Transforming Academic Library Instruction

Amanda Nichols Hess, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor and e-Learning, Instructional Technology, and Education Librarian at Oakland University Libraries in Rochester, Michigan. In this role, she works with her colleagues to develop the Libraries’ diverse and user-focused online learning offerings; she is also responsible for delivering professional learning offerings aimed at building librarians’ capacity to integrate instructional design and technology into information literacy instruction. Dr. Nichols Hess is also the liaison librarian to OU’s School of Education and Human Services, where she maintains an active teaching presence. In addition to her library and instructional work, Dr. Nichols Hess has served as a Faculty Fellow at OU’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. In this capacity, she provided a diverse set of face-to-face and online professional learning opportunities to faculty university-wide.Dr. Nichols Hess’s scholarship focuses on information literacy instruction, instructional design/technology, and the intersection of these practices in faculty development. She has shared practically-focused articles on professional development in a number of influential library journals, including Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian, College and Research Libraries, Communications in Information Literacy, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, portal: Libraries and the Academy as well as chapters ina number of books. In addition to these publications, Ms. Nichols Hess has also shared her work on librarians’ professional learning and development at the Association of College and Research Libraries’ conferences, LOEX conferences/forums, regional professional conferences, and through webinars.

Dr. Nichols Hess has a uniquely broad view of the ways in which our expectations of academic librarian instruction are changing as long-held standards are rejected in favor of frameworks and the rigors of traditional standards and practices are exchanged in favor of more fluid information literacy–based learning objectives. . . . Amanda Nichols Hess’s work with transformative learning theory reveals a more dynamic and diverse landscape of transformation taking place in the journeys of those same librarians that is far more likely to be initiated by a change in leadership or classroom experience than by the adoption of a theory or implementation of a framework.

• DedicationTable of ContentsList of Figures and TablesPrefaceAcknowledgementsPart 1: Academic Librarians, Transformation, and Information Literacy InstructionChapter 1: Academic librarians, Instruction, and Teaching IdentitiesChapter 2: Transformative Learning Theory: A PrimerPart 2: Catalysts and Factors in Perspective TransformationChapter 3: How Teaching Transformation Begins: Catalysts and Disorienting Dilemmas Chapter 4: How Teaching Transformation Develops: Overarching Personal Inputs Chapter 5: How Teaching Transformation Develops: Relational Components Chapter 6: How Teaching Transformation Develops: Professional ComponentsChapter 7: How Teaching Transformation Develops: Underlying External InfluencesPart 3: Transformative Outcomes in TeachingChapter 8: Teaching Transformation in Practice: Resulting Teaching Identities Chapter 9: Transforming Teaching in the Future: Key Conclusions and Research Directions Appendix A: Survey QuestionsAppendix B: Interview QuestionsBibliographyIndexAbout the Author