Doing Killer Research: Exploring Situated Information Literacy in a Credit-Bearing Course

Credit-bearing courses that focus solely on information literacy seem to be the ideal model of “library” instruction as these courses provide more opportunities to scaffold learning and engage with concepts and ideas in more depth. Unfortunately, courses that only focus on information literacy often do so at the expense of vital frames of reference, creating inauthentic learning experiences in which students have to manufacture research questions and practice skills divorced from any disciplinary or personal context. This presentation will discuss a case study of a first year seminar course taught by a librarian that focused on examining “morbid” curiosity about true crime, serial killers, and murder. In this course, information literacy is situated in a larger discussion about a shared theme. For example, instead of discussion about what a scholarly source is and how it’s used, students in the course found scholarly sources that helped them better understand the cultural appeal of true crime narratives. The focus is not explicitly on the material practices of research; instead, students become ever more information literate as they aim to solve problems and answer questions that arise organically out of the shared class theme. This session will advocate that situating information literacy into a larger disciplinary (or interdisciplinary) theme is a model that librarians should pursue in lieu of one-shot sessions or even credit-bearing information literacy environments that focus only on information literacy concepts and mechanics. Audience members will be given the opportunity to reflect on their local contexts to investigate possibilities for pursuing and adjusting this model and will also be given suggestions of how to discuss information literacy in more authentic, situated ways within their current instructional paradigms