SMU Libraries will be distributing $1000 to the winner of the Faculty Information Literacy Stipend. The winning faculty member will be recognized for working with a librarian to design and implement an information literacy assignment into a course in Spring or Summer 2020.
Application deadline for Spring/Summer 2020 courses: December 6, 2019
Application deadline for Summer/Fall 2020 courses: May 1, 2020
LaiYee Leong, this semester’s stipend winner, says “The IL grant was an incentive to redesign my course to make information literacy a core student learning outcome. Doing so challenged me to rethink what skill set – beyond subject knowledge – I wanted students to develop. Rather than simply assign a conventional term paper, I created a multi-week project that segmented the research process. It required students to seek and assess information in a thoughtful way.”
The students in Professor LaiYee Leong’s course on Movements and Protests are investigating how primary and secondary sources support or reject a particular existing theory about mass mobilization. Librarians worked with students to determine strategies for finding and evaluating primary sources, specifically discussing the modes of information dissemination during the various protests discussed and the difficulties of evaluating primary source information under repressive regimes, particularly with the rise of digital authoritarianism.
“SMU librarians supported the endeavor by building a course-specific resource guide and providing instruction on essential research strategies. The feedback so far suggests students appreciate receiving more deliberate research instruction and, feeling better equipped, they seem to possess a stronger sense of ownership about the assignment.”