Getting results from one-shot instruction: A workshop for first-year students

This article describes a one-shot workshop called "Unravel The Library" aimed at students enrolled in English composition classes at the University of Minnesota. Unravel lesson plans follow a set of objectives, use active learning techniques, and can be taught by any staff member. Some workshops include an assessment to measure student retention of basic concepts, tools, and skills. Parts of the lesson plan can be adapted to a variety of audiences by teachers or librarians wanting to build information literacy competencies, refresh students on using indexes, identifying scholarly literature, evaluating citations, finding books and periodicals, and designing search strategies in databases.