Scottish Information Literacy Project

Just back from a 2 day JISC Regional South West Summer Conference – The Learner Experience where John and I were asked to do a presentation about the project  - initial feedback from the organisers is that it was well received.

We shared the presentation slot with Exeter College talking about their information literacy work, issues etc. They are using CILIP’s information literacy definition and looked at Rudyard Kiplings wise words “I keep six honest serving men … Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who” to inform their rational, aims and objectives leading to a strategy and a mission to “raise the profile of Information Literacy in the college by creating greater awareness across all sectors of the Exeter College community”. They have also been:

• carrying out some research into what skills students from the colleges link schools are coming in with
• developed Explore & Discover Information Literacy Tools – 3 modules which include lesson plans
• a new learning portal that has an i-zone

Some interesting work being done with the potential for greater collaboration in the South West region of England through the JISC Regional Office. Will be interesting to see how they get on.

Other sessions of interest included Dr Neil Witt, University of Plymouth who has been involved in several JISC projects including a JISC project called Web2Rights ”to develop practical, pragmatic and relevant Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and other legal issues toolkits to support … in their engagement with next generation technologies.” Have a look at their website Web2Rights which includes a six minute animation, resources and toolkit. Also UsPaCe which “aims to support the needs of WBL learners and mentors via the creation and sharing of resources and by providing online student support for learners in the work-place to be accessed via desktop or mobile devices. Additionally UsPaCe will support and allow tutors, mentors, learners, employers to interact, communicate and share ideas experiences and knowledge.” as Neil said “not reinventing the wheel but re-using the wheel to make a better vehicle.

As to be expected with e-learning there was talk about e-portfolios (Elgg and Mahara) and iGoogle (looks on a quick look to be similar to Netvibes) which I need to investigate at some time as I don’t really know anything about them and much talk about Web 2.0 and a range of e-tools but little about the necessary skills required. Although in one of the sessions information skills was mentioned by an academic and the ‘digital native theory’ was discussed in another again by academics who felt that the theory was unfounded and based on second hand results.

Once the conference presentations are available I’ll provide a link.

Yesterday I attended a stimulating and interesting event at the ELISA Open Forum 2009 – Libraries & Learning in the E-environment in Edinburgh. The programme was packed but well paced with lots of interesting presentations, discussions and cross sector delegates from library and information services in Edinburgh.

The morning keynote speaker was Nora Mogey, Head of Learning Services, Information Services, University of Edinburgh on “All kinds of E-verything”. Nora went through the alpahabet informing us of lots of useful tools / free stuff that she / the university are using. Examples included:

• V for Voice Thread - you can record your thoughts about multimedia images – pictures, presentations, documents for example a class could make a multimedia presentation.
• K – Kineo - described as lots of e-learning free stuff
• A – Audacity - lets you record things, simple to use you download the software and your recordings go onto a file which you can then use. Edinburgh University are encouraging staff to use it to give feedback to students.  
• X – eXams – Edinburgh University are offering students the option to use computers for exams (text based ones only not possible for maths or diagram based exams) instead of using pens to write out their exam answers. a third of students have chosen this option.
• W – Wordle - lets you produce a cloud / word tag.
• J – JING - lets you take pictures of your screen,  record videos off onscreen action, share instantly over the web, IM , email.
• H – Hot Potatoes - lets you construct quizzes, crosswords etc. for the web.

Nora stressed that eLearning is not about learning online, the focus is on learning (pedagogy).

Elspeth Scott, ICT and elearning Staff Tutor, Dundee City Council Education Development Service  - talked about “GLOW: the national learning arena for schools“.  Elspeth is an experienced school librarian and GLOW mentor. In her introductory session Elspeth gave an overview of GLOW stressing that it was not about IT / ICT but about learning and that it was an opportunity for librarians both school and public. For those that wanted to know more this was followed up in the share and discussion section. Elspeth logged onto GLOW to show interested parties what Dundee had added and the various aspects of GLOW in response to questions asked. The latest news includes:

• all 32 local authorities have now signed up to GLOW with 25 of them starting to use GLOW
• there is a pilot for Parent’s accessing GLOW to see their child’s work on GLOW
• Teacher Training are in – they will be using GLOW next session
• there is a pilot with FE colleges – Dundee College
• local authorities can decided who they involve as partners for instances – their public libraries or other organisations that may be beneficial.

Nicola Osbourne is a Social Media Officer at EDINA who is also a student study social media who gave us “A Day in an E-Life: E-Ventures in Studying, Working and Living!“  This was a fascinating insight into her personal, work and student life which she says “all overlap” and through technology is “always on”. She likes doing 5 things at once and said that her learning takes place through Skype and Second Life. It is not a life that I am familiar with or would want to emulate but it is the life of many young people and a life style that educators should be aware of.

Other presentations were:

• how Stevenson College are experimenting with e-technologies including Web 2.0 tools as their VLE is not being used
• Edinburgh City Libraries – Virtual Library a work in progress which includes their Capital Collections which gives online access to some amazing and unique prints, photographs, engravings and drawings held by the library. In addition to participating in the online Enquire service (formerly ask a librarian) there is Ask Scotland which is an email service for questions about Scotland. They are launching in the autumn a community information database – Your Edinburgh. 
• digital services for parliamentarians – Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe)
• Waverley Care - who offer information and advice about HIV and Hepatitis C. This was an interesting insight into the work of agencies like this who found that in order to provide the information they first had to help people with skill building and confidence resulting in offerring classes (with Adult Literacy educators and other agencies) e.g. in IT, literacy, confidence.

The day finished with Hamish Macleod from the MSc programme in E-learning at Edinburgh University who talked about the programme which has part time students from all over the world and his thoughts and experiences. He did make reference to pedagogical principles and talked about capitalising on ‘teachable moments’ when someone wants to know something they want to learn. The term wasn’t knew to me as I had come across it in the book I’m currently reading about Practical Pedagogy for Library Instructors - which I will post another time. Now I need to get on with sending out the information I promised people yesterday.  

Hopefully the presentations will be made available through the ELISA website and next year’s event will be just as successful. Well done to the ELISA committee and Wendy ball the ELISA Development Officer for a great day.

This is clearly an extremely helpful piece of work and will attract much interest and many citations.  We particularly like it because it highlights issues about which we have been campaigning for some time. It also draws attention to action needs and points which again reflect our experience.

There are useful references to staff training:  initial staff training and CPD programmes – p. 10 there is an equal imperative for employers to use and develop the skills of the people they already employ – p. 18 and. Web 2.0 as a communication medium is also discussed. …’it appears that lecturers and teachers are not generally disposed to interactive communication online’ – p. 24 (this is similar to Learning and Teaching Scotland’s finding re teachers lack of ICT skills.  

There are useful references to the potential role of web 2.0 and student interaction and activities like induction e.g. students interacting face to face – acquires added importance and significance. Face to face contact with staff is shown to matter to students. – p. 28. There are some reference to pedagogies and the use of web 2.0 technologies in assessment (tracking individual contributions in blogs, wikis  ) but they also talk about the students becoming part of the assessment – essays (from the web) found and critiqued..

The use of social networking software, usually Facebook, as a means of helping students establish contact with each other is discussed e.g. – make friends – prior to enrolment. – p. 31 also gain an understanding of the prior experience and expectations of their new entrants so that they are able to respond appropriately and effectively to them – p. 34

The report notes that Web 2.0 technologies fit perfectly with…. – the constructivist approach although this type of learning does not sit comfortably with all present day students who expect the tutor to function as a an authoritative transmitter of information. – p. 36 (Relates back to independent learning and information literacy).

A key finding on p.6: Information literacies…. - represent a significant and growing deficit area. – p. 6 (also p. 24). Also ‘Present day students are heavily influenced by school methods and delivery so that shifts in educational practice there can be expected to impact on expectations of approaches in higher education’. This is very useful but we are less happy about p.8, Practice in schools ‘Practice is variable, but the type of approach to learning outlined above – project and group-based supported by technology – appears to be in the ascendant and so likely to condition expectation in higher education’.

This seems to be linked to para 83 (p.37) which makes a number of optimistic statements, supported by only one reference and does not cite expertise in the specialist area, the School Library Association, for example. It is noteworthy that there has been no attempt to distinguish between key stages/levels/primary and secondary. Our experience on the Scottish Information Literacy Project is that while there are excellent areas of independent learning practice (See our Information literacy case studies/exemplars of good practice in schools http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/informationliteracyt) traditional methods of teaching and learning are widespread. In Scotland we now have a VLE for schools (Glow http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/glowscotland/) to promote innovative methods of learning and teaching but take-up is variable and some local authorities have refused to join it. Interestingly school librarians are among its most active champions.  The outcome is that the generality of students come to HEIs with no information literacy skills and a process of what is effectively remedial education is necessary. The experience of Glow has also shown that both copyright awareness and compliance is at a low level among both teachers and pupils and this skill deficiency must transfer to the HEI sector when school pupils become students.

Para 73 (information literacies in a digital age) refers to the CIBER report and the need for information literacy training at a young age, a point echoed by the Digital Britain report (p.64) http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/digital_britain_interimreportjan09.pdf. It is simply too late to leave this training until University. The HEI sector must actively engage with the schools sector from early years onwards to ensure a seamless skills progression from school to HEIS so that new students can immediately apply and develop further the independent learning skills they have learned at school.  This principle is enshrined in our draft National Information Literacy Framework Scotland. URL http://www.gcal.ac.uk/ils/framework.html

In September 2009 at the Scottish Learning Festival, Professor Richard Teese, the Australian authority on Scottish education, (see http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/slf/previousconferences/2008/video/index.asp for video of keynote) criticised Scottish universities for failing to engage with and influence the Scottish school curriculum (Curriculum for Excellence). HEIs should be directly influencing the school curriculum from early years onwards in the direction of independent learning and information literacy outcomes. School teachers must also be trained in information literacy skills, a point made in the Digital Britain report (p.64).  We believe we are showing the way as we now have a contract with Learning and Teaching Scotland to develop information literacy training materials for early years, accompanied by CPD materials for teachers. 

Para 97 (p.40) which mentions employability skills is to be commended. These are also precisely the skills which can be introduced at school and further developed in HEIs. Govan High School in Glasgow has developed an elaborate ‘Future Skills Framework’ of 71 core transferable skills which is already attracting interest beyond the schools sector. (Summarised on our blog). http://caledonianblogs.net/information-literacy/2009/05/08/govan-high-school-future-skills-symposium/

We welcome – ‘JISC develops ongoing research and support programs for institutions in best practice in developing information literacy and web awareness’  – p.10

On p.41 recommendation:

‘HEIs take steps to keep abreast of the prior experience and expectations of their student body’

Is to be commended by should be supported by another:

HEIs should actively work with the schools sector at all levels to develop independent learning skills which are relevant to the HEI sector and can be further developed there.

Most of the presenters of oral evidence are based in Scotland – University of Edinburgh, Napier, Strathclyde (CAPLE). – p. 49

The report can be found at: http://www.clex.org.uk/ourfindings.php

This idea comes from Mark Hepworth’s blog – “a kayaking trip: an adventure, that involves battling through rapids; avoiding whirl pools or colliding with rocks; having to navigate channels; using one’s knowledge of the water (environment), the kayak, the padel (tools); following an overall route or journey and so on.”

http://markhepworthsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/kayaking-metaphor-for-facilitating.html

I can see this appealing to a wide range of people, it certainly caught my imagination and I’m sure it will others. There are two other postings that continue with the theme and expand upon it to include:

• whirlpools of despair (I’m sure we have all been in these) – “not being able to pin down ones topic; not sure which precise question to investigate; unfamiliarity with the information landscape (where to go and how to use it) etc.”
• “People can be on the banks giving advice – emphasising the importance of other people as a source of information and knowledge.”
• “the barriers, the rocks, with common problems e.g. too much information, not enough, irrelevant, wrong type.”

http://markhepworthsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/kayaking-metaphor-for-information.html

http://markhepworthsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/kayaking-metaphor.html

Thanks to Mark who is a lecture at the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University for blogging about this.

The National Information Literacy Forum in the US is mobilising supporters to join their campaign for the national recognition of October 15th – November 15th as National Information Literacy Month

Couple of interesting questions in Bonnie Cheuk’s weblog posed by Mark Hepworth - why do people generally shy away from thinking about how they learn and why do organisations seem unwilling or don’t appreciate the need to spend time and money developing people’s information literacy and information management skills i.e. their information processing capacity?

As Bonnie goes on to say that in her opinion “they do not ’shy away’, they just don’t think about it, this is what they do ‘naturally’” However for those involved or interested in learning whether in education, the workplace or any learning environment it is important that we understand about learning.

The second questions is a question that I’m sure those interested or involved in information literacy in any workplace / organisation has asked themselves or others. Bonnie says that “I think this is because all knowledge workers are expected to have certain level of skills to process and use information, this is what they do everyday (but they may not be calling it information literacy/management skills).” I would go further and say that managers implicitly expect all workers not just knowledge workers to have the skills to process and use information and that these skills are acquired whilst in education.

To read more on her thoughts about the later question she has a paper in Libri: http://www.librijournal.org/2008-3toc.html Delivering Business Value through Information Literacy in the Workplace

Recently came across a blog posting about a school librarian’s thoughts and experiences about GLOW (Scotland’s national intranet for education) entitled Get Glowing which makes interesting reading about the issues she is facing also her experience on an introductory presentation on GLOW to the staff at her school. Jen’s other thoughts and activities also make for interesting reading including the Visible Thinking project she is involved in. Some great work going on here both in an information literacy sense, individually and collaboratively.

A case of watch this space, get the thought process working and share ideas and thoughts.