Thursday
Apr092009
LILAC 2009 - IL for Social Workers
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 2:27PM
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 1st level students felt it was a benefit to their course and 62% felt it added value to their practice. Once they were in 3rd 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.
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 1st level students felt it was a benefit to their course and 62% felt it added value to their practice. Once they were in 3rd 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.
Reader Comments (2)
[Finally getting my 10 minutes of fame :-) Been mentioned on this blog several times, have spoken at LILAC and even had a mention on Sheila Webber's blog! At this rate, I'll soon be the first result returned when I Google my name!]
Jenny and I got a fair bit of interest - we also had about 35 people at our session and got 6/7 questions. I also had a couple of people collar me later to ask about our IL strategy.
I enjoyed the conference but was a wee bit disappointed that the HE sector still dominates. And I didn't feel that the 'information literacy for life' theme was fully explored. I've fed my thoughts back to the committee and also suggested that they consider Edinburgh as a venue for LILAC 2010!
Pleased to hear of the interest you got from your presentation and yes it would be good to see 'information literacy for life' theme fully explored plus LILAC in Scotland.