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Pedagogy: Faculty

Resources and information about library pedagogy

Pedagogy for Working with Faculty

Faculty: Highlighted Strategies

Partnering with faculty is a way to increase Information Literacy instruction without increasing lessons taught by librarians.
Here are some ideas for ways to work with faculty:

  • Hold workshops
  • Offer self-service tools on a website or LibGuide
  • Review syllabi for information literacy objectives
  • Design assignments with faculty

Faculty: Featured Literature

Cowan, S., & Eva, N. C. (2016). Changing Our Aim: Infiltrating Faculty with Information Literacy. Communications in Information Literacy, 10(2), 163-177. https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2016.10.2.31

Highlights: This article contains a variety of ways in which the authors are sharing information literacy practices with their faculty, including:

  • How students and faculty research processes differ
  • A targeted approach for graduate students
  • A LibGuide where faculty can find IL tools to use in their classrooms
  • Events in partnership with their Center for Teaching and Learning


Hammons, J. (2020). Teaching the teachers to teach information literacy: A literature review. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 46(5), 102196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2020.102196

Highlights: This literature review is very helpful for easily identifying other articles that discuss “teach the teacher” strategies in libraries. They include 24 different initiatives. The tables on pages 4-5 (overview of all articles), 7 (impact), and 8 (response and impact) are particularly useful to give an overview of which articles follow/address which strategies.


Lacy, M., & Hamlett, A. (2021). Librarians, step out of the classroom!: how improved faculty-led IL instruction improves student learning. Reference Services Review, 49(2), 163–175. https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-09-2020-0062

Highlights: These librarians got a grant to pay four faculty members to add IL into their classes. The faculty each submitted their syllabi to the librarians and then attended a two-hour workshop with the librarians to revise the assignments. The faculty found this very valuable, as did students, although students’ written work improved less than their increased confidence suggested.


Mills, J.; Wiley, C.; and Williams, J. (2019). "This Is What Learning Looks Like!” Backward Design and the Framework in First Year Writing. Library Faculty Scholarship. 1. https://repository.belmont.edu/libraryscholarship/1

Highlights: Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s pedagogy of “backward design” was used to formulate a first-year writing class lesson focused on the desired outcomes of the process of searching using “Searching as Strategic Exploration” as the threshold concept. The evidence of learning is a class assignment where students document how to problem solve a “failed search”. A follow-up, individual assignment further develops and documents search strategies to identify, read, and comment on additional search questions or terminology from 2 useful sources. The assessment process is described, and the assignments and rubric used are provided that resulted in improved problem-solving through the search process.

Faculty: Bibliography