Amity Saha

by Amity Saha, Graduate Assistant, ALCD Project, and Graduate Student, Hospitality & Tourism Management

Led by Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies Associate Professor Clarence Maybee, a team from Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies has received a $249,179 award through the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program via the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to conduct the “Academic Librarian Curriculum Developers (ALCD): Building Capacity to Integrate Information Literacy across the University” project. A partnership between Purdue University, the University of Arizona, and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, the ALCD project increases the capacity of academic librarians to enable student learning by partnering with instructors to develop curricula that allows students to more intentionally, creatively, and ethically use information in disciplinary contexts. Learning to use information within a disciplinary context fosters lifelong learning—allowing students to engage with information to learn in personal and professional settings beyond higher education. Supporting student success and learning, the ALCD project aims to demonstrate the value of academic libraries’ educational efforts to key stakeholders, such as administrators, instructors, and students.

Clarence Maybee

A total of 15 librarians and15 instructors from across the three universities will participate in the three-year ALCD project. The librarian participants will learn about informed learning design, a learning design model developed by Dr. Maybee that emphasizes the role of information in the learning process. They will then work with instructors to create classroom assignments in which students engage with information in new ways to learn course content. In the second year of the project, the instructors will implement the assignments in their courses. In the third year, the results of the project will be shared to provide the higher education community with a sustainable model for promoting student success by teaching learners to use information within the learning context.

Project timeline for “Academic Librarian Curriculum Developers (ALCD): Building Capacity to Integrate Information Literacy across the University”

Along with Dr. Maybee (project leader), there are three co-project leaders, including Michael Flierl (Ohio State University) Maribeth Slebodnik (University of Arizona), and Catherine Fraser Riehle (University of Nebraska, Lincoln). Rachel Fundator, information literacy instructional designer (Purdue University), and Amity Saha, graduate assistant staff, (Purdue University) are also part of the project team.

All members of the project team have extensive experience collaborating with classroom instructors to develop curricula, including the creation and implementation of Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation (IMPACT), a campus-wide program to enhance undergraduate courses. Dr. Maybee has led Purdue Libraries’ involvement in IMPACT since 2012. He is a faculty member with ACRL’s Immersion program, a weeklong intensive retreat for academic library professionals to develop their teaching.

As a graduate staff of the ALCD project, my primary responsibilities include working with the project leader and co-leaders at each institution to help create and implement ALCD project activities, including recruitment, workshop development and implementation, support for the analysis of project outcomes, and the sharing of results of the project through various methods.

For more information about the ALCD project, contact Amity Saha (GA) at saha33@purdue.edu, or Dr. Clarence Maybee (PI) at cmaybee@purdue.edu.

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (13-19-0021-19).