Helping Undergraduate English Language Learners Through Information Literacy Obstacles
credit-bearingAt the University at Buffalo, education librarians implement Universal Design for Learning (UDL) concepts and social constructivism to provide approachable and accessible information literacy instruction to English Language Learners.
Since 2016, the Education Services Team in the University at Buffalo (UB) Libraries have partnered with the English Language Institute (ELI) with the goal of delivering information literacy instruction (IL). Most of these students are both international and English Language Learners (ELLs). In addition to hurdles involving language, they have gaps in knowledge that need to be approached in different ways. The librarians have always focused on finding dynamic ways to make information literacy approachable, accessible, and meaningful. To achieve this, the Ed Services team has embraced Universal Design for Learning (UDL) concepts to implement multimodal delivery of content along with utilizing social constructivist teaching practices.
For ELI students, IL concepts are structured in a 10-week credit bearing lab attached to their ENG105 class. Because students thrive with structure, the librarians provide a “Group Research Starter Pack” with translatable resources regarding an assigned research topic (ex. TED Talks, database articles). Students use their starter pack to obtain background information about their research topic. Throughout the semester, groups work toward a final deliverable in the form of a multimodal presentation. To bolster student engagement, librarians create videos and documents that supplement the class lectures. In addition, gamification and hands-on activities are employed, allowing instructors to do formative assessments in real-time and modify lessons as needed.
ELLs benefit from enhanced attention to detail alongside increased patience from the instructor to be successful. Over the last six years, the librarians have obtained valuable takeaways and qualitative feedback that continue to influence the reiteration of course content. In this session, the presenters will detail the various ways they craft their instruction to be more accessible for students, combining UDL strategies, social constructivism, and the ACRL Framework. Participants will identify high-impact/low-effort tasks for improving accessibility based on their own learning environments.
You can find resources for this presentation here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folder...
About the Presenters:
Bryan J. Sajecki received his MS in Library and Information Science from SUNY University at Buffalo in 2012 with a focus on school librarianship and education. In 2016 he was hired by the Education Services Department of the University at Buffalo Libraries and is currently a Student Support and Engagement Librarian there. He writes and presents on strategies for making Information Literacy instruction more accessible for undergraduates, specifically with the use of social constructivism, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and dejargoning library vernacular to bridge gaps of information from high school to college. His research interests include outreach initiatives to underserved student populations on campus and the impact of positive librarian relationship building on student retention and academic success.
Keith Nichols is an undergraduate education librarian who works primarily with first- and second-year students at the University at Buffalo (UB). He received his MLS from UB in 2012 and an MPH from the University of Georgia in 2017. His main research interests revolve around understanding how information literacy relates to student retention and achievement in the undergraduate population and how undergraduates who receive early intervention with information literacy training fair in the college setting. Mr. Nichols has worked in his current role at UB since 2017 and currently serves on the education services team which handles undergraduate information literacy and learning projects for the UB libraries. As part of the education services team, he has presented on multiple occasions on topics such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), dejargoning library vernacular, and bridging the gap between high school and college level research skills. "