Dungeons and Dragons in the Information Literacy Classroom: How We Taught Bias in a For-Credit IL Class

Abstract

In a for-credit information literacy class required by all freshmen students, regardless of major, it is difficult to find consensus when it comes to teaching emotionally fraught concepts such as bias. This editorial addresses those challenges and presents a novel solution to teach bias in class: by having students examine the private lives of fictional characters.

I began my position as the Head of Teaching and Learning at Duquesne University’s Gumberg Library in July of 2019. I was eager to begin designing curriculum for Duquesne’s required one-credit information literacy class: UCOR 100. Nearly five years later, the course has changed names to BRDG (Bridges, the name of our core curriculum) 100 and my department has designed (and taught) five versions of it. We started with a very traditional in-person class, included an online version for students who could not fit the face-to-face class into their schedules, created a course meant to be taught in a Hyflex environment during the pandemic, and tweaked the classes that followed to address the changing needs of post-pandemic students.