Monday, April 04, 2011

Perspectives on the Information Literate University

Last Tuesday I presented Perspectives on the Information Literate University at an internal seminar at the Open University (the photo shows a sculpture outside the library). For those outside the UK, the Open University is the major British distance learning university, which has had over 1.5 million people studying with it in its 40 year history.
It has had an Information Literacy Unit for some time, and the Head of Information Literacy, Jo Parker, had invited me to contribute to the seminar, which was on Innovating IL to engage learners. This was an interesting session, in which there were also presentations about information literacy embedded in a social work programme (there is a book chapter on this, see http://oro.open.ac.uk/27434/), the work of a group that is identifying ways of mapping out different ways to plan and monitor modules, and a discussion about information literacy in the context of different programmes.
Here is my presentation embedded from Slideshare:

There is much useful material on the OU's website. There is a page with links to various resources to do with information literacy at http://library.open.ac.uk/help/stuskill/
The resources include:
- Information literacy toolkit for lecturers developing modules: http://www.open.ac.uk/iltoolkit/index.php
- The open learning unit: Safari - skills accessing, finding and reviewing information http://www.open.ac.uk/safari/index.php
- Open learning Key skill assessment unit: Information Literacy: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2962

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