We will keep this page up to date with Spring 2025 offerings, so please keep checking it for updates and new offerings!
For Ohio State employees completing the Meaningful Inquiry teaching endorsement: For the self-paced version of the workshop, participants are required to attend two required online workshops (TILTing Research Assignments and Motivating through Meaningful Research Assignments) and two elective online workshops. If you attend a workshop that is not listed here that you believe should count as an elective, please send a description of the workshop (including learning outcomes, if available) and a short description of how it is aligned with Meaningful Inquiry’s learning outcomes to LIB-Teach@osu.edu for consideration.
Please note that some of the elective offerings are only open to the Ohio State community – these will be marked accordingly.
Required Workshops
TILTing Research Assignments
Tuesday, March 11, 2025, 12:00-1:00.
Click here to register.
OR
Wednesday, April 9, 2025, 12:00-1:00.
Click here to register.
Research assignments, common across higher education, often require students to demonstrate their information literacy. Instructors may assume that students are prepared to meet the expectations for these assignments or feel unable to teach information literacy at the expense of disciplinary content. Hence, the ways of thinking and knowing related to information literacy can form a hidden curriculum. This online workshop introduces the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework and provides an activity for you to consider how you might apply this framework to your own teaching practice.
Motivating through Meaningful Research Assignments
Wednesday, February 26, 2025, 12:00-1:00.
Click here to register.
OR
Wednesday, April 30, 2025, 12:00-1:00.
Click here to register.
When we find our work to be meaningful, we are often more motivated to tackle that work…this also true for students and their academic work! In this workshop, we will discuss key elements of motivation as they relate to student learning and consider how we can help students finding meaning in their academic work.
Elective Workshops
Help! My Students Can’t Research
January 23, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
To register: https://go.osu.edu/helpresearch25
While ubiquitous in higher education, research assignments can be great sources of frustration for both students and instructors. Instructors may find themselves wondering why students seem unable to meet their expectations, but students may struggle to identify what those expectations even are. In this workshop, participants will learn more about the reasons why students may have difficulties understanding and meeting expectations for research assignments. Participants will also learn about strategies and resources that they can use to support students’ ability to become stronger researchers. This workshop is intended for course instructors, graduate teaching associates, instructional support staff, and librarians at Ohio State. Participants from other institutions are also welcome to attend.
Meaningful Inquiry through Socially Annotated Journal Clubs
January 27, 2025, 12:00-1:00 PM (Eastern)
Click here to register
This will be led by a Meaningful Inquiry alum – Dr. Nick Denton, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Education and Innovation
While the primary research literature is vital for engaging in inquiry, research articles are not made for content novices and pose challenges for student engagement and comprehension. Join Meaningful Inquiry fellows in learning how instructors can use social annotation to facilitate expert guidance and peer collaboration during reading assignments and achieve entire class engagement during synchronous journal club discussions.
Information Literacy: Definitions and Core Concepts
January 30, 2025 , 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
To register: https://go.osu.edu/ildefineconcepts1
OR
February 5, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
To register: https://go.osu.edu/ildefineconcepts2
What is information literacy? Why is information literacy important for students? In this workshop, participants will learn about several definitions of information literacy and develop an understanding of the key concepts, skills, and dispositions associated with information literacy. In addition, participants will learn why explicit information literacy instruction is crucial to students’ academic and professional success and consider what their role in supporting students’ information literacy development might be. This workshop is intended for course instructors, graduate teaching associates, instructional support staff, and librarians at Ohio State. Participants from other institutions are also welcome to attend. The workshop will be followed by a second workshop, Teaching Information Literacy: Strategies and Resources. Participants are encouraged to attend both workshops.
Who Are Today’s Students? Characteristics and Trends
February 11, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
Click here to register
This workshop will be led by Meaningful Inquiry alumna, Dr. Amy Collins, Assistant Professor and Teaching & Learning Scholar in the Center for Learning Innovation at the University of Minnesota Rochester.
Have you ever asked yourself, “What is going on with students these days?” In this session, we will review the latest research findings on student characteristics in this post-COVID learning environment in higher education. We will cover how the pandemic learning disruption impacted students’ readiness for higher education. This session will also touch on current trends in students’ attitudes towards education and offer possible approaches for working with students effectively. The session will include tips for those who teach and work with students. After attending this session, participants will be able to (1) Identify some of the key impacts of the pandemic learning disruption on students, (2) discuss and reflect on emerging research findings about effectively supporting student success, and (3) develop an idea to enact at least one new strategy in working with students.
Teaching Information Literacy: Strategies and Resources
February 6, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
To register: https://go.osu.edu/ilstrategiesresources1
OR
February 12, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
To register: https://go.osu.edu/ilstrategiesresources2
How do we teach information literacy? In order to develop the habits and skills associated with information literacy, students need explicit guidance and support across their entire academic careers. In this workshop, participants will learn more about strategies and activities that they can use to teach information literacy in a variety of contexts. In addition, participants will become familiar with multiple resources available to help them integrate information literacy into their teaching practices. This workshop is intended for course instructors, graduate teaching associates, instructional support staff, and librarians at Ohio State. Participants from other institutions are also welcome to attend. This workshop builds upon an initial workshop, Information Literacy: Definitions and Key Concepts. Participants are encouraged to attend both workshops.
Decoding Research Practices: Narrowing the Expert-Novice Gap
February 13, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
To register: https://go.osu.edu/decodingresearch
Instructors’ expectations for student performance on research assignments is heavily influenced by their disciplinary expertise and their knowledge of academic research practices. However, because this knowledge may become tacit, instructors may have difficulty communicating their expectations to students. The Decoding the Disciplines model, developed by Joan Middendorf and David Pace, has been shown to help narrow the gap between expert and novice thinking by providing instructors with a seven-step process that they can follow to identify and model their own thinking and practice. This workshop will provide participants with an overview of the Decoding the Disciplines model and will demonstrate how participants can use this process to identify student learning bottlenecks related to research and help students move past these bottlenecks. This workshop is intended for course instructors, graduate teaching associates, instructional support staff, and librarians at Ohio State. Participants from other institutions are also welcome to attend.
Disability-Informed Approaches to Research
February 18, 2024, 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
Click here to register.
This workshop will be led by Kestrel Anderson, who is a Writing Across the Curriculum Graduate Consultant at The Ohio State University.
Disabled researchers bring unique perspectives to conducting research, including library-based research. How can we approach researching and writing with sources—in both instruction and practice—through a disability-informed perspective? How do we develop and support multiple ways of approaching and accessing information? When common practices don’t work for us and our students, how do we adapt and try something new? This virtual workshop, a collaboration between the University Libraries and the Writing Across the Curriculum team, will explore how disability studies can offer new strategies and insights to working with sources and increasing information literacy.
This workshop is aimed at course instructors, graduate teaching associates, and librarians. All are welcome!
Should I Still Be Teaching That? Identifying Outdated Research Notions
February 20, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
To register: https://go.osu.edu/outdatedspring25-1
OR
February 26, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
To register: https://go.osu.edu/outdatedspring25-2
Are .org sources more credible? Should students be discouraged from using Wikipedia or Google Scholar as part of the research process? Students, and sometimes even instructors, may have a wide range of misconceptions or outdated notions when it comes to information searching and research assignments. In this workshop, participants will learn about some common, but outdated, understandings about how to find, evaluate and use information as part of the research process. Participants will also collaborate to update these notions to provide more effective guidance to students. This workshop is intended for course instructors, graduate teaching associates, instructional support staff, and librarians.
Adapting to Change: Student Research and Emotions Post-COVID
Wednesday, March 5, 2025. 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
To register: https://go.osu.edu/adaptingtochange
The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated emergency remote teaching has reshaped the research journey for first-year students, altering their emotional responses and information-seeking behaviors. As emergency remote teaching took hold, students adapted by leaning more on peer networks and evolving their information literacy across diverse contexts. This presentation dives into the post-COVID research challenges students face, comparing pre-pandemic data from 2019 with fresh insights from 2023. We’ll explore how students’ frustrations and persistence levels have shifted, and how their emotional experiences now play a crucial role in their research process. By understanding these evolving dynamics, all educators can better support students in navigating their academic paths. Join us to discover strategies that harness students’ emotional resilience, foster self-regulated learning, and build robust information literacy skills in this transformed educational landscape.
What They Don’t (Yet) Understand: Taking an Empathetic Approach to Student Research Challenges
March 13, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
To register: https://go.osu.edu/empatheticresearch
For instructors, it can be frustrating when students consistently struggle to meet our expectations for performance on research assignments. Why do they so often use poor sources? Why can’t they provide proper citations? Why did they turn to AI to complete the assignment? In some cases, instructors may be inclined to blame such performance on laziness or indifference. However, while such frustrations may be understandable, instructors may fail to recognize the extent of the knowledge gap between what experienced researchers know and what novice learners do not (yet) know. This workshop will support instructors to think about how we can take a more empathetic approach to the challenges that students experience with research. Instructors will be encouraged to consider how we can recognize and acknowledge the real challenges that students may be experiencing related to research as we help students to develop the skills and knowledge they need to become effective researchers. This workshop is intended for course instructors, graduate teaching associates, instructional support staff, and librarians at Ohio State. Participants from other institutions are also welcome to attend.
Navigating the Novice-Expert Research Gap: An Information Literacy Taxonomy
March 19, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
Click here to register.
Students and instructors can find research assignments to be frustrating, as students (as novices) and instructors (as disciplinary experts) are seemingly speaking two different languages. Instructors develop assignments and expectations for performance based on ways of thinking and knowing that are common to experts, but these expectations are not always explicitly or transparently taught or discussed with students. In this presentation, we will outline a new taxonomy that is intended to help instructors and librarians navigate this expert-novice research gap. Participants will be introduced to the new taxonomy and consider how they can utilize it to develop research assignments with clear expectations and appropriate scaffolding for learning. This presentation is intended for course instructors, graduate teaching associates, and librarians.
Not Just Research Skills: Identifying and Teaching the Dispositions and Values of Effective Researchers
March 27, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
To register: https://go.osu.edu/researchdispositions
Being an effective researcher requires a significant amount of knowledge and skills, but it also requires students to demonstrate key dispositions and values, such as adaptability, patience, and curiosity. This workshop will identify some of the attitudes and values that are shared by experienced researchers that allow them to more effectively with research, and will consider strategies that instructors can take to help students develop these dispositions. This workshop is intended for course instructors, graduate teaching associates, instructional support staff, and librarians at Ohio State. Participants from other institutions are also welcome to attend.
Transformative Information Literacy
April 3, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm (Eastern)
To register: https://go.osu.edu/transformativeinfolit
A transformative education is one in which students do not just learn new skills and knowledge, but develop a new perspective that allows them to critically consider and question existing understandings and assumptions. Is it possible to teach information literacy in ways that support epistemic and personal transformation? If so, what would this look like? This workshop will provide an overview of the concept of transformative education and will consider this notion in relation to efforts to teach information literacy. This workshop is intended for course instructors, graduate teaching associates, instructional support staff, and librarians at Ohio State. Participants from other institutions are also welcome to attend.
Beyond Labels: Empathetic Teaching Practices for Neuroinclusion
April 8, 2025, 12:00 -1:oo pm (Eastern)
Click here to register.
This workshop will be facilitated by Hanna Primeau, Instructional Designer at The Ohio State University Libraries and Amanda Larson, Affordable Learning Instructional Consultant at The Ohio State University Libraries.
In today’s educational landscape, it’s crucial for instructors and librarians to adapt teaching practices to accommodate the diverse needs of learners, including those who are neurodiverse. So, what is Neurodiversity? According to Baron-Cohen it is (2021) “the view that there are many varieties of the brain, and all of them occur naturally, instead of the old, inaccurate, binary division into normality and abnormality” and within higher education, it’s important to note that these differences are often invisible. The rates of students joining the ranks of higher education who are neurodiverse are raising, and “…theoretically speaking, over a period of several years, about 20,000 students with [an autism] diagnosis may start their education at universities” (Cierzniewska and Podgórska-Jachnik, 2021) with only ⅓ of students with a disability informing their college (NCES, 2022).
This program discusses instruction techniques informed by empathetic pedagogy and supported by learning technology, to create inclusive learning environments that support neurotypical and neurodiverse learners alike. Beginning with an introduction to neurodiversity, attendees will be led through challenges that are often faced by neurodiverse students throughout post-secondary education. From there we expand on what Empathetic Teaching is, its values, how to espouse them, and how they align with the needs of learners of all types. Finally, we will dive into how to integrate learning technology to support a neurodiverse classroom with recommendations for incorporating assistive technology to aid learners. Join us as we explore practical strategies for teaching across various educational settings, from one-shot sessions to credit-bearing courses.