The Inquiry: 101 lesson plan is based upon Dr. Thanh T. Nguyen’s “Teaching in an Open World: Adopting a Business Model” instructional design template. This lesson plan will provide you - the librarian and professor - with a roadmap for teaching research skills. It provides you with a clear picture of the goals and outcomes you will help your students achieve, lists detailed actions and specific task your students must complete to reach their stated goals, calls for the use of a variety of technological tools which will help you meet the needs of your diverse learners, includes detailed rubrics to allow you to provide your students with formative and summative assessment and complies with the Association of College and Research Libraries Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.
Incremental Learning: The lesson begins with something the students are familiar with in order to “hook” them. In this instance, students are introduced to a topic they are familiar with – young voters impact on the 2008 candidacy of Barack Obama – and search tools they are comfortable with - Google and Wikipedia. As Dr. Nguyen explains, you want to student to start with what they know and finish with what you want them to learn (Nguyen, 2011).
SMART Goals: SMART Goals specify what it is that you want your students to learn and include Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-specific outcomes. The Inquiry:101 lesson is centered around three SMART Goals, each of which is expressed in a manner that clearly state’s the importance of accomplishing the goal to your students. The SMART Goals for this lesson are:
- Devising an effective research question: The student will ask: “How can I design a research question dealing with 20th century U.S. history that is narrowly focused and based on a topic that’s engaging to me personally.”
- Selecting Keywords: The student will ask: “How can I identify at least three appropriate search terms based upon based on the variables I’ve included in my research question? How can I use those terms to look for items in the library catalog and the Academic Search Premier database?”
- Finding the appropriate resources to search: The student will ask : “How they can I use my knowledge of the subject, my keywords, and subject terms to come to conclusions about the types of resources I want and where I might find them – primary sources, scholarly journal articles, statistical data, etc.”
Multiple-ways of teaching and learning: In Inquiry: 101 multiple ways of teaching and learning are provided through the use of a variety of multi-media materials: YouTube, traditional search engines, proprietary databases and the library collections. Learners can engage with these tools in a variety of different ways. Additionally, students striving to achieve these SMART goals work with their peers in groups and interact with their fellow students, the librarian and their professor in online communities.
