The 7 (new) Pillars of Information Literacy

(SCONUL 2011)

I'm just taking a look at SCONUL's new model for The 7 Pillars of Information Literacy. The new model is clearly based on the original 7 pillars from 1999's "Information skills in higher education" briefing paper (SCONUL) but I wanted to have a look at how this has been brought up-to-date.

I need to show evidence based practice in response to my discipline for my PG Cert portfolio so I thought critiquing the new model and mapping it to areas of practice might be a good way to do this (and this explains why I'm spending my Sunday afternoon thinking about information literacy rather than any number of things I'd rather be doing!)...

Pillar: Identify - able to identify a personal need for information

Prob'ly being a bit librarianish and picky here but this is a bit different from the original pillar of "The ability to recognise a need for information". Small difference but I wonder what the addition of the word "personal" adds? I guess my point here is relating to my subject discipline (health and social care) in that our students sometimes need to identify information needs in others. I'm thinking here of patient information. I think it is fairly common that our students will need to recognise information needs in others and cater for that - especially in public health or health promotion roles. (I think we have a course on e-consultancy - this would be a prime example).

That aside, I think that the criteria (what students should understand and be able to do in this field) are fairly sound. I especially like that they are scalable - making the point that information changes and there is always more to learn. Getting students to think more explicitly about their information needs is not always easy. I think students are sometimes taken aback when I start lit. search sessions with a paper (or whiteboard) exercise to define key concepts and search terms. I think knowing what you need to find out about is fundamental though.

I think this pillar is fairly persistent in that most of the skills around knowing your information needs don't really change. It is interesting that being able to manage time effectively to complete a search is mentioned though. I guess this is more of an issue today than it was when the original pillars were published.

Pillar: Scope - can assess current knowledge and identify gaps

This pillar is around assessing what information is available and I guess it's about making judgement on different criteria. The updated pillar is a lot more explicit around issues like format (explicitly mentioning digital formats and how these might affect the information sources). Thinking about currency of information is an interesting one. Does our definition of current change in an age of Facebook and Twitter? Format can have a massive effect on this - really common now that articles are pre-published on the web before being available in print. Even between e-resources there can be a massive difference in currency - we often find that articles are available from publisher's links long before they make it into full text databases. For my students, accessibility is incredibly important and again it comes down to format: being able to use ebooks opens a whole new world to them when they are on a work placement with limited access to print collections.

Our students don't come to us with an understanding that some resources are in print, some in e and some in both so this is something we address in taught sessions. It's also deeply embedded in our resource discovery strategy. Putting all types and formats into a single discovery service means that, if our students use our discovery service, they will be exposed to all of the available information from day one and should develop skills in choosing the most appropriate information for their situation.

Pillar: Plan - can construct strategies for locating information and data

Again planning a search strategy is not something that comes naturally. I think maybe the awareness has changed since 1999 in that most people are now used to finding alot of the information they need in their lives really easily on Google. Does this make it more difficult to get across the message that when searching for academic information you need to be a bit more systematic and strategic?

It's good to see that an "understanding of the construction and generation of databases" is no longer a criteria for this pillar - I think that reflects how far the tools have moved on in terms of usability. It's right that the focus for this is on planing search techniques and tools. I also like that the criteria include understanding the need to "revise keywords and adapt search strategies". I constantly make this point to students - that they need to look for new search terms in their search results and feed these back into the search.

In my practice, what order you use the tools in has become important recently. I always advice our MSc. students to use our subject guides to make a list of the databases they want to search. Search the discovery service first and tick off all of the databases that it searches, only then is it necessary to go into individual databases that are not indexed in the discovery service.

A point for developing my practice here as the SCONUL criteria include understanding and using controlled vocabularies and taxonomies. I have to admit I really struggle to get these ideas across to my students! Maybe Google has brainwashed everyone into keyword searching but in my experience, the concept that people like librarians assign subject descriptors to information and that you can use those to search semantically seems to be completely alien!

Pillar: Gather - can locate and access the information and data they need

Again, digital information is made more explicit in the new model. I was particularly interested to see "how digital technologies are providing collaborative tools to create and share information". For me this only covers half the story i.e. using social media to find information and being aware of some of the problems that might be inherent in this, but I'll go back to that point later...

In the main this is about actually accessing the information. This is a massive part of what we do: from teaching students where they might find different sources (e.g. books, journals etc.) to supporting them through our authentication systems (it's interesting that one of the criteria is understanding "the difference between free and paid for resources").

The big one for my students seems to be the ability to access full text information. There is an expectation that everything is available in full text, online. Now we all know this is far from reality so part of the work is about adjusting this expectation, highlighting the difference between an abstract and full text, giving students the tools to filter information based on what is available and being able to navigate their way through our authentication systems. For a student in the NHS (with multiple athens accounts, firewalls, limited access to computers) this can be a nightmare!

Evaluate: Can review the research process and compare and evaluate information and data

Has this changed over the past 12 years? Well I think good evidence is good evidence whether its in print or online. There's nothing explicit in the criteria for this pillar that mentions evaluating online information, which seemed odd to me, but then it twigged - this is about thinking critically about the content - it's really got nothing to do with the medium. Or has it? The example that comes to mind here is advising students that if they can't identify an author or date of publication for a website then they should consider whether it is appropriate or not. I think I need to generalise my practice here a bit though. It's just occurred that just because something has been published as a book doesn't mean it's any good - especially with more and more vanity publishing...

So no, I don't think this aspect of information literacy has changed since the original pillars.

Pillar: Manage - Can organise information professionally and ethically

This is quite a biggie for my subject discipline. Some of the criteria (honesty in information handling, appropriate data handling, keeping systematic records, ethical storing and sharing of information) I think have a new emphasis. I'm thinking of issues around patient data, data protection and disclosure. I think maybe this (and the next pillar on dissemination) need to be made a bit more explicit around responsible use of social media. E.g. talking about patients or colleagues on Facebook is really not an information literate way to behave. I think partly this is around developing an understanding of the reach of social media (i.e. that it's a public space), the persistence of information created (i.e. that your drunken night out photos will be there in 5 years time for future employers to see) and potential risks and consequences of actions in this space. It's an emerging area but I think one that we have to develop support for...

Along more traditional terms it's interesting that the use of bibliographic management software is made explicit. It is qualified with "if appropriate" but I wonder if a less specific criteria might work better e.g. student is able to develop an appropriate strategy for managing bibliographic data. Just a thought. We do support endnote web use so this is an area of practice that we engage with but I guess I'm undecided on how far we should encourage students to use reference management software, especially if they have already developed their own way of managing references.

Pillar: Present - can apply the knowledge gained: presenting the results of their research, synthesising new and old information and data to create new knowledge and disseminating it in a variety of ways

It's interesting that new media such as blogs and wikis are explicitly mentioned here alongside traditional forms of publishing. There also seems to be a stronger emphasis on the importance of social networks/ communities of practice in disseminating information. Also the idea that you might present the same information in different ways for different communities. I think this pillar has come along quite a bit - especially if you look at the research lens (the pillars adapted for researchers) which include understanding the importance of open access to research.

I guess this makes sense as one of the areas that information has changed because of technology is that there are a far greater variety of tools and methods available for disseminating information. Publishing is an area of massive change - and I think with increasing open access the impact of this change is likely to accelerate over the next few years.


Definition of information literacy as an umbrella term

It's interesting to see information literacy used as an umbrella term for a range of literacies (digital, media, visual etc.). This is an area where I was unsure (for example if digital literacy is a different thing to information literacy) but I think I agree that information literacy covers all of these terms in a general way but that the more specific definitions of literacies are useful for defining different aspects of IL.

Lost a bit on embedding these in the curriculum from the original position paper

One thing that occurred, especially thinking about how difficult it can be to find opportunities to deliver learning in these areas, was that the original position paper mentioned the importance of embedding information literacy in curricula. Specifically it mentions embedding it in the subject that the student is learning. For me this would mean ensuring that subject units have information literacy outcomes built in to the assessment strategy. This is one area where I need to develop my practice - where possible to influence curriculum development to embed these important outcomes. I think this is particularly important as health and social care professions now place an increasing emphasis on evidence-based practice. For me, information literacy is a vital ingredient for developing evidence based practice.

Lenses useful for linking these to more specific disciplines - development of a health informatics lens?

I like the idea of having different lenses (discipline based adaptations of the pillars). The only one developed so far is the research lens. So, I'd like to pose a question to end this (rather mammoth) post. Does health information deserve its own lens? I think, given the distinct nature of health information, health professions and specific issues such as patient confidentiality (discussed above) that there would be some good arguments in favour of this.


References

SCONUL, 1999. Information skills in higher education. London: SCONUL. Available: http://www.sconul.ac.uk/groups/information_literacy/papers/Seven_pillars2.pdf [Accessed 22 May 2011].

Social Media: re-conceptualising information literacy

Notes from a seminar I attended on Monday...

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I'm just on my way back from a seminar at London Met University by Professor Helen Partridge (Queensland University of Technology - visiting fellow at Oxford Internet Institute). The title was Social Media: re-conceptualising information literacy.

It was an interesting evening. As Helen is in the middle of her research it was more a discussion than reporting on any findings. Helen's research interests are in the way that technology affects peoples lives and how this can be used to enhance education and her background is from public libraries before she became an academic.

Helen started by outlining her interest in how technology in general (and specifically social media) changes people's information worlds.

Some introductory stats on social media usage certainly suggest that this is the case (e.g. 35 hours of video uploaded to youtube every minute). At this stage Helen asked us to think about our Personal Practical Knowledge... i.e. what was the background of people in the room. The majority were academic librarians (academic liaison). The majority of people used social media at least once a day and said they "couldn't live without it". Hold that thought.

I've listed some things I wrote down during the session at the end of this post (can't remember where I was going with some of them but must have found them interesting enough to type down at some point). I had no signal to tweet so these were my way of remembering.

One thing that stood out for me was some of the discussion in the seminar. Maybe I misinterpreted this but there seemed to be some quite negative comments about the use of social media in education relating to it either commercialising people's emotions or contributing to a dumbing down of learning.

My personal opinion on this is that, in itself, social media doesn't do either of these things. Yes, it has the potential to be used as a commercial marketing tool (but then so do all other forms of media). Likewise, people can use social media to find information in the same way they can use google or books - does that lead to a more surface approach to learning in and of itself?

The point that stood out most for me was an example (actually a cartoon) illustrating how social media can be used to find information. The example was that somebody who wanted to find out about a French word went on Twitter and asked. As well as getting a translation they also got information about usage and pronunciation from links sent to them.

This provoked quite a discussion on whether this was true learning or not. Some felt that finding this information via Twitter lacked depth and didn't really represent information literacy (that's how I interpreted the discussion anyway). I think I disagree with this on two levels. The first - one that I'm starting to realise in relation to my own practice - is that not everything is a learning opportunity. In fact, if you try and make everything into a lesson, you end up with teaching that is not authentic - in that it doesn't relate to the world of the learner. I guess an analogy is that we wouldn't teach our students how to use a card catalogue to find books. The world just doesn't use them any more and teaching this would be what Dylan refers to as "useless and pointless knowledge". And I think it's the same with social media. I think, objecting to using social media as a source of information on the basis that it's somehow "too easy" fails to acknowledge how people (in the world outside education) choose to find information. My second objection is that by dismissing social media as somehow shallow or surface we then lose the opportunity to teach students how to use social media effectively. How to view the results critically, to question authority and accuracy etc. - all those good things that information literacy essentially is...

Wikipedia was mentioned quite a bit - mostly with regards to using it as a source of information. I think what interests me more is the idea of contributing to Wikipedia being a powerful learning tool. The knee jerk reaction is to say "not all of the people who contribute are qualified authorities - therefore we should not use it as a source". But not everyone who writes a journal article is "qualified". What we should be teaching is for people to question the authority of the author - of any piece of work... Outside of this I don't quite understand academic objections to wikipedia when, at it's heart there lies the idea of peer review- why is there not more academic engagement with this tool?

On a more positive note, I thought that Helen's research is very learner-centred. She often spoke about finding out about the information world of our users - rather than applying our own assumptions to the question above. Which I think is a good approach. We can't assume that users will have the same view of social media as us - in fact it would be weird if they did as we are information professionals... But by finding out about their experience of social media we can address how this changes information literacy and how we support that.

Long day, so that's about all I can remember on any deep level - here are the point's I wrote down during the session...

Political change in middle east - what it the role of social media?

Social media in pro anorexia sites (bad uses). Also information can be decontextualised.

So much information out there but how does social media decontextualise this?

What is information? (is a FB status "information"?)

Information used by companies - technology used to portray information. FB status change - e.g. single status.

Josua Underwood miLexicon

When does asking a queston on Twittter become not learning?

Brian Lamb - wikipedia article as an assignment.

Authority in social media - concerns are around a lack of authority and "depth".

Change - how does social media change how we do IL?

Public vs' private - this is now an aspect of IL.

Richer and more dynamic discourse.

LIS professionals should be leading in this space.

Marc Prensky Lecture

I've just been very lucky to attend a lecture by Marc Prensky (who's visiting Bournemouth University for 3 weeks). Marc's best known for coining the phrases digital natives and digital immigrants. Whether you agree with the existence of these groups or not, what Marc had to say was very thought provoking and, I think forces anyone in education to at least consider the idea that education needs to adapt in order to remain effective in a rapidly changing world.

The key message I got from the lecture was that accelerating change is now the way of the world (I was expecting the key message to be about technological change but Marc argues that not only is the technology changing but also students (the student demographic in the UK has certainly changed very drastically) and pedagogy. I guess this is the main characteristic of the group Marc calls Digital Natives - they are used to constant change. Whereas constant change can be quite stressful for my generation and upwards. Younger generations are so used to constant, rapid change that, if teaching is not varied they can soon switch off to formal learning. A telling point was that, when asked how often teaching methods should be changed to hold their interest, students replied "every day".

I always try to approach new ideas with a fairly cynical head but I found Marc's ideas fairly compelling - I think because of his approach, which is to talk to students and find out what makes them tick. He hasn't just come up with these ideas they're based on talking to students and basing his teaching on what they need rather than his needs as a teacher or the needs of the institution. Another message was that students want learning to go beyond just being relevant to being "real". We call this a number of things (collaborative learning, learning by doing etc.) but they all boil down to the learning experience being real.

So, do we need to change our ways in light of this? As a librarian I found one of the examples particularly thought provoking (I need to find the ppt at http://www.marcprensky.com/to follow this up properly). Marc asked the audience how many people loved books (pretty much everyone). He then mentioned a sci-fi book where all of the worlds books could be made available digitally - but the cost was that the printed works had to be shredded to make this happen. When the audience were asked who would do this nobody raised a hand - and this is what Marc sees as the problem - that we are attached to our old ways of doing things and not prepared to sacrifice these. I think of myself as being immune to the whole librarian as book lover thing but I have to admit I wasn't prepared to put my hand up to agree that, if the only to digitise books was to shred them, that it should be done.

For teachers I think the lecture was a call to teach in a different way - by engaging with students to find out what they are passionate about and using that in the classroom so that learning happens on a more personal yet at the same time collaborative level. For librarians I think there was an added dimension. As well as challenging us to think about how we deliver the teaching we carry out, how to we provide resources that facilitate this kind of learning. Do we need to reassess our attachment to things like hard copy books and think more creatively about the types of resources that students are going to engage with?

You can find out more about Marc's work at: http://www.marcprensky.com/

Marc's latest book is called Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning.

HLG Conference Presentation

A day of firsts for me today. First trip to Manchester (it rained!), first visit to the Health Libraries Group (HLG) conference (it was interesting - I wish I could have seen more) and also my first time presenting at a conference (it was scary!).

It was quite a full on day as travel to the conference involved: walk to Southampton Airport (luckily just down the road from us), flight to Manchester Airport, bus to station, train to Manchester Picadilly, tram to Salford Quays, then a short walk through the quay to The Lowry.

The venue was great - I managed to get there in time to catch the morning session on change management in NHS libraries - interesting few case studies on merging trust library services and something I'll need to be aware of for supporting our students whilst in the NHS...

Then it was lunch break and I had a look at a few vendor stands then took a stroll to gather my thoughts before presenting in the afternoon session. The presentation was about the need for information literacy - especially for health professionals - the challenges that we face in higher education in delivering this, and how our approach at Bournemouth (particularly our Using Information Community within the VLE) is meeting these challenges.

It was interesting to me from the other two presentations (from librarians in the NHS) how the same themes ran through what we're doing - despite working for very different types of library alot of our goals re: information literacy, and the challenges we face, are the same. The PILLARS VLE work is certainly something I'll be taking a closer look at.

I'd prepared two slide decks - one a standard powerpoint and one using http://prezi.com as a more visual presentation. Unfortunately the kit wasn't geared up towards prezi just yet so it was lucky I had the powerpoint as a backup.

It'd be a shame to waste the prezi so here it is...

The Using Information Community (and beyond!): Exploring the potential of online communities in delivering information literacy on Prezi

Bridging the Skills Gap: Developing Innovative Library Support for Researchers

Oh yeah. I just remembered this blog was supposed to be a record of professional development. This one's about the Developing Innovative Library Support for Researchers conference at Sussex Uni on Tuesday 8th June 2010. It's rough and ready but here's my record (largely taken from Tweets so apols for the grammar)...

Welcome
Bob Allison, Stephane Goldstein, Alison Mitchel

Bob kicked off with a reminiscence of Philip Larkin while he was an undergraduate  at Hull and a tale about graffiti in the library - but on a more serious note he recognised the role that libraries and librarians play in research with a reflection on a conversation with a librarian after a successful RAE in 2001. The librarian felt part of the research process and was glad that the RAE was a success, something which stuck with Bob. There was also some mention of the fact that library buildings and spaces are changing to accommodate researchers and that libraries are one of the most rapidly changing areas of HE at the moment.

Stephane Goldstein, with the 1st keynote highlighted some of the work of RIN. RIN look at the interface between researchers and information - including looking at researchers behaviour - they've found that digital literacy is often inadequate. RIN's main study "mind the skills gap" http://ow.ly/1VwwY found that a gap between researchers perceived info skills and their actual skills. Researcher Development Framework is an opportunity to coordinate joined up approach to research support. A JISC call for proposals to promote data management training, funding 6 projects, was also mentioned.

Alison Mitchell delivered the 2nd keynote on researcher development. Expressed importance of researcher's information skills being transferable to jobs beyond HE. Vitae aims are about developing researchers skills rather than geared towards specific research. Roberts funding is now coming to an end - now it's up to institutions to decide how research is embedded in the organisation. There's a need to develop the marketability of researcher's skills in the employment market and info. skills are part of that skillset. On the Vitae website the "rugby team impact framework" (http://ow.ly/1VwWd) includes a tool for measuring the impact of training workshops. The good practice part of Vitae site will include examples of training materials. Alison mentioned a 100K "Innovate" fund for innovative ideas for researcher development projects.

Gearing up for e-thesis
Isobel Stark - I didn't go to this session.

MI512: Information support for researchers at LSE library
Rowena-Macrae-Gibson
Rowena Macrae-Gibson spoke about MI512: Information Literacy tools for researchers - (blogs of the breakouts are on the ning site). The MI512 researcher information literacy programme is non-credit bearing - researchers use their own research subjects so have useful outputs. The programme integrates skills e.g. the referencing and citation workshop is linked to endnote session and they help to make sense of each other. Referencing is one of the most active, and best attended sessions. NB: orcid (sp?) open source version of researcher id. LSE decided not to include their federated search tool in MI512 as they believe it isn't useful for phd level searches. MI512 was judged to be a success - good numbers of research students are booking onto programme - despite it being non-credit bearing. Good example of cross-departmental working (IPE element?). It is important to measure impact of training and good feedback from researchers helps to maintain management support for programme.

The Research Liaison Team at Sussex: an innovative model
Joanna Ball, Helen Webb

Waving and definitely not drowning!: Offering library support for academic research in a Google world
Annamarie McKie - i didn't go to this session.

Supporting the REF at the University of Brighton
Suzanne Tatham, Helen Woodward
Suzanne Tatham, Helen Woodward Spoke about supporting the REF at
Brighton (actually they changed the title from REF to Research in light
of recent news). They found that one of the biggest challenges is
getting message of what's available e.g. workshops/tutorials etc. over
to researchers.Their information skills workshops are administered by
the university wide workshop booking system and appear alongside IT,
numeracy and all other workshops - so researchers have one place to go
for all of their skills. Another benefit is that admin/ bookings are
done by the training admin team. All workshops are also available
online for those that can't make it in person. As part of their
researcher skills offering, Brighton run a bibliometrics workshop. It's
attended by staff, research students, RA's, librarians. One comment
from bibliometrics workshop was that some didn't know what a "citation"
was. Can't assume prior knowledge of basic researcher skills. Scemago
(sp?) was mentioned as an open access alternative to scopus - also
Ulrich's show's where journals are indexed if they are not in WoS.
Brighton's workshop booking system includes online form for session
feedback - can email form to all attendees. Brighton also do a Google
Scholar for citation analysis for subjects not well covered by WoS or
Scopus - they highlight the downsides but also that it covers books/
conference proceedings etc. There followed some interesting comparison
of different results for no's citations using WoS, Scopus and Google
Scholar. In the questions at the end, the common need to support researchers
with which journals to publish in and making sense of the REF for
researchers were identified as challenges.

Information skills training for researchers: the Surrey experience
Gill Downham, John Baxter
Gill Downham and John Baxter on "Information skills training for researchers: The Surrey perspective". The organisational structure at Surrey includes 2 teams - Researchers development team, Institutional repository team and Academic liaison team. The space is also important - Surrey cleared a floor of print journals to make flexible learning space for researchers and undergrads. Use tried and tested methods for developing researcher info skills: new student inductions, specific workshop sessions, 1-2-1's. Surrey's experience is that students arrive with a diverse range of skills. Their generic induction for research students - includes a recommendation that students make an appointment to see their AL librarian for a 1-2-1. Surrey include a presentation on using their repository for increasing citations in their "Getting Published" workshop - so that use of the repository is grounded & in the context of research support.

Kitty Inglis summed up... key message thatlibraries and librarians play central part in research - huge potential to collaborate & collaboration is essential in a climate of having to do the same or more with the same or less. The event evaluation was done using clickers - which was more fun than filling in a form.

"Nurture the Belbin plant"

This is a post on my personal blog about the CILIP in Hants and Wight AGM yesterday. Now that we have our own sub-branch blog I'll post a slightly different version on there also...

...but this one's about what I got out of it personally - so mostly it's about the excellent presentations from Linda Jones and Timothy Collinson.

The theme was the Darkside and the Brightside of the web, with Linda taking the former and Timothy the later. I liked that both presentations allowed audience to participate. Some quite dry topics (like copyright) were dealt with in an interesting and engaging way. As well as demonstrating an understanding of the topic, both presentations showed an understanding of how people learn.

Dark side

The  first of the two presentations was about the dark side. The session kicked-off with newspaper clippings of cautionary tales of the Internet (all from last month) handed out to all . Seeing such a massive folder of clippings about how the internet or public disclosure had somehow gone wrong for folks made quite an impact.
The first topic chosen by the audience was copyright  ("you can tell it's a room full of librarians!"). One example was a 10 minute movie on YouTube called "A Fair(y) Use Tale" - a mashup comprised of Disney clips that explains copyright (irony fans will love this).

Another topic was a Facebook T&C's activity (with sweets) - or perhaps more broadly, getting us to think about what we're signing up to on the web. Sometimes it does pay to read the T&C's! Other examples related to passwords - i.e. lists of commonly used passwords and public disclosure (Tony Blair itinerary being disclosed by his daughter on Facebook for e.g.).

Normally, I switch off to cautionary tales about using the Internet. In my early days as a librarian I heard lots of scaremongering born of fear of the unknown. I think the reason Linda's presentation was so good was she wasn't saying don't use the Internet, just that you should be a bit savvy when you do. One of the key messages was to use the Internet to evaluate the Internet  - if something looks a bit iffey - Google it!

Bright side

Timothy's presentation was about really positive uses of the Internet. About getting user participation - particularly in a HE setting. An interesting concept was his use of Analog -> Digital twitter. This was a fantastic way to get people engaged with Twitter without having to have everybody logged into a computer. At the start of the session the audience were given slips of paper and encouraged to write short messages or thoughts (tweets to the initiated) which were collected and entered to a twitter account through the session. For anyone who's been itching to use Twitter for collaboration in the classroom but has been struggling for a way to do it without everyone: a) having an account and knowing how to use it; and b) having to be logged in to their own computer - here's an answer.

Timothy illustrated a number of positive uses of the internet - especially good examples of web 2.0 usage at UoP.  Their Thing of the Day blog is definitely worth a look as it sneaks IL into posts among more esoteric entries such as Hats of Meat! The key message for me was that librarians need time to play and be creative! "Nurture the Belbin plant in your organisation" was Timothy's parting shot - definitely something to think on.

All in all, top notch. It's a day and several glasses of wine later, for somebody with a goldfish memory like mine to recall this much is testimony to the quality of the presentations.

Reading: Information lliteracy: a neglected core competency

This is one of a number of interesting looking articles in the latest Educause Quarterly. It's a summary of what information literacy is and concludes a number of key findings:

1) That college students information literacy skills are underdeveloped.
2) Information literacy is essential for lifelong learning.
3) Students should be exposed to information literacy throughout education.
4) Collaboration by faculty, librarians, technology professionals can develop information literacy.

It's interesting that collaboration between these groups is highlighted rather than it being seen as the domain as a single group.

The article goes on to explain the deficiencies in college student's information literacy skills. The key findings (course readings and google are prime sources, reliance on professors for information rather than independent learning, google and wikipedia prevalent, and perhaps most worryingly, little interaction with libraries and librarians) will seem familiar to anyone working with first year undergraduates. The article points out that by "satisficing" (finding just enough information to complete the assignment) they are missing out on learning opportunities.

As well as defining "information literacy" as:

"...the umbrella term for emerging literacies such as technology literacy, media literacy, and health literacy." (Weiner 2010)

It also highlights Digital Media Literacy as "a critical challenge in education in the next five years" citing the 2010 Horizon Report from Educause as an important document in this field.

The paper then extols the virtue of introducing Information Literacy at elementary level - citing reports from employers that new employee skills are not good enough (although this finding is not referenced).

I think one of the important questions that this paper asks is how we can develop progressive development of information literacy throughout  education - making the links between educational establishments may be the difficulty.

Useful and brief summary with some useful references to follow up.

References

New Media Consortium, 2010. 2010 Horizon Report. Texas: New Media Consortium. Available: http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2010/ [Accessed 11 March 2010].

Weiner, S., 2010. Information literacy: a neglected core competency. Educause quarterly, 33 (1). Available from: http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/InformationLiteracyANeglectedC/199382 Accessed [11 March 2010].