RIP Encarta, Viva Information Literacy and Wikipedia

Microsoft has announced that they will be closing down their online Encyclopedia, Encarta, due to the extensive use of Wikipedia. The part of the article that I was particularly excited about was this quote:

Christopher Dawson of ZDNet certainly doesn’t think so. The demise of the encyclopedia, he argues, should simply galvanize educators into teaching the research skills students need to wade through “brutally powerful knowledge sources” like Wikipedia and Google. “The encyclopedia is dead,” Mr. Dawson writes. “Long live critical thinking.”

Here is a link to the full article.

This kind of article reminds us how valuable and important the work we do is to our students but also reminds us that while we might be using the language of information literacy, faculty are viewing this "wading" through the web as critical thinking. This harks back to the questions asked at one the LILAC presentations I attended: Getting the Student Perspective, Is Joe Student Paying Attention? Are we using language that actually engages our communities to think about the actions they take every day as they dive into the world of information? Are we rendering ourselves obsolete by using terms like "information literacy" in the first place?

What language should we be using instead? Isn't that always the tough question? But really, what ideas do you have for other ways to frame these essential skills?

Thank you LILAC!

Thank you to the organizers and attendees at LILAC for such a terrific conference. There are a couple of things that make a conference particularly good in my mind and LILAC had them all. Here's a breakdown:
1. The People: Everyone we met was wonderfully kind, welcoming, and interested to hear about Champlain and share what they were doing at their own institutions. The degree of transparency and collegiality at LILAC was really unique. There is a sense that these are librarians that share and collaborate openly and often. This never fails to impress me.

2. The Tracks: as I mentioned to Steven Bell, I prefer conferences that have a structure you can follow. It was wonderful to look at sessions in the context of their track to get a fuller sense of what to expect and the way in which information literacy would be explored. Although there were many interesting sessions, the break down into tracks helped me distinguish between sessions that were interesting and ones that might be more applicable to my work.

3. The Keynotes: In two and a half days, there were four keynotes and they were all incredible. All of the speakers (Melissa Highton, Conor Galvin, Patricia Iannuzzi, and Leslie Burger) were thought provoking in their own ways. Two things were particularly noteworthy: first, that the speakers all referred back to one another's lectures, referring to points the other had made but more so elaborating or explaining their own take on the issues. Terrific. Second, the speakers were a part of the conference. They attended sessions and spoke to delegates. I don't always see this at conferences and it emphasized that feeling of collegiality.

4. Tending to our needs: This might sound silly but it really does make a difference to have tea and welshcakes, time to chat, a coat room that is monitored so you feel good about leaving your luggage, and people who can answer your questions in a central location. My colleauge, Cinse, was especially fond of the Welshcakes.

5. Special events: We attended two events in special locations. The Networking evening at Caerphilly Castle and a more formal dinner at the National Museum of Wales. Both events were lovely from the food to the music to the open bar! It was wonderful, especially to a group of foreigners, to be in two locations that are significant to the region. I loved both evenings!

On top of all of this, as if it weren't enough, we were shocked to be awarded the CILASS Award for Information Literacy and Inquiry Based Learning. To be given an award like this was an incredible honored. As you can tell, I thought there were so many wonderful sessions. We are so grateful to be recognized amongst such company.

Thank you to everyone who made LILAC the wonderful experience it was. I hope we can join you again!

LILAC09: My students and other Animals”

My students and other Animals
Matthew Borg and Erica Stretton
Sheffield-Hallam

Dealing with LARGE cohorts.
Students have to understand the importance of information literacy before they can incorporate information literacy skills into their “academic mindset”.
We need to know the limitations and the strengths of the materials that we are using with students.

Tells students there are 1 trillion unique urls on the web. When you do a google search, what percentage of the web are you actually searching? Has students write their answers on post its and then put them on a continuum on the board.
Google actually indexes 4%--40 billion pages.

Their experiences with 900 business students over
One shots, computer based, practical tools for databases and library materials or materials specific to their course of study (business).
NOW, they are seeing students over three workshops, each with a different focus. Sessions without computers other than podium. NEEDED SOMETHING NEW.

Considerations of student boredom, using active learning, different learning styles.
Needed to rely on one librarian leading the session in non-digital rooms.

Asking students: How do YOU find information?
Ask students to discuss a recent information search of your own with a neighbor.
The type of info you are looking for, where you looked.
Look at the list of animals: what kind of information animal are you?
Ask students to analyze their information seeking behaviours and adapt to the changing landscape in the academic sphere.

Ask students:
How many types of business information you can think of? What have you used in the past? Report back and then share with them a list of sources. RAISE AWARENESS. Now that they are in a higher ed environment, they need to think more broadly about what is available and appropriate to their work.

Putting the research question FULLY into Business Source Complete = no results. Then explore how to deal with it. Give them a full working demo that isn’t perfect or practiced, include the bad and the good. Show them how to deal with NO results.

Find mistakes in a screen shot of a search screen. Cool exercise. Shows how complex a search can be and how to use options to make your search more useful. Awesome idea. Great addition to COR120 exercises.
One thing I’ve noticed is that there is a lot of emphasis on truncation and wild cards. Been mentioned in a number of sessions and in conversation.

Start their discussion of critical analysis with Wikipedia. Ask students what they think of Wikipedia?

What feedback they received from their sessions.
Invite staff (or faculty!) to the practice session.
GREAT IDEA. Way to get faculty involved, solicit feedback, and practice. Also helps us deal with questions about the setting the bar appropriately. We should make this a standing component of our sessions.
Kept an online diary (use Clearspace or Zoho??) for tracking feedback.

MEGO = My eyes glaze over. HA!

Creating a reference guide for students rather than taking face-to-face time for basic skills (library catalog). Perhaps this is a cultural difference—would our students really read through a workbook?

Fantastic that a librarian asked about how much paper they are using in their sessions? AWESOME!

Loved the active learning part of this session! A bunch of ideas I will take home, especially the screen shot of databases exercises and inviting faculty to practice sessions.

LILAC09: Leslie Burger: “From Information Literacy to Digital Citizenship: Libraries and the New Democracy”

Leslie Burger, former ALA President and Director of Princeton
“From Information Literacy to Digital Citizenship: Libraries and the New Democracy”

Thinking from the perspective of a public librarian. Everyone here is academic.
“Libraries for all seasons and all reasons”: no matter what type of institution you are in feeds into the work we do in all of our institutions. In public libraries, doing much of the pre-literacy work: teaching them how to read, how to listen. The partnership between the school librarian and the public librarian; learning information literacy skills. Find themselves back in public libraries “trying to negotiate their way through the complex world we live in”.

How do we need to prepare our users to be digital citizens?
What is a digital citizen and why do I need to be one?
Do I need a separate passport to cross the web border?
Information in the currency of democracy—Jefferson

Learning on the job how to integrate digital resources into her work. How the world has changed: everyday, public libraries are teaching people how to be information literate but in a very different way—one person at a time. The teach-able moment. Isn’t this something we should be aiming towards everyday?

Information is power = example of the experimentation of prisoners being outlawed based on the information her class extracted in the 60s.

As she reads the 1989 ALA Statement: isn’t it interesting that it is always about how we can compete rather than what we want for ourselves? Hmm.

Top Trends:
• The web as ubiquitous throughout the world, not just in the developed world. It’s not always through computers. People get information in new ways.
• The web has changed the way we do business. Information is widely distributed and openly available.
• Information as a commodity. Not new to librarians: people that know how to find good information have a competitive advantage.
• People are communicating in a variety of ways. Tools that have the potential to change how we use information .
• Information consolidation. Too much available to ever use. Google is not altruistic. It is capitalistic. Sell back to us our own free information, example of Google Books. It might be free now, but it won’t be eventually.
• Library as a trusted resource
• Librarians on steroids—we are better than we were before. Skilled information navigators.
• More content than ever before. Playing on a more
• Librarians as the on ramp to the digital highway for those that don’t have access or can’t afford access. In the economic downturn, more people are turning to libraries. While the Gates foundation supplied significant funds to get many libraries new computers, those computers are now 6-7 years old. The problem when help comes from NGOs—what do you do when the grant is over?
• Information fuels our democracy.
o Taking issue with Melissa Highton’s point that the
o Book recommendation “Digital citenzship—Mossburger” people that are internet savvy participate to a lesser degree?

Concerns about the demise of the newspaper. What is happening to investigative journalism, can we really trust the bloggers???

Libraries were not an essential part of teaching to the test during NCLB. This puts into question about how ubiquitious information literacy is in our K-12 educations. A GAP!

Two issues:
Helping people navigate from the “old way” to the “new way”
How can we augment what is missing in our school libraries, both in terms of IL instruction as well as support their research needs (eg. school libraries closing at 3 pm: do they turn off the need for information for those school students? Of course not. So they turn to public libraries.) Asking faculty or teachers to come to the library to do the assignment at the public library, since that is where students are.

Give me the answer: sometimes they just want the answer and we have to wait for a teachable moment. Dual screens.
Consider each interaction an opportunity to change someone’s life!

Public libraries need to be looking at the K-12 IL standards.

Highlighting a number of public library sites: Spokane, San Fran, Central Illinois.
New Jersey state library: Helping Residents Through Tough Economic Times. COOL.

ALA’s E-Government resources.
Online Information literacy: the role of YouTube for the most basic to more advanced tools. IDEA for Andy for the next video: let’s get MORE advanced, not easier.


Information Literacy for the People:
Monitoring trends: what is going on? What is shifting? What do our services need to look like?
Market!!! We need to get out of the idea that they know to come to us. We need to TELL THEM to come to us.
Make information seeking fun: engage them in the moment.
Tie your information literacy moments to solving real life problems. Let’s be where we are needed and providing instruction in things that people are interested in or challenged by. We learn from eachother.
Reach out to those that need you the most; go for the unexpected. Be where people are and might not expect you to be.
LEAD THE WAY & Never give up.

We are in a values driven profession with the opportunity to change people’s lives.

LILAC09: Getting the Student Perspective: is Joe Student Paying Attention

Student perspective on Info Lit:
Alison Bestwick, Univ. of Sheffield, student ambassadors to CILASS

Student created film about what students think about Info Lit.
CILASS Channel (They have a student film group—good idea)

Asking how you define information literacy:
Students did not know!
Can they (or other librarians) put the “7 pillars” in order? Understanding higher order vs. lower order skills. They put two into the right place but were discussing info lit in the process, “which is a good thing”.
Students not giving themselves enough credit for what they do already. Student admitted that it is something they already do, they just don’t know. COGNIZANCE
Ask students what they think students should be able to do at certain points in their own careers. GREAT IDEA. It might help develop instruction.
From the video: great to see how the student perspective shifts our own vision of IL frameworks.

Is the term “information literacy” the best way to describe it. Use non-threatening mechanisms. Stop using JARGON. Let’s come up with other ways to describe what we’re doing and do it in a way that is more inviting. From the video: when we don’t use the term information literacy, we get better results.

Asking students how successful they are when they research?

Where do you (students) go to fill in gaps in your own knowledge?
GREAT QUESTION. Add a component to the Goals and Expectations exercise.
Do you feel you are supported in your research?
How confident do you feel in x, y, z, skill?

The Information Literacy Parthenon.

IDEA for ROB: Could your media students make a video for us on IL? Defining it? How they use it? Students want to hear more from other students.
Connection to CCM and Business: how can we market IL? What kinds of promotional materials can we generate?

From the questions:
First time one attendee had seen a student perspective. So helpful.
Suggestion to share the definition with students and get their feedback to how we could redefine it, describe it otherwise?

An interesting comment about students not being information literate but that is not what the video said, at least in my view. They ARE more information literate, just not familiar with the way we ask them to describe it.
How do we make the sessions we do more aligned to what students need? If you ask students, they will say they haven’t had training, even if they’ve had multiple sessions. But they aren’t seeing that as support or helpful. How can we remedy that? Is it how we present our sessions? Is it how we try to make a connections to students?

We make a lot of assumptions about what students need or do. Perhaps our assumptions are off.

LILAC09: The Pathway to Success: Using Research Trails for Summative Assessment

Rebecca Mogg (Cardiff University)
The Pathway to Success: Using Research Trails for Summative Assessment

Assumes embeddedness of IL
Design assessments that evaluate IL & what students are doing in their courses—RESEARCH TRAIL.
Coursework submitted with their essay that documents the research process. A required component to the assignment. Includes evaluative reflection of why they included their sources. Also can be used to assess referencing (citations). How is this different than an annotated bibliography? Could it be used as a essay component to the bib?

Why do it?
Draws on higher order skills. We can choose which criteria from the IL outcomes we wanted students to address. Also can be used to assess writing and critical thinking outcomes. Not just for IL outcomes.
Promotes both formative and summative assessments.
Suitable for all level of learners. It depends what you are asking students to evaluate (remember, we set the criteria).
Deters plagiarism.
Promotes problem solving: learn from what works and what doesn’t.

Strong emphasis on the assignment and rubric (see handouts). Students saw the rubric ahead of time. Built on what students already know how to do. In her sessions with students, one session on what they knew already (Google, Library catalog), second session on more advanced database searching, third on mirroring the process students would go through.

Learning objectives—finding and evaluating.

Shared everything they did to find their sources:
What did they use to find it.
What keywords did they use, did they use Boolean, truncation
Include reasons for selection (relevance, objectivity, reliability, currency)
IDEA: Increase the emphasis on currency. Might be an interesting way to connect more to primary source materials—some things don’t go out of date while somethings go out of date almost immediately.

Provided extensive feedback in order to make the assessment summative AND formative. Give them something to take out of the process as well.

Validity: how well did the assessment work.
Reliability: did it connect to the criteria?
Sufficiency: how much time did it take for them to do the assignment and the time she gave to assessing in comparison to what we learned from it.

Validity: concerns about students falsifying their approach in order to meet the criteria rather than conducting a genuine process.
Reliability: students did what was required and the rubric worked well. Reliability decreased as more people participated in the marking of papers. Different assessers have different ideas about what meets/does not meet. (Also a concern when faculty take over the assessment)

Sufficiency: an enormous amount of work on her part.

Does think it is successful. Assessed higher order skills and process rather than strictly product. Student feedback is not as positive. Helped her identify gaps in student understanding and use that information to develop her teaching strategies. The relevance has to be made clear to students.

Questions:
By taking a journal approach, could you deal with the issues of students falsifying their process? Isn’t this where faculty could be partners: creating benchmarks?
Very little discussion about faculty as partners or benchmarks. Essential component to success, especially for students that are not as advanced?

If you do use Grad Assistants or Professors, must collaborate IOT make significant connections between their final work (the essay) and the research trail.

More on promoting problem solving: continue applying what they’ve learned but it is on their own, independent of the instruction.

At Cardiff, a bottom up and a top down approach. It is recognized at the University level and a directive from the top about IL as well as within departments/schools.

To make the activity easier and equally sufficient: list x number of references rather than all the things they look at.

How much help was provided: email, reference, but not additional class time.

LILAC09: End of Day One

I am just about to shut out the light from an amazing day at LILAC. Let me tell you, American readers, this is a GREAT conference. Every person I met was wonderfully friendly and interesting to talk to. Both sessions I attended were great and in both sessions, the follow up questions shed light on critical or practical issues that make bringing the ideas presented home more feasible.

Tonight, we had a "networking evening" at Caerphilly Castle. NOTE: The image is from Flickr since my camera is over the Atlantic somwhere. More on my lost luggage below.

The food was very good, it was open bar, and I met a great group of librarians and learned about a number of UK universities I had never heard of before. We also got into a heated discussion about Melissa Highton's talk and the role of Google Scholar in student learning.

I'm having a great time here. Sadly, my luggage did not arrive today so tomorrow I need to go splurge on a pair of "trousers" for tomorrow's evening event. The jeans and sneaks just won't cut it for "smart" dress. Cross your fingers for me that my bag arrives before we leave for Dublin on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, more posts tomorrow.

LILAC09: “Enhancing Undergraduate Engagement with Knowledge and Research through Evidence-based Information Literacy Training”

Angela Newton, Amanda Lynch McPhee
Univ. of Leeds
“Enhancing Undergraduate Engagement with Knowledge and Research through Evidence-based Information Literacy Training”

e-BILT:
IL assessment tool for undergraduates
University wide
Results and their implications

SCONUL IL Pillars
Based their questionnaire on 6 of the 7 pillars.

Comparing their data to Sheffield. The cross study with Sheffield enhances validity.

Recruited faculty from each school and provide evidence to each school. Develop best practices for developing IL skills. Kickstarting a larger conversation about IL.

What do you of expect undergraduates students?
Broke into groups, which was AWESOME so I could hear from UK librarians
The conversation was based on NOT recognizing information need but LIBRARY need.
Similarly to our experience, students aren’t very strong at evaluating and comparing information. They find something from a database but they don’t ask whether that is what they want. What’s interesting is that the data presented from the assessment contradicts this anecdotal finding.

Will be conducting a longitudinal study over time. How do students measure over time.

Locating and accessing information remains the biggest area of challenges. Does this connect to their web site at all? Are they conducting usability studies at all?

What you DO with the data that you get is truly exciting. But is the change only in their training vs. how we provide access to information?

Can this be developed as a pre-arrival tool?

Librarian from Darby pointed out that by using Google Scholar, we aren’t demonstrating their need to look any further.

Assessment questions:
Are students prepared to meet the academic demands placed on them?
How can we gauge assessment if we are assuming there is just one right answer? An argument for rubric-based assessment.

Good session. Really interesting.

LILAC09: Keynote by Melissa Highton

Melissa Highton, Learning Technologies Group, Oxford University Computing Services, Oxford

Challenging the view and questions about the place of Oxford and Cambridge in a diverse education system.

Learning technologists and information literacy should work together and save the world!

Managing the flamingo: Alice in Wonderland. Every time she tried to play, the flamingo or the hedgehog would be difficult. An analogy for getting all the parts of your library or your IT & Library to work together and get them on the same page.
Maximum leverage.

Oxford’s conference on Digital Literacy

Can you be digitally literate without being information literate? Can you be information literate without being digitall literate? Are they the same? Do they have overlap? If so, in what ways are we letting the two conversations continue together.
Who will write the framework for digital literacy? Use the Wikipedia pages to build a definition of digital literacy.

Oxford & Cambridge:
Autonomy within the organization.
Oxford Libraries: 11 million printed items, the largest library system in the UK
How do you categorize and organize information in such a large system? How do you argue for funding for your needs against the goals of the larger institutions?
Publishing new content, generating new ideas. How do we change information efficiently or effectively? Rethink authority—the authority’s view and perspective changes too!

Lead in new ways of learning.
Encourage student to think differently about information, research, and presentation. How can do a better job getting students to do these things.
What should digital literacy look like in a higher education setting? Should it be taking the place of history? Of literature? Shouldn’t we change our approach of incorporating the literacies into the curriculum rather than thinking it needs to be separated out?

The language of student skills and information literacy has changed very little in the last ten years. We are tied too closely to what we think employers want.
What are the 21st Century skills?
Who should be shaping the debate about digital literacies?

How will institutions change in the recession? Continuing education.

“YouTube is single handedly saving us from boring presentations.”
Where is the differentiation between your content and mine.

We are preparing students for jobs that don’t exist, to use technology not yet invented, to solve problems we don’t yet have. In staff development, we develop staff for jobs they already have, to use technology we already know, to solve problems we largely already understand. If we are taking this long, if we are struggling this much, then we should acknowledge that some of it has to do with what we do and how we do it. Let’s question that!

The influx of international colleagues. What efforts are you making to accommodate international academic staff and international students? Who is giving advice to students? Are we being aware and effective in those settings and meeting their needs truly? Are we giving training that is consistent?

How are we internationalizing our curriculum?

Thinking about staff:
What do you do when knowledge is power and colleagues withhold that information or are purposefully making it difficult to find in order to hold on to power.
How information can be abused, not just used. See the world around us. Information is used for decision making , incl. bad decisions. We might want to teach the “light” end of infomraiton literacy but make them equally aware of the “dark” end. A Machiavellian approach to IL. Presenting information to show yourself in the best light. Recast what you know about information to manipulate it. What digital natives do already, do they know it? Do they realize the impact of those actions?

High level information literacy skills.
1. Modeling literacy: the role of information in decision making. We must know what the models senior decision makers see, how are those models used, how are those models understood. Interpret and manipulate information in models. Oxford’s Modeling for All
Making use of their gaming skills. Is modeling literacy already present and we need to leverage those skills more carefully and wisely. Digital wisdom

2. Open content literacy: accommodate a diversity of technical platforms. Who licenses it? Who gives permissions? Open educational resources is more than open access. Different levels of comfort around different kinds of materials/content. Use/reuse/ adapt: what is the context of using others’ materials? How much is too much? Support students as they how they use and find open material and understand how to use those licenses AND recognize that students generate material and need to know how to license it as they want! We should be aware of and teaching Creative Commons. Forseeing YouTube as a hub of educational activity, similar to what iTunes (iTunes U) is becoming. How do index open source teaching tools—an opportunity for us all.

Oxford currently offering 500+ lectures (talks and seminars that are a one time thing) and materials in iTunes U with a complementary web portal. Joseph Stiglitz/Gordan Brown

iTunes U as a tipping point at Oxford around podcasting. It is a way of publishing and sharing information. Does that make them digitally literate/information literate/media literate?

The Grand Tour = exposure to the cultural legacy. In the digital age, that is open to EVERYONE, not just the rich and aristocratic. Democratization of information. Grand Tour Learning. Google is NOT making us stupid…it can make us a hell of a lot smarter.

The continuum of openness.

If we are going to solve big problems, we need to pull content and materials out of educational silos . Librarians can help index and break apart those huge chunks of knowledge. We can provide guidance to how that information is shared, is distributed, is licensed or not.

Questions:

Open educational resources and the spectrum of reactions to these initiatives. Are we touting our horns too soon? MIT’s courseware is spotty, not comprehensive, and at times not maintained. Is podcasting the same as truly sharing resources?
Know what content you have and what content is available. Find a starting place and grow it. Quite the same as the research process: steps, looping back, changing, iterative. Leveraging the University’s goals: publicity, marketing.

How do you deal with competition of big institutions putting up a lot of content? What is the incentive for smaller institutions that only offering a few lectures?

Just as a side note: I feel pretty young in this room and the twitter stream is pretty quiet. But Melissa Highton was terrific! Very thought provoking and very exciting. I am officially excited about this conference.

Greetings from Cardiff

I have made it to Cardiff for LILAC. Cardiff is a lovely city. If my luggage had arrived with me, I would have taken photos and uploaded them already but USAir decided my luggage was too exiting to pass up. My fingers are crossed that it will show up this afternoon.

It is pretty exciting to be attending a UK conference on information literacy. I haven't had the chance to attend an IL focused event like this in the States. I am amazed at how many librarians are here with so many different job descriptions, from so many institutions.

The conference is just underway and I will be blogging the talks much as I did at ACRL. We are presenting on Tuesday afternoon and I just found out that our session is fully booked! WOW.

Great to be here. Blog posts of sessions will be forthcoming.