Aha! Centering Student Voices to Better Understand an Instruction Program

Abstract

This article describes using aha moments as an assessment approach to gain a better understanding of student learning in relation to the six frames in the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Librarians asked students to share an aha moment following information literacy instruction sessions during the fall 2022 semester. Researchers coded responses to one of the six IL frames and found that student insights most often reflected learning aligned to the “Searching as Strategic Exploration” frame, though “Information Has Value” also had a strong presence. The results provided a holistic picture of student information literacy learning at Northern Kentucky University and are driving programmatic changes.

Keywords

• assessment
• student learning
• ACRL Framework
• aha moments
• threshold concepts