Information Literacy Instruction: To Flip or Not to Flip the Classroom

Librarians and graduate assistants at R.B. House Undergraduate Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill teach information literacy instruction sessions to students in the required freshman English courses. One-shot or multi-shot instruction sessions are typically taught but experimenting with instructional methods/techniques is encouraged. Flipped classroom, or inverted classroom, instruction has become increasingly popular at the university. The goal of this study is to explore the effectiveness of traditional versus flipped class instruction to see if one method is more effective for helping students develop information literacy skills. Approximately 50 students participated in the study. Students’ unit projects were scored using an information literacy rubric as the tool for assessment. Overall, students’ scores in the flipped classes were higher than students’ scores in the traditional classes.