C&RL News April 2019 212

LIB 1500 is a three-credit information literacy course offered by the University 
Library at California State Polytechnic Uni-
versity, Pomona (Cal Poly-Pomona), which 
is taught by faculty librarians. The course 
was developed during the 2014–15 aca-
demic year and has been offered continu-
ously since. While targeted primarily toward 
freshmen, in the course inevitably include a 
number of sophomores and upper-level stu-
dents seeking to fulfill their lifelong learning 
General Education requirement, for which 
LIB 1500 is one of several options. While the 
development of LIB 1500 has been a labor 
of love, by the end of Spring Quarter 2017, 
those of us involved in teaching the class 
had noticed that the course was becoming 
dated and needed a complete overhaul. 
Therefore, during the 2017–18 academic 
year, librarians at Cal Poly-Pomona funda-
mentally redesigned LIB 1500 to reflect the 
threshold concepts described in the ACRL 
Framework for Information Literacy for 
Higher Education. In doing so, we learned 
valuable lessons about course structure, 
applied learning, and the iterative nature 
of course revision.

Issues with the original course
Prior to revising LIB 1500, the library faculty 
observed a disconnect between the theo-
retical concepts we discussed in class and 
the in-class activities that would follow. For 

example, a discussion of smart appliances 
might be followed up by a citation exercise 
or a discussion of online privacy by an ac-
tivity involving use of reference sources on 
an unrelated topic. At times, it seemed as if 
the course had been created with two con-
flicting goals in mind, and the resolution to 
that conflict had been to attempt to do both 
things at the same time. The result was an 
in-class experience that was at best, eclectic, 
and at worst, incoherent.

In order to bring some sense of coherence 
to the class, we needed a structure that would 
allows us to organize the concepts we were 
teaching, yet be flexible enough to allow us 
to adjust for technological changes and the 
continuously updating nature of the informa-
tion environment. As the threshold concepts 
outlined in the Framework for Information 
Literacy for Higher Education appeared to 
provide us with that balance of structure and 
flexibility around which we could rebuild 
our course, it seemed the logical choice to 
use the Framework as reworking the course.

Planning the first revision
In June 2017, an ad-hoc committee com-

Shonn M. Haren is library instruction coordinator at 
California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, 
California, email: smharen@cpp.edu
 
© 2019 Shonn M. Haren

Shonn M. Haren

Reframing from the ground up
Redesigning a credit-bearing information literacy course using  
the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education

mailto:smharen%40cpp.edu?subject=


April 2019 213 C&RL News

posed of five teaching librarians and our 
systems librarian set out to drastically over-
haul and update LIB 1500. Our goals were 
ambitious. The structure of the course was 
to be shifted from a calendar week-based 
course to a modular course, with each mod-
ule addressing one of the threshold concepts 
outlined in the Framework. Within each 
module, the individual lessons would each 
include a concept discussion and an in-class 
activity that related directly to each other, as 
well as relating in some way to the topic of 
the module that contained it. As illustrated 

in figure 1, we sought a direct correlation 
between each of our course modules and a 
concept explored in the Framework.

We also intended to replace the course 
final. The old course final had involved stu-
dents picking a research topic at the begin-
ning of the quarter and then performing a 
series of research activities about that topic, 
including searching for sources, citation of 
those sources, and source assessment. The 
final itself was a reflective essay in which the 
students would describe their experience with 
the research process. This was a solid assign-
ment, but student engagement was low, and 
the whole process seemed a bit artificial. We 
wanted something that would demonstrate 
a more direct application of the skills they 
were learning in the class, and increase their 
engagement with the material. The revised 
final would be a group project in which the 

students would be assigned a Wikipedia stub 
and expected to apply the skills and concepts 
learned in class to improve the stub by adding 
information, citations, and images. 

As Cal Poly-Pomona embraces a “learn 
through doing” philosophy, we felt that this 
final provided our students with an oppor-
tunity to see how the concepts they were 
learning worked in a real world context, 
involving a resource that they all used at 
one time or another. Through a partnership 
with the Wikimedia Education Foundation, 
Wikipedia provided our course with a dash-

board, sandboxes, and training in how to edit 
Wikipedia and Wikipedia Standards.

In order to spread out the work, the 
librarians on the course revision committee 
each volunteered to write one of our course 
modules. They would be expected to pro-
duce the following:

• module learning outcomes that would 
map to the course learning outcomes,

• two-to-four unique lesson plans (de-
pending on whether it was a one- or two-
week module) that included an internally 
coherent concept discussion and in-class 
activity and connected to the larger module 
theme,

• readings and reading quizzes for each 
lesson in the module,

• an end of module assessment that 
measured the student learning of the module 
learning outcomes.

Figure 1: Correlation between the Framework and LIB 1500’s modules.



C&RL News April 2019 214

The overall goal was to provide the stu-
dents with a coherent learning experience 
in each class, where their readings, lectures, 
applied activities, and major assignments all 
worked together to help them understand 
and apply the concepts they were learning.

“Test driving” the new course
The 2017-18 school year provided us with an 
opportunity to “test drive” the revised course. 
Over these three quarters, we offered four 
sections of LIB 1500 to a total of 90 students. 
During this period, we got a good idea of 
what worked and what still needed work. 
Restructuring LIB 1500 around the threshold 
concepts in the Framework was largely suc-
cessful. Lessons felt much tighter and more 
coherent, and clearer connections between 
lessons and activities have also led to an in-
creased degree of student engagement, as 
well as with the material in the classroom. 

The Wikipedia final also proved to be 
one of the key strengths of the course revi-
sion. It was mentioned frequently in student 
surveys as one of their favorite parts of the 
class. The final has involved a high degree of 
student engagement, as students who might 
not have been greatly concerned about the 
formatting of a final paper suddenly became 
arch-perfectionists when told that the fruits of 
their labors would be visible on one of the 
most accessed websites on Earth. With very 
few exceptions, the products of group work 
on these projects has been excellent, even 
when students have been asked to work on 
a topic well outside their academic comfort 
zones, such as when a group composed of 
humanities and social science majors were 
asked to work on “Ice Jacking,” a stub dealing 
with an engineering topic. We are particularly 
pleased with this project as it epitomizes the 
“learn by doing” ethos we embrace at Cal 
Poly-Pomona.

While the first iteration of our course revi-
sion had its share of successes, it also had a 
fair number of failures. For example, while 
the Wikipedia final has been popular among 
our students, we had difficulty integrating 
the training provided by Wikipedia into the 

course itself. This had to do in part with the 
fact that the trainings existed on a separate 
dashboard from our Blackboard course shell, 
and our initial uncertainty about how to 
incorporate the grading of these trainings. 
In this first iteration, completing the train-
ings provided 10 percent of the grade for 
the final, and was scored only at the end of 
the quarter when the final was due. While 
we could observe some correlation between 
the groups that completed the trainings and 
higher quality final projects, we didn’t have 
a really good way to incorporate what they 
were being taught in the trainings with what 
we were teaching them in the classroom, and 
the disconnect was a problem. 

Another challenge has involved Module 
4, which addressed the Research as Inquiry 
frame. After teaching the original lessons for 
this module during Fall Quarter 2017, the 
librarians felt that these lesson plans didn’t 
provide the students with enough hands-on 
experience in considering a research topic 
or doing background research on that topic. 
Therefore, in Winter Quarter 2018 we revised 
these lessons, focusing on a real world re-
search problem, in this case selecting and 
doing background research on buying a car. 
In the first lesson, students would be broken 
up into groups and provided with a scenario 
(one example said they could buy any car 
they wanted, but it couldn’t cost more than 
$10,000), and it then asked them to generate 
a mind map of what kind of topics they felt 
would be important to consider when look-
ing for that vehicle. 

In the second lesson, the students were 
provided with a variety of reference sources, 
such as the Kelly Blue Book, and asked, using 
those sources, to decide on a specific type 
of vehicle that met their earlier criteria and 
that they thought would be worth purchas-
ing. This applied focus resulted in far greater 
student engagement and a better understand-
ing of both the messiness and real world 
relevance of the research process.

Finally, contradictory though it may seem, 
structure also proved a problem in the first 
round of course revisions. Under the re-



April 2019 215 C&RL News

vised model, Module 5, which addressed 
the Search as Strategic Exploration frame, 
came near the end of the course, long 
after students should have begun search-
ing for sources for their Wikipedia project. 
As a result, students had to begin to find 
sources for their final project long before 
they were introduced to useful tools and 
effective strategies for performing searches 
in catalogs, databases, or the open web. Our 
restructuring of the course had inadvertently 
forced our students to “go it alone” in one 
of the most crucial steps for preparing for 
their final. 

Conclusion
A credit-bearing course is a complex 
mechanism with learning outcomes, lec-
tures, readings, activities, and assignments 
all playing roles as moving parts that, 
when moving in concert, provide both 
the instructor and the student with an 
enjoyable, if sometimes challenging, ex-
perience. However, as harmony between 
those parts can be difficult to achieve, re-

vising a course can be a daunting pros-
pect. 

In using the Framework for Information 
Literacy for Higher Education, we were 
able to build our course around its struc-
ture of general concepts and avoid some 
of the problems of discontinuity that had 
plagued us in the past. The Framework’s 
structure allowed us to logically organize 
the concepts covered in our course while 
providing us with the flexibility to change 
things as new problems arose. 

In light of the problems we identified 
in our first round of course revision, we 
chose, in the following academic year 
(2018–19) to add in-class Wikipedia train-
ing sessions, change where the research as 
inquiry and search as strategic exploration 
modules appeared in the class and add 
several new lessons to address concerns 
such as fake news. The flexibility and 
breadth provided by the Framework made 
these later revisions far simpler and less 
disruptive than they would have been in 
the older system.  

4. ACRL Research Planning and Review Com-
mittee, “2018 Top Trends in Academic Libraries: 
A Review of the Trends and Issues Affecting 
Academic Libraries in Higher Education,” C&RL 
News 79, no. 6 (2018): 286–300, doi:10.5860 
/crln.79.6.286.

5. LeEtta Schmidt and Michael English, 
“Copyright Instruction in LIS Programs: 
Report of a Survey of Standards in the 
U.S.A.,” The Journal of Academic Librarian-
ship 41, no. 6 (2015): 736-43, doi:10.1016/j.
acalib.2015.08.004.

6. Ibid.
7. John Eye, “Knowledge Level of Li-

brary Deans and Directors in Copyright 
Law,” Journal of Librarianship and Schol-
arly Communication 2, no. 1 (2013): 1-14, 
doi:10.7710/2162-3309.1103.

8. Juan-Carlos Fernández-Molina, João 
Batista E. Moraes, and José Augusto C. 
Guimarães, “Academic Libraries and Copy-
right: Do Librarians Really Have the Required 
Knowledge?” College & Research Librar-
ies 78, no. 2 (2017): 241-59, doi:10.5860 
/crl.78.2.16584.

9. “CC Wiki: Marking/Creators/Marking 
Third Party Content,” Creative Commons, 
last modified November 19, 2003, 23:44, 
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki 
/Marking/Creators/Marking_third_party 
_content#Additional_explanation_and 
_tips.

10. https://sparcopen.org/our-work 
/ s p a r c - l i b r a r y - o e r - f o r u m / ,  h t t p s : / / 
creativecommons.org/2017/09/05/invitation 
-join-cc-open-education-platform/. 

(“An open impediment,” continues from page 204)

http://doi.org/10.5860/crln.79.6.286
http://doi.org/10.5860/crln.79.6.286
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2015.08.004
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2015.08.004
http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1103
http://doi.org/10.5860/crl.78.2.16584
http://doi.org/10.5860/crl.78.2.16584
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Marking/Creators/Marking_third_party_content#Additional_explanation_and_tips
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Marking/Creators/Marking_third_party_content#Additional_explanation_and_tips
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Marking/Creators/Marking_third_party_content#Additional_explanation_and_tips
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Marking/Creators/Marking_third_party_content#Additional_explanation_and_tips
https://sparcopen.org/our-work/sparc-library-oer-forum/
https://sparcopen.org/our-work/sparc-library-oer-forum/
https://creativecommons.org/2017/09/05/invitation-join-cc-open-education-platform/
https://creativecommons.org/2017/09/05/invitation-join-cc-open-education-platform/
https://creativecommons.org/2017/09/05/invitation-join-cc-open-education-platform/