I was once a world famous magician: Using improv to improve performance in the classroom

Abstract

A wise improv actor once told me that when students come to class, they expect to be bored. Unfortunately for information literacy instructors, there may be no place where this is more true than our own classrooms. Research has shown that the confidence students have in their research-related skills often does not match their proficiency with those skills.

For some students, this means that they enter our classrooms believing that they already know how to effectively find, evaluate, and use information as part of the research process. As a result, they are not open to the idea that there might be more to learn. So they expect to be bored.