Scottish Information Literacy Project

Couple of blog postings that people might be interested in that relate to an Infolit iSchool Second Life event on 23rd April:

1. Information Literacy meets Library 2.0 Peter Godwin and Jo Parker

Impressions from the LILAC (information literacy) conference Vicki Cormie talking about Andrew Walsh’s session on using mobiles, Marshall Dozier talking about Peter Godwin’s, which also focused on mobiles.

2. Information Literacy Weblog Sheila Webber

Mobile Phones and a New Zealand study – Twiss, T. (2008) Ubiquitous information: An eFellow report on the use of mobile phones in classrooms to foster information literacy. http://www.scribd.com/doc/9507014/Toni-Twiss-Ubiquitous-Information

The project has been working with Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS):

to  identify exemplars of good practice / case studies within the cross curricular area of information literacy for dissemination through the LTS (Learning and Teaching Scotland) website which offers an important mechanism to keep education authority and school staff informed and supported.

Thanks to the above parties, LTS Curriculum for Excellence Literacy and English Team and the school librarians involved the case studies are now live and can be viewed on the LTS Information Literacy Website under sharing practice  - two more case studies are still to be finalised by LTS. Hopefully more case studies will be added in the future. 

The addition of these sharing practice case studies / exemplars of good practice linked to the Curriculum for Excellence four capacities (to enable each child or young person to be a successful learner, a confident individual, a responsible citizen and an effective contributor) will add value to the LTS resources:

• facilitating access to practitioners’ good practices and classroom resources within this important cross curricular area
• demonstrating how specific information literacy competencies can be applied in practice
• identifying exemplars linked to different levels within the curriculum, subjects and resources.

This is an important development with the inclusion of information literacy as part of the Curriculum for Excellence Literacy and English experiences and outcomes specifically

• finding and using information in the listening and talking, and reading sections
• understanding, analysing and evaluating in listening and talking, and reading sections “to encourage progression in understanding of texts, developing not only literal understanding but also the higher order skills”
• organising and using information in the writing section

For more details see Curriculum for Excellence: Literacy and English experiences and outcomes also the accompanying  – principles and practice paper / document.

I reported in my first posting on LILAC 2009 about Moira Bent and Elizabeth Stockdale’s presentation Integrating Information Literacy as a habit of learning: Assessing the impact of a golden thread of IL in the curriculum  for anyone who is interested the presentation is now on slideshare.

The Scottish Information Literacy Project has been awarded funding by Learning and Teaching Scotland to work with Learning and Teaching Scotland in an area which is a key area for both Learning and Teaching Scotland and the Scottish Information Literacy Project. One of the Project’s ‘products’ is the first draft  of the National Information Literacy Framework Scotland which is a Framework linking specific information literacy skill levels to appropriate Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework levels from primary school to workplace and lifelong learning levels.  We are currently extending and redrafting it to make it a genuine lifelong learning policy document in line with the Scottish Government’s ‘cradle to grave’ educational strategy.  We will be working with Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Literacy Team on a project entitled:

 ‘Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21^st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level)

The Project’s aims are:

To create a quality CPD Information Literacy resource pack whose target audience will be Early Years (primary 1-2).  This will contain:-

• Background Information re Information Literacy
• Learning and teaching approaches
• Supporting resources –e.g. Posters, PowerPoints.

Learning and Teaching Scotland is constructing a resource called ‘Real and Relevant – Information Literacy Skills for the 21^st Century Learner’ which is aimed at the upper primary/early secondary stages. This resource reflects the purposes and principles of Curriculum for Excellence as well as linking with specific outcomes from the Literacy and English framework. The Project, aimed at early and first level, will help us to extend the early years component of the Framework. Both projects should complement existing work already carried out by Learning and Teaching Scotland in this area, e.g. the structure and terminology that has been adapted to be in keeping with primary practice and the CfE literacy and English framework.

I only managed to attend one of the sesions on emerging technology Are we sharing our toys in the sandpit? A discussion on issues surrounding the re-use and re-purposing of electronic information literacy learning objects in the UK. where there emerged lots of the issues surrounding this area and the possiblity of interested parties coming together.

The use of mobile technology got people talking
If they won’t turn them off, we might as well use them. Using mobile ‘phones in information skills sessions Andrew Walsh  and Information Literacy meets the Mobile Web – Peter Godwin (see Vicki Owen’s posting about both these sessions).

Other sessions covered various aspects of Web 2.00 including Second Life Aspects of information literacy in virtual worlds - Sheila Webber (Sheffield University Department of Information Studies), Vicki Cormie (St Andrews University Library), Lyn Parker (Sheffield University Library) and Marshall Dozier & Denny Colledge (Edinburgh University Library). The presenters all have experience of teaching and/or supporting teaching on their universities’ Second Life islands (Sheffield’s Infolit iSchool, Edinburgh’s Vue and St Andrews’ Minerva Island).

One of the key note speakers Melissa Highton Head of the Learning Technologies Group (LTG) at University of Oxford talked about the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge using iTunes U to record one off experiences (lectures). She also talked about Digital Literacy which she said there was no definition as yet (I think she menat agreed definition) and asked who would shape a Digital Literacy Framework. Surprisingly she didn’t mention the earlier work of Alan Martin and the DigEuLit Project – A European framework for Digital Literacy. She stated that learners need to aquire an increasingly complex range of skills for effective lifelong learning including information literacy and e-learning skills, and with the emergence of new technologies we all need to.

This year’s LILAC, held at Cardiff, was yet another administrative triumph for the organising committee with all the components of a successful international conference present including two superb evening events. I shall certainly be going back to Caerphilly Castle again. With the 5^th year completed a pattern is now established with the continuing predominance of HE, both in attendees and presentations. This is not surprising, given that HE is the library sector where there is most interest and activity in R&D and also funding to support it. There is interest, but less time, money and resources generally in schools but there were presentations about or relating to schools which is a welcome development. It is also good to see university libraries working with schools and this is clearly well established in a number of cities now as the discussion following Michelle Schneider’s presentation showed. There was a much less about the workplace and taking the IL message to supportive non ‘library’ client groups. There was nothing directly on media literacy and only one presentation on health literacy which attracted a disappointingly small audience for such an important subject. The range of sources people use to find information about weight issues was interesting as ‘librarianly’ type sources cam about two thirds way down the list. In view of our work I find this unsurprising and no doubt Christopher Walker would be of the same opinion, given that he has found that parents of young children’s principal source of information is the TV programme, ‘Supernanny’.

There is no doubt that the programme was extremely full, perhaps too full, although this may be unavoidable as the organisers would not want to disappoint any applicants unnecessarily.  However the conference has been running for five years now and perhaps it is time to stand back and take stock. As director of the Scottish Information Literacy Project I have tried to move away from a concentration on models based on traditional information sources and to some extent to move away from a culture of librarians talking to librarians in favour of making partnerships and contacts with supportive organisations outside the library world. This includes employers’ organisations, skills bodies and trade unions. In a real sense we should be talking to anyone but librarians and promoting IL as an essential career choice and management skill, a CPD skill, a workplace decision making and lifelong skill, a civil right and a skill to support leisure. Perhaps next year there should be some longer reflective sessions about what IL is really for and where it ought to go in the 21^st century. Speakers from outside the profession would be a good idea although such people are still not very common.  As usual it is easier to pose the questions than produce the answers.

Christine has reported on a number of specific sessions and like her I found Leslie Burger’s presentation inspiring because she is a public librarian with a cross sectoral, skills perspective which is just what we need.

Among the parallel sessions the one I will remember most is not a worthily scholarly presentation but Alison Beswick and Claire Taylor, two students at Sheffield University who spoke about ‘The reality of information literacy: Does Joe Student actually understand what’s going on’. Although I have sat through many presentations about what students need and what they should get this is the first time I have ever seen actual students giving their perspective on what IL is. It was a naïve piece of work in the very best sense of the word, consisting largely of a video of interviews with students, apparently selected at random, and asking them informally for their perspective on IL. Having in the past been involved in service evaluation work I am always struck how muted the voice of the learner/user is in information skills teaching and learning and more presentations along these lines would be welcome, especially supported by unequivocal evidence of value and impact. A theme for next year, perhaps? I also found Wendy Beautyman’s talk on children’s’ information seeking behaviour interesting. She is obviously very good with children and there should be interesting results but we will have to wait for another day to hear them.

As usual I missed some presentations which looked interesting such as Marsha Miller and Susan Frey on the techno senior.

Cutting the 5th anniversary cake

Bill Johnston is Senior Lecturer and Assistant Director of the Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement at the University of Strathclyde he has experience in first year experience as well as information literacy and is a member of the project advisory group and spends quite a bit of time in Australia speaking at conferences. In a recent visit to the University of Southern Queensland he spoke about:

1. practical tips for teachers of first year courses to help them engage their students early in the semester.
2. embedding information literacy skills into first year courses and using assessment to engage students
3. how to prepare students for the workplace.

The interviews were filmed and can be viewed at www.usq.edu.au/learnteach/learnres/vsarchive/bjohnston.htm 

The three individual interviews with Bill are not long and give practical examples. Thanks to Sheila Webber for bringing my attention to this in her information literacy weblog.

Although Linda Jones and Greta Figgens (University of Portsmouth) ’Destination information!: taking staff on an information literacy journey’ was about library staff development some of the resulting activities did include transition for new students to HE.

Destination Information is the name of a successful staff development day held to introduce staff to information literacy (IL) and make them aware of some of the activity around IL - their own role in promoting IL and their own IL skills. The topic used was planning a holiday and the pre-selected teams had to present their plan as a poster and handout, the idea being to replicate the students’ experience. Interestingly the staff did behave like students in the strategies they employed and not those of their profession. The day was very successful  with an increase in the uptake of staff development particularly among the library para-professional staff, some of whom have gone on to be use blogs for their NVQs. They also talked about some initiatives including:

·  a University wide interactive website Prepup (includes: course information; virtual tours; student and tutor videos; useful academic development materials) to engage students pre-entry to the university

· taking part in Freshers Fair using a Pirate theme which attracted students to their stand

· using a specifically designed Fortune Teller (see short video below) to demonstrate how randomly students find information; also did one for staff / lecturers for a teaching and learning event – novel. 

The wonderful thing is that the staff development event had been inspired by a session at last years LILAC – ‘Information Literacy at the Issue / Service desk’ (Hannah Hauxwell, University of the West of England). This demonstrates what conferences like LILAC are all about sharing good ideas and inspiring people.

Download

Transition is an area of interest to the project and I attended a couple of parallel session related to this topic

Michelle Schneider, University of Leeds – Reach for Excellence: Information Literacy supports widening participation

This scheme supports academically able young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, who for a variety of reasons feel higher education is out of their reach. It gives year 12 and 13 students residing in Yorkshire a taster of the social life, as well as offering guidance and advice in actually gaining a place to university. The students have to apply and some of the criteria for eligibility e.g. first one in family to go to university; on benefits. The programme run by the universities Access and Communication Service offers:

·         Subject specific taster sessions

·         Impartial pre-entry guidance

·         5 day residential summer school

·         Study skills workshops (this is where the library and information literacy fits in).

The library became involved as they saw it as; an opportunity to further their commitment to widening participation; a great way to introduce essential information literacy skills, an opportunity to gauge current skills and knowledge of students before they get to university. For the first workshops in 2007 they designed a 2hr workshop looking at research skills and academic literature (where it comes from, what to look for and evaluate it), referencing (showing your sources and avoiding plagiarism). To get a sense of what they were doing, they got the students to think about the last time they researched a piece of college work and to write down which resources they used to find the information and why did they use them. Not surprisingly Wikipedia and Google were most used. They looked at where knowledge comes from and journal articles were discussed as many of the students hadn’t heard about journals. When looking at evaluating information on the web the librarian showed how easy it is to change an entry in Wikipedia – this surprised the students and was a really useful exercise which I’m sure others could use both in schools, colleges and universities. For plagiarism they used a plagiarism pub quiz with teams and prizes which went down well.  

In 2008/09 they changed the workshop and introduced an icebreaker where the students said what they expected to find in a library and then given the chance to go to the library and ‘find and seek’ – given an adapted floor plan and 12 questions instead of a tour. This was really enjoyed by the students, giving them a sense of how an academic library runs and encouraged them to use their library cards after the session as it was now less intimidating.

From comments from the students, they did learn that – the library wasn’t as daunting as they thought, evaluate, not to always trust Wikipedia, not all websites are reliable, the existence of Google Scholar. The librarians learnt a snapshot of pre-university student skills and used that knowledge in staff development training sessions and shared it with other colleagues to inform student induction sessions. Also that it was useful to work with other departments to further their commitment to widening participation.

Whilst this type of activity may not be new – Birmingham are running similar schemes but the students came with their teacher or school librarian there are some useful techniques that others could use.

More on this area later.   

Clarissa Hunt (Open University)
Investigating the perceived value of information literacy skills for social workers 

Clarrisa’s presentation was about the OU’s Social Work degree and the IL strand within it which targeted 3 strands of practice learning. Of the students that took the stands (compulsory in Wales but not in England or Scotland) 60% of the 1^st level students felt it was a benefit to their course and 62% felt it added value to their practice. Once they were in 3^rd year the benefit to the course rose to 63% and 78% felt it added to their practice. 90% said they would use IL in their work and 92 % said they would use it in further study. It was a small sample and they are now following up on these students who graduated in 2008.

This was the only workplace related presentation I attended although project partners Jenny and Lesley (Scottish Government Library and Information Services) did a parallel session on Government Information Literacy in the ‘century of information’  I had heard their presentation before so I was excused.