Chapter Five: Learner-Centered Instruction in Libraries
Though the competencies needed to become an instructional designer are as vast and complex as those needed to become a librarian, there are several key instructional design skills covered in this chapter in which all developing instructional librarians should become familiar. These are foundational skills to information literacy instruction and are used in the process of planning and developing student learning. These skills include:
- Writing learning objectives,
- Instructional planning with backward design (an important component of the ACRL Framework), and
- Applying Gagne's 9 Events during the course of instruction (Robert Gagne is considered to be the father of instructional design).
All of these skills are integral to designing and developing student-centered learning because they place the learner at the forefront of all instructional decision making. Who are your learners? What do your learners need to know? What do they already know? What tasks and activities will help them successfully achieve the learning objectives?
To get started, here are three essential questions (Wiggins & McTighe, 2013) we ask you to consider while reading this chapter:
Chapter 5 Essential Questions
EQ1. What makes instruction effective?
EQ2. How do librarians benefit from instructional design knowledge?
EQ3. What does it mean to be an instructional design librarian?
5.1 Writing Learning Objectives
This section was adapted from Chapter 40 of Maverick Learning and Educational Applied Research Nexus Copyright © 2021 by Minnesota State University, Mankato is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
Learning objectives are clear, concise statements that describe what students will know or be able to do by the end of the course or lesson. Learning objectives usually begin with an action verb and they define something that is measurable (something that can be assessed). Learning objectives are often used interchangeably with the terms outcomes or learning goals.
Effective learning outcomes are beneficial because they:
- Provide learners with a clear target/goal for the course
- Direct selection of appropriate assessment strategies
- Guide selection of effective learning activities
Effective learning outcomes create the foundation for alignment in your course or lesson. Alignment is the idea that all components of a instruction work together to help the student master the concepts and skills of the course. A well-written learning objective will define exactly what you expect the audience to learn within parameters (such as length of course/unit/lesson) and how you will measure this.
An effective learning objective is:
- Measurable/Observable
- Specific/Relevant
- Succinct
The ABC's of Writing Effective Learning Objectives
Audience: Who will be doing the behavior/skill?
Behavior: What will the audience be doing?
Condition: Under what constraints will the audience be doing it?
Degree: What is the level of acceptable performance?
Word selection is essential in writing effective learning objectives. Choose language that is objectively measurable and specific.
Example: Learners will be able to articulate at least three key differences between magazine articles and scholarly journal articles.
- Measurable/Observable: Yes, you can measure the articulation of differences.
- Specific/Relevant: Yes, this specifies two types of periodicals.
- Succinct: This is a concise objective.
Example: Learners will understand the difference between magazine articles and scholarly journal articles.
- Measurable/Observable: “understand” is not measurable unless paired with a measurable method of assessment.
- Specific/Relevant: “difference” can be interpreted vaguely unless given specific parameters.
- Succinct: This is succinct but is not measurable or specific enough to be effective.
5.1.1 Using Bloom's Taxonomy
When writing learning objectives or outcomes, you should also consider the appropriate level of cognition for the scope of your lesson and audience. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a useful tool for selecting the appropriate level of cognition when writing learning objectives.
- The lower levels of cognition in Bloom’s represent things like remembering, understanding, and applying. Introductory courses tend to have a greater proportion of learning outcomes at these levels of cognition.
- The higher levels of cognition represent things like analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Upper-level and graduate courses tend to have a greater proportion of objectives at these levels of cognition.
See this visual representation of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy that illustrates six levels of cognitive function with correlating verbs, activities, and assessments. Use this chart to help you write effective, measurable learning objectives at the appropriate levels of cognition for your course.
5.1.2 On the Web
Even more resources that may be helpful to you in writing measurable learning objectives.
5.2 Instructional Planning with Backward Design
This section was adapted from Chapter 39 of Maverick Learning and Educational Applied Research Nexus Copyright © 2021 by Minnesota State University, Mankato is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
Backward design is a process that educators and librarians may use to design learning experiences and instructional techniques to achieve specific learning goals.
- Begin this process by determining the desired end results for the course: What do you want the students to know?
- Then determine how to measure (assess) that the material has been learned: How will you know the students have learned?
- Finally, map the course or lesson to scaffold appropriate instructional activities.
Backward design can be used for designing a course, a module/unit/section, or even a single class period.
Figure 1
Note: Adapted from Wiggins, Grant P., and Jay McTighe (1998) Understanding by Design.
5.2.1 Applying Backward Design
Backward Design can be thought of as task analysis, similar to the process an architect, engineer, or graphic arts designer might use for a new project. The analysis begins by identifying the desired outcome of the task, followed by determining how you will measure success, and finally planning the steps needed to reach that result. As you begin developing a course, unit, or lesson plan for a single class session, you might use the following steps and questions to help guide the backward design process:
Stage 1: Desired Results
What should the students be able to do, demonstrate, or accomplish at the end of the lesson, unit/module, or course?
Because there is a vast amount of content and skills that could be addressed in any area of study, an instructor must identify the learning priorities for each course, unit/module, or lesson. The following process may be used for narrowing and selecting outcomes (See Figure 2):
- Worth being familiar with: During the course/lesson what do you want students to hear, read, see, research, or encounter? This represents a wide range of topics, concepts, skills in your course that students should have some familiarity with. Broad knowledge that could be assessed with traditional quizzing or exams.
- Important to know and do: What are the key concepts and skills that students must have to be successful in the course or lesson? Another way to think about this is that you would consider these to be pre-requisites to being able to successfully complete key performances.
- Enduring understanding: What concepts and skills and “big ideas” do we want students to retain and be able to apply to their real-world experiences long after the course ends, and details are forgotten?
Figure 2
Process to Identify Curricular Priorities
Note: Adapted from Wiggins, Grant P., and Jay McTighe (1998) Understanding by Design.
You might consider using the following filter questions to help you determine what topics might fall into the “enduring understanding” category:
- Filter 1: To what extent does the concept/skill represent a big idea that has enduring value beyond the classroom? These are transferrable theories and skills that impact the quality of life beyond the course itself.
- Filter 2: To what extent is the concept/skill central to your discipline? Does the topic represent an authentic learning experience that represents how the discipline is applied in the real world or how knowledge is generated in the field?
- Filter 3: What concepts are particularly difficult to grasp, harbor misconception, or are foundational principles that may not be obvious to learners?
- Filter 4: What principles and skills are particularly engaging for students? What topics can be connected to big ideas and learners’ own interests and experiences?
Take Action
Review this Writing Measurable Learning Outcomes document. Apply Stage 1 of Backward Design: identify instructional priorities, ask filter questions to determine enduring understanding topics, and write measurable outcomes for a course, unit, or lesson.
Stage 2: Evidence and Assessment
How will you know your students have successfully met the outcomes, are competent in the skill, and/or can apply the knowledge or concepts in the course/unit/lesson?
The next step in backward design is to determine what evidence to collect that will allow you to know what your students have accomplished. Evidence refers to the range of formal and informal assessments throughout a lesson, unit, or course. A common misconception is that evidence is only end-of-semester tests or projects. This is not the case. You might consider using assessments methods from across the following continuum in your instructional design:
Figure 3
Assessment Method Continuum
5.2.1.1 Quiz/Test
Simple, content-focused items that evaluate for facts, concepts:
- multiple-choice, short answer.
- single best answer response
- scored using an answer key
- questions are not known to students prior to the exam
5.2.1.2 Academic Prompts:
Open-ended, questions or problems that require critical thinking:
- ill-structured problem requiring analysis, synthesis, evaluation
- open, no single best answer, require justification for answer/methods
- scored based on criteria and performance standards
- may or may not be known to students prior
5.2.1.3 Performance Tasks/Projects
Complex authentic tasks that mirror real-world experiences and issues:
- Real or simulated setting, with similar constraints and benefits
- Students must address an identified audience
- Must accomplish a specific purpose as related to the audience
- Can be personalized by the student
- Tasks, criteria, and standards are known in advance
Stage 3: Learning Plan
What concepts and principles, materials, learning activities, and instructional experiences/coaching do students need in order to successfully accomplish the performance assessment tasks of the course?
The final step in Backward Design is to plan the activities and practices that students need that will help them be successful in the informal and formal assessment tasks you’ve selected. Alignment of the entire design from outcomes to assessments and activities should also be addressed at this stage as well.
Take Action
Review this Mapping Your Course document. Apply Stage 2 and 3 of Backward Design: Determine how you will measure achievement of the outcomes using the assessment continuum, select learning activities that align with those assessments, and complete a map of your course/unit/lesson.
5.2.2 Resources
This section outlines some additional resources you might begin to think about using to adopt this teaching strategy:
5.3 Gagne's 9 Events of Instruction
You are now familiar with writing learning objectives using Bloom’s Taxonomy and planning instruction using Backward Design, but what does the instruction look like in practice? How can you implement instruction in a way that enhances student learning? Robert Gagne’s (1965) 9 Events of Instruction—foundational to instructional design—provides a framework that will guide you in the development and implementation of library instruction.
Click on each event below to discover applications appropriate for library-related instruction:
In order to learn, students need to be pay attention. Gaining attention at the beginning of a lesson prepares your students for learning.
- Show a brief Youtube video, ask a thoughtful question (with a larger class, ask a clicker question), present a striking image, an unusual fact, or a great quote. Anything that will grab your students’ attention. It should somehow be relevant to the instructional content though.
HIDDEN CONTENT
Students need to know what they are expected to learn by the end of the lesson. Informing students of the learning objectives gives them a purpose for learning and helps them to focus on what they are about to learn.
- If information literacy is a part of the curriculum, then the course’s syllabus should include information literacy objectives for the semester. During an instructional session, students should be informed of that lesson’s learning objectives (i.e. what will they know by the end of the session?). Include them in your lecture slides, on handouts, etc…
It is easier to learn new skills when you are able to connect them to what you already know.
- Have students discuss prior experiences with writing papers and/or doing research (even if that research is non-academic per se). Discuss your own experiences as a college student with writing research papers.
Present the same material in different ways and with different modes, such as lecture, hands-on activities, problems, case studies, etc… Use examples and non-examples. Avoid redundancy when presenting material (i.e. don’t read your presentation slides).
During activities, students should be provided with guidance in order to cut down on frustration.
- Use Think Sheets, rubrics, or anything that explicitly communicates instructions and expectations. WebQuests are particularly useful for providing both structure and learning guidance.
Students should be given ample opportunity to practice and apply skills.
- If possible, provide students with a good 20 to 30 minutes to simply practice the skills they’ve been taught. For example, at the very end of an IL session, let them get started on their own research papers. This gives you the opportunity to work with students individually.
Feedback helps students gauge their own learning.
- Polling and clicker questions are one way to provide feedback during an information literacy session. Encouraging (or requiring) students to ask for help in the library provides additional opportunity for feedback. And ideally, if a librarian is embedded in a course, having access to students’ work in progress allows librarians to give ongoing feedback.
Assessing performance allows students to identify content areas that still need to be mastered.
- For librarians, assessing student performance needs to be a collaborative effort with the classroom instructor. For example, librarians could work with instructors in the development of rubrics for research assignments. Additionally, encouraging instructors to break up research assignments into graded components will help students to assess their performance as they move through the course.
When students are able to apply new skills and knowledge in a personal context, they are more likely to retain those skills.
- Librarians can help instructors design research assignments that are relevant to students. This may be a personalized topic or may come in the form of assignment choices, such as a digital story, a wiki, or other alternative form of research assignment.
Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction are very useful in developing and implementing instruction. The 9 Events are not necessarily sequential though. They should be viewed more as a framework for designing instruction, and you may not use all 9 events within a single lesson plan.
5.4 Featured Exercises in Instructional Librarianship
5.4.1 Exercise—Learning Objectives
Strong learning objectives should employ verbs that are observable and measurable. They should also reflect an appropriate level of student understanding. In the following exercise, use this visual representation of Bloom's Taxonomy to select appropriate action verbs for the learning objectives below. As you select a verb for each learning objective, think about the types of activities that could be used to measure it. Do the activities appropriately reflect the verb's level of understanding according to Bloom's Taxonomy?
Bloom's Taxonomy Action Verbs
By the end of this information literacy session, students should be able to:
an information need.
sources that appropriately support their information needs.
Successfully a research database.
between scholarly and popular information sources.
multiple scholarly information sources in a research essay.
5.4.2 Exercise—Planning with Backward Design and Gagne's 9 Events
Robert Gagne was a proponent of approaching the planning and design of instruction backwards
from the learning outcomes. Because of this, Gagne's 9 Events of Instruction pairs well with Backward Design. In this exercise, you will put your understanding of these concepts into practice. You are tasked with developing a learning plan for a literacy lesson (information, digital, data, etc.) from the learning outcomes. Gagne's 9 Events will help guide the process. See the template below.
Planning from the Learning Outcomes
Target Audience
(Describe your learners.)
Learning Objectives
(What learning do you want to observe and measure?)
Learning Activities and Assessments
(What activities and assessments will help you determine that learning took place?)
Learning Plan
(Explain what you will do during each event of instruction.)
- Gain Attention (Describe how you will gain learners' attention.)
- Inform Learners of Objectives (Describe how you will explain the learning objectives in a way that your learners will understand.)
- Stimulate recall of prior learning. (Explain how you will help connect your learners' existing knowledge and background experiences to the learning objectives.)
- Present the Content (Explain how you will present the learning content to a diversity of learners.)
- Provide "Learning Guidance" (Describe the strategies that you will use to ensure that your learners are grasping the content.)
- Elicit Performance (Describe the activities that your learners will participate in to practice the concepts/skills being taught.)
- Provide Feedback (Explain when and how you will provide learner feedback.)
- Assess Performance (Explain and justify the assessment(s) you selected to measure learning growth.)
- Enhance Retention and Transfer (Describe the strategies and/or activities that you will implement to help learners maintain and transfer their newly acquired knowledge/skills.)
5.5 References and Recommended Readings
Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. (Eds.). (2000). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Pearson.
Gagne, R. (1985). The conditions of learning (4th ed.). Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
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