Making an IMPACT: Campus-wide Collaboration for Course and Learning Space Transformation

Most of us would agree that the roles of librarians have been changing with an almost mind-reeling rapidity. While this can be challenging, it also can provide excellent opportunities to support our students in their academic endeavors in new and meaningful ways. At Purdue University such an opportunity arrived in the shape of a provost-initiated, campus-wide course redesign program called Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation (IMPACT). This initiative aims to bring active-learning to foundational courses traditionally taught through lectures. Involved since the onset, Purdue librarians recognized the IMPACT initiative as one way to enter the conversations blooming on our campus about the nature of learning, curriculum design, and how space design impacts potential learning. Needless to say, involvement in this initiative has required us to examine our professional roles and to rethink them in light of how our work could better support student-centered learning. In this article, we present three perspectives: (1) the information literacy coordinator, (2) a libraries’ administrator with a gift for space planning, and (3) an in-the-trenches liaison to course redesign projects. Each will discuss the IMPACT initiative from his or her unique perspective and view of its impact on librarian roles. Collectively, we will tell why we think it is essential that this kind of campus effort is supported by libraries