Embracing Change: Alternatives to Traditional Research Writing Assignments. Silke Higgins and Ngoc-Yen Tran, eds. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2022. 319 p. Paper, $86.00 (978-0-8389-3766-2).

Amidst a competitive job market, a constantly evolving digital sphere of communication, and the many pressures (ecological, economic, and otherwise) facing students upon graduation, academic institutions are charged with the task of best preparing students to thrive. Embracing Change: Alternatives to Traditional Research Writing Assignments meets this challenge by inspiring information literacy instructors to consider their unique student populations and their corresponding needs; to be open-minded regarding resources available; and, above all, to be creative and nuanced in moving past written essays and reports toward assignments that better reflect student learning.

Embracing Change is organized in two parts. Part 1, “Analog-Driven Assignments,” contains chapters on topics such as voter guides, museum exhibits, letterpress poetry, zines, finding aids, and children’s books. Part 2, “Technology-Driven Assignments,” covers Wikipedia Edit-a-thons, infographics and lightning talk videos, podcasts, and digital humanities projects. Instruction and course types range from tens to hundreds of students, use a variety of grading scales (e.g., pass/fail, “labor-based grading contracts,” ungrading), and they involve faculty across a spectrum of academic pursuits and levels. The format of each chapter is easy to follow. Authors report on the context of their institutions and classes, followed by the explicit details of their course and assignments, along with a mix of feedback from their own perspectives as well as from their students.

Though the primary audience for this book is instructional librarians, some chapters may also be helpful to units such as digital humanities and archives that engage in instruction with special collections. Additionally, this book would be an asset beyond the library to research and inquiry instructors, as well as curricula support, writing center, or student success staff.

The editors are well positioned to have shepherded this volume through production. Higgins is a research and instructional librarian working with non-traditional students and English language learners, both examples of students who may benefit from alternatives to the written assignment model. Tran’s role as a coordinator for teaching and learning coupled with a focus on high-impact educational practices is evident in the selection of ideas presented in the book.

The contributing authors mainly comprise instructional, liaison, and student success type librarian roles, featuring some input from faculty members and curricula support as well. This range of authors testifies to the applicability of the ideas of this book to librarians and instructors, as well as to readers from a wide variety of academic domains and institutions whose students could all benefit from the ideas in this text.

A key strength of Embracing Change is its learner-focused format. Although some chapters and assignments are geared toward an entire research course or an embedded model of information literacy instruction, most can be adapted to fit the purposes of one-shot instruction. Chapter 8, “Remembering Local Mexican American History through Storytime,” goes beyond adapting assignments from one-shot instruction, suggesting instead collaboration with faculty for integrated information literacy instruction. The authors note that one-shot instruction is “shown to be potentially ineffective for student learning, and [is] considered a cause of librarian burnout, particularly for librarians of color and other marginalized groups” (132). Each chapter begins with a full description of the educational setting, contextualizing the institution, class, and constitution of the student body. This organization makes it clear how invested the authors are in understanding and catering to their students’ unique interests and needs.

Since each chapter entails assignments that have already been implemented (and, in some cases, that have even gone through multiple iterations), the authors have benefitted from feedback (both personal and from students). Where possible, they share these experiences with the reader. Appendixes featuring course descriptions or assignment outlines are included in almost every chapter, and are valuable as instruction or clarification for adaptation. Even where assignments are entirely out of the realm of possibility for many reading this text (one requires a letterpress for printing), readers will be inspired by the dedication and processes of instructors who facilitate their students’ learning using grants, faculty collaboration, colleague expertise, or whatever other resources are available.

While Embracing Change achieves its goal in exploring alternatives to research writing assignments, the book’s brief introduction fails to introduce the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy, which many chapters reference. Given the applicability of Framework outside the scope of libraries (such as inquiry or research writing faculty, curricula support staff, or really any academic staff without an MLIS), it could have been a helpful gloss in the introduction. Furthermore, given the brevity of the introduction, the editors missed an opportunity to ground their book and its contributions within the relevant discourse of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. But these are relatively minor concerns. Overall, readers of this text will gain an understanding of actionable ideas to inspire their own methodologies for modern information literacy instruction.—Nicole Doro, McMaster University