LILAC 2009: information literacy: staff development and transition from school to HE

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.

Short video of University of Portsmouth's Library Fortune Teller

LILAC 2009 - Information literacy and transition: school and higher education

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.   

 

 

 

LILAC 2009 - IL for Social Workers

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.

LILAC 2009 - Information Literacy and Public Libraries

 

Although the majority of speakers and delegates at LILAC are from higher education, public libraries were present in the form on one of the keynote speakers and one of the parallel sessions both of which were very good and tied in with the work of our project partners in the public sector.

Key note - Lesley Burger, Princeton Public Library - From Information Literacy to Digital Citizenship Keynote speakers

Lesley talked about how libraries must enable people to become digital citizens for the 21^st Century and that information fuels our democracy she quoted Thomas Jefferson – Information is the currency of democracy. She talked about how in the public library they see people day in day out on a one to one bases and that they see people into and through life starting as children into and through adult life.

She also talked about public libraries working with schools (in the US school libraries are disappearing – worrying trend there for us all both sides of the pond) and that before the teacher gives their pupils an assignment they are brought into the library to do the assignment themselves. Something that Ian McCracken does as part of his staff induction at Govan High in Glasgow.

 Key messages were:

• Information Literacy for the people – take advantage of teachable moments – consider ever interaction an opportunity to change someone’s life


• Monitor trends and respond


• Market your heart out - in areas of influence


• Making information seeking fun


• Solve real life problems – tie information literacy to this


• Share experiences together


• Invest in technology


• Reach out to those who need you most


• Partnerships


• Lead the way


• Go for the unexpected where people don’t expect you


• Never give in.

 The trends she talked about included:

• Internet is everywhere


• Information is becoming a commodity


• Use of dizzying array of communication devices


• Librarians still navigators


• Library still trusted resource – on ramp to digital highway – access for those that can’t afford purchasing computers etc.

 I hadn’t heard Lesley speak before but a lot of what she said resonated with me and the work we are doing in the project not just in the public sector but in all areas of life. Hopefully it will inspire others to do more within the public library sector.

The public library parallel session I attended was Lisa Thomas & Karen John – Portfolios and partnership: a pilot information literacy project for secondary schools.

The pilot project was a joint project between Caerphilly Public Library Service and a secondary school which followed on from a European-funded Gateways to Learning project which ran in libraries in South East Wales (2005 -07) delivering informal information skills sessions to adult learners to help them ‘learn how to learn’ – knowing where to look and getting the best. Caerphilly Public Library Service developed a proposal to extend the information skills sessions with 14 – 16 year olds in local secondary schools (a difficult to reach group). They discussed the proposal with the school librarian and ran two sessions.

1.      In the school library:

·         Internet – Surfing Safely, Beyond Google used websites of interest to the teenagers – What’s on TV, What’s in Argos.

·         Tied in with Welsh Baccalaureate.

·         School Librarian went through the OCN Booklet, booklet used as portfolio and school librarian signed off on it

2.      In the Public Library:

·         Looked at range of sources, books etc

·         Introduced teenagers to public libraries and the services they offer.

 Outcomes – hard work gaining teenagers interest and belief that they didn’t know it all and that the public library staff did know a thing or two also staff intensive but positive experience for all and awareness of public library for non users.

The PowerPoint’s from both sessions should be able from the LILAC 2009 website at some stage if anyone is interested in learning more.

More of my postings later.

 




 

LILAC 2009 (The Librarians Information Literacy Annual Conference) Cardiff

I'm amazed how quickly LILAC comes around each year. This year was the 5th and it took place at Cardiff University. As usual there were familar faces like John and I's but this year I noticed that there were quite a few first timers who were enthused about the conference - the keynotes, the parallel sessions, the networking evening at Caerphilly Castle and the conference dinner at the National Museum Cardiff. If that all sounds exhausting then believe me it was. John and I were there to do a presentation at the parallel session (just after the first keynote on the Monday afternoon) - Taking Information Literacy beyound the library. The session went well with 35 people attending and several questions asked at the end with a couple of people seeking us out to discuss specific issues that they wanted advice about including links with schools / transition.

Unfortunately on at the same time was Christopher Walker talking about his PHd research Seeking information: A study of the use and understanding of information by parents and young children. This a really interesting project and an area that hasn't really been looked at. Speaking to Christopher later at the social networking event he updated us on his research which has been completed and he is currently working on his findings. It is just a pity that he got so few people attending his session.

One parallel session that was fully booked was Moira Bent and Elizabeth Stockdale Integrating information literacy as a habit of learning - assessing the impact of a golden thread of IL in the curriculum. Moira is a Faculty Liasion Librarian and Elizabeth is a Lecturer - Environmental Studies at Newcastle University. The golden thread of explicit information literacy skills was introduced, taught, practiced and assessed within Elizabeth's environmental studies programme.  Learning logs (what the students did, what they learnt, what they will do next time) and search strategies were submitted as part of credit baring assessments. Informal reviews of the approaches were also made through conversations with staff and students. Elizabeth shared with us some of the things she had learnt as a lecturer:

• students need encouragement to reflect on skills development


• direct and credit-bearing assesment - if they want to know if they have done stuff I need to assess


• library session - if lecturer goes with students it shows it is valued also they might learnt a thing a two

Moira then shared some of the things she had learnt:

• students benefit from reflecting about their information literacy abilities


• information literacy isn't just for librarians


• we also need to think about teaching habits not just learning habits.

It was really good to see a joint presentation between a librarian and a lecturer and hear their views about information literacy teaching and students. It would be good to see more of this at LILAC.

The presentations should be available from the LILAC 2009 website at some stage.

I will do some more postings about the conference later.