Patrick Rudd, Lina Kuhn and Shannon Tennant discussed information access and privilege in first-year curriculum courses.
Patrick Rudd, coordinator of library instruction and outreach services, Lina Kuhn, lecturer in English, and Shannon Tennant, coordinator of library collections, presented 鈥淚nvestigating Information Privilege and Accessibility with First-Year Students鈥 at The Innovative Library Classroom conference at William & Mary on June 3.
The presentation shared Rudd, Kuhn and Tennant鈥檚 experiences connecting to pilot curricula that teaches first-year students about the structural inequalities in the production and accessing of information. Rudd and Kuhn, working on learning outcome revisions for ENG 1100, asked students to consider information privilege and accessibility in a series of library instruction sessions. Tennant worked with a COR 1100 course, teaching on inherent biases in search engines and databases. The presentation discussed their approaches, student responses, and next steps.
Rudd, Tennant and Kuhn,聽along with a group of聽English faculty, received a CATL聽Diversity and Inclusion Grant聽to support聽and continue this work. The grant will support research聽to聽investigate聽existing systems of information collection and dissemination, with the premise that such systems are often inequitable and potentially harmful. Four distinct aspects of information systems聽will be investigated聽within the context of ENG 1100 courses: how data algorithms play into information distribution, the publication and prevalence of misinformation, missing and marginalized perspectives in published research, and privilege in access to information.
After researching these areas, they aim to create a repository of materials including lesson plans, activities and writing assignments.聽The grant will also support workshops and outreach聽to the two other first-year foundation courses in the聽CORE curriculum: COR 1100 and STS 1100.