Katie Greer from Oakland University discussed critical pedagogy and critical literacy during an asynchronous session at the Lilly Conference. Greer discussed a course they teach as a general education requirement with several really useful assignments and tips!
The idea of students as partners, co-creators, and new experts resonates with me!
I took away these great suggestions from Greer’s session:
- Polling students about the course assignment deadlines at the beginning of the course and modifying, if necessary.
- An assignment that encourages students to read, analyze, and reflect on the Talk page of Wikipedia pages they select. Have groups share findings and impressions on discussion forums (inspired by Jacobs’ chapter in Critical Library Instruction 2010).
- Bias and prejudice in vocabularies. US Census terminology changes, for example.
- Class announcements that include the why and not just the what.
- Students as reference librarians for each other, providing suggestions and resources.
- Capstone project to create and share a resource with critically analyzed information to dig deeper into the information.
