt' and 'methodological belief'. Come experience this dichotomy and consider whether it could catalyze your instruction.

Participants will:
1. Identify key cultural markers that suggest the need for a framework of skilled doubt and belief in balance.
2. Play with both doubting and believing approaches to appreciate their strengths and weaknesses.
3. Identify areas in their practice where they might de-emphasize doubting approaches or build support for a believing approach in information literacy.

Daemen University's First Year Experience (FYE) seminar incorporates an Information Literacy component led by the Research and Instruction team, joining asynchronous online modules with engaging in-person sessions. Last Fall, inspired by Project Zero's Thinking Routines, we introduced a "Mystery Box" activity: groups received two small items and collaboratively brainstormed keywords, scoped potential research topics, and navigated online library tools to find three relevant resources. The exercise fostered autonomy, creativity, humor, and hands-on learning. Faculty appreciated how this successfully addressed pinch points of freshman research skills, and were enthusiastic to adapt it to their own classrooms.

Participants will:
1. be able to design interactive and gamified activities for library orientations and information literacy instruction that incorporate critical thinking and creativity.
2. evaluate the benefits of constructivist pedagogy and active learning strategies in fostering student engagement, autonomy, and skill acquisition in information literacy sessions, particularly for first-year students.
3. develop strategies for integrating keyword brainstorming, pre-research techniques, and basic database search skills into hands-on learning experiences that are adaptable for diverse student needs and learning preferences and fulfill the ACRL Framework.