Embedded Librarians and Scaffolding for Remote Learning

Abstract:Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the librarians at the Brooklyn Campus of St. Joseph's College New York developed a new embedded librarianship model of instruction, incorporating scaffolded information literacy modules that could be delivered remotely. To measure the new model's efficacy, the researchers administered the 15-item First Year Experience (FYE) Library Literacy Scale to 118 students at the start of the semester as a pretest and again at the end of the semester as a posttest. Results indicated a significant improvement from pretest to posttest, as supported by a significant paired sample t-test, t(117) = –9.01, p < .001. Additional analysis revealed that this result was not influenced by course modality, gender of the student, or which librarian taught the class. The benefits of an embedded librarianship model compared to the traditional one-shot session are discussed.