Information Literacy Program at Decker Library

Image Description: Colored pencils lined up on a white background. Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

About This Guide

This guide offers a practical starting point to librarians incorporating critical information skills into the instructional practice. The guide includes templates for first-year and second-year courses, reading materials to build out a robust pedagogical framework, instructional and information literacy materials from other institutions, and examples of active learning techniques.

“When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess.” - bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

The Decker Library’s instruction program is centered around a commitment to information literacy and draws heavily upon the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy. The Instruction Team is also committed to inclusivity and interdisciplinarity in its instructional practices. Inspired by the principles of critical librarianship and active learning techniques, the Instruction Program seeks to support all MICA students and promote an open and inclusive academic environment here at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

High-level goals for instruction:

• Students will demonstrate an ability to make informed choices in both their life and their work.
• Students will illustrate the connections between their research and artistic practices.
• Students will identify the connections between research and real world matters.
• Students will recognize the social and political implications of art making.
• Students will be inspired to create, develop and design work that improves the MICA community and the Baltimore community at large.

To learn more about the philosophy behind our teaching practice, please see Decker Library's 2017 Information Literacy Program.

A Community of Practice

The intention of this guide is to help build a Community of (Teaching) Practice here at Decker Library. The concept of a community of practice is attributed to cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger, and for our purposes implies a group of people who are excited by the possibility of learning from each other and working together as a team to support student and faculty development.