Monday, August 13, 2012

IFLA #wlic online information literacy course for undergraduates

I'm liveblogging from the IFLA World Library and Information Conference in Helsinki, Finland there is a session organised by the Information Literacy section and the E-learning section. The first talk is on An online information literacy course for undergraduates: early experiences presented by
It was converted from an existing face to face course "Introduction to library research practices". The speaker said that she's trying to change the name as she feelsd it isn't really up to date. It is a popular course, on the books for 25 years, and over 5000 students have taken it over the years. Recently it was adapted for Education students, and it's now a required course for them.
The online version has "built on the sucesses" of the f2f course. The biggest reason for putting the course online was to increase the reach and impact of the module.
They have three main phases covered in the module (the photo shows the slide associated with this bit). They teach about planning the search, carrying out the search critically, and about applying and using the information. They had the support of an e-learning team who helped convert existing content and creating new content.
Each section starts with a pre-test, activities and reading and then ends with a post-test (the tests are the same). If peoples till have problems in the post-test, support and revision is offered. People are presented with all the study materials for each session, so learnres can tackle it in whatever order they like. There is audio material, video and animated diagrams, plus tutorials to show an expert modelling good practice.
In terms of feedback, particularly popular was a discussion lists where they could interact with the tutor and the other students. Retention was good.
Changes are: to simplify the assessment, as it is challenging coping with this with the larger number of students, and to increase the amount of synchronous interaction.
http://www.econcordia.com/ (click on courses and go to Inst250) and there is also info on http://grover.concordia.ca/isis
Full text at: An online information literacy course for undergraduates: early experiences ANNE WADE and JOANNE LOCKE (Concordia University, Montreal, Canada) and PATRICK DEVEY (eConcordia, Montreal Canada)

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