INFOhio ICoach

1. Is there a need for an information literacy supplemental curriculum designed to guide students through the research process? 

Most definitely! Most 9-12 students are familiar with “googling” any question they have and getting a basic answer, but have poor understanding of evaluating that information or of how to use information they find in their own speaking and writing projects. 

1. What does teaching research and inquiry skills to 9th-12th grade students look like in your library or classroom? 

Teaching research and inquiry skills in my HS ELA classrooms often looks like students being dragged through various levels of hell. They resist the idea that they will have to read and think deeply.

1. How do you teach students how to use ISearch and different resources and databases available through INFOhio?  

I often focus on teaching students to use the Academic Search Premier, but I see that there is not a direct link to the databases from the 9-12 page any longer. We start by running several “practice” searches and looking at ways to expand and reduce the number of possible items. I especially focus on “full-text” items since we live in a very rural area with limited access to physical library resources. I tend not to focus on the encyclopedia searches because I often want students to dig deeper into more academic resources. 

1. How do students access R4S? How do you share R4S with students? 

I have used many of the activities and planning modules when teaching “research.” Most of the time I curate the resources I find most useful and post things through our Google Classroom rather than student’s accessing them directly through InfOhio.  

1. As an educator, what do you see is most valuable about R4S?

As an educator, the planning aspect of R4S is certainly most valuable to me. The modules break the process down into manageable chunks and are rich with resources to use for skill development.   

1. What is most valuable about R4S for students? 

For students, it has a similar value. The chunking of the various tasks would allow students to work asynchronously if necessary or go back to particular sections they are struggling with in future projects. 

1. What would make R4S a more valuable inquiry tool? Update Content? Ease of Access? Something missing? 

Updated content would definitely make it more valuable. I have found that sometimes links are no longer active or the material a bit dated. I would also like some sort of “pre assessment” tool. I vaguely remember there being a link to a university that was doing some sort of research on information literacy in the past that could work as a pre assessment, but I think that project has long ended. Something similar would be useful. 

1. Would there be value in having INFOhio tools modeled or introduced within R4S?

Yes, especially if students were working asynchronously or independently. Having video or pointers may be helpful to them.    

1. When you use R4S with students, what are you pulling out? What is being added? 

I find that modules 2-5 are the real “nuts and bolts” portion of such a project and that is where I spend the most time with my students. Although module 1 is definitely important, in my ELA classroom, students are often writing toward more prompted writing rather than coming up with research questions from scratch as we are doing it as part of a larger literature unit. That module generally gets truncated and I rarely get much into module 6. I have taught module 1 as part of an enrichment intervention and I think it worked well that way. 

Hi Megan

Wow, thank you for such detailed responses to each of the questions regarding R4S! This is so incredibly helpful for us at INFOhio as we think about our resources and how to best serve Ohio's teachers, parents and students!

Your response for number 2 made me laugh!

Thank you again for all your feedback!