Tying Television Comedies to Information Literacy: A Mixed-Methods Investigation

Many components of Information Literacy (IL) are too massive to be addressed in a single instruction session, yet an introduction to these concepts is essential for students' academic careers and intellectual development. This study evaluates the impact of applying excerpts from television comedies that illustrate ACRL's Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education to library instruction sessions for first-year students. Pre- and posttest results from 193 subjects and interview data from two focus groups indicate that television comedies can be integrated into one-shot instruction sessions to demonstrate IL concepts in an accessible and dialogue-provoking manner.