Project Information Literacy

In December 2013 The US Project Information Literacy published a research report about first-year university students and information literacy. It is based on interviews with 35  first year students (from 6 institutions), a survey of school and university students (all in the USA) and analysis of library resources."In this study, we investigate the challenges today's freshmen face, and the information-seeking strategies they develop, use, and adapt as they make the transition from high school to college and begin to complete college research assignments."
Head, A. (2013) Learning the Ropes: How Freshmen Conduct Course Research Once They Enter College. Project Information Literacy. 
http://projectinfolit.org/pdfs/PIL_2013_FreshmenStudy_FullReport.pdf
The main website is at http://projectinfolit.org
There is also a related video: Major Findings: PIL's Freshmen Study. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWNGZUa952A&feature=youtu.be
Photo by Sheila Webber: Crows in trees, Gothenburg, January 2014

More research on student expectations and experiences #qaa

The report I mentioned yesterday on student expectations reminded me that research was carried out in:
Johnston, B. and Kochanowska, R. (2009) Student expectations, experiences and reflections on the first year. The Quality Assurance Agency. http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/docs/publications/student-expectations-experiences-reflections-first-year.pdf?sfvrsn=16

This report concentrated on students studying in Scotland. The researchers interviewed a slightly larger sample of students than the UK-wide study. Bizarrely (but why am I not surprised), despite the fact that they were both funded by QAA, the latest study does not appear to reference this earlier one.
Some similar points emerge (e.g. to do with contact with academic staff, and the need for support through transition), but some further interesting nuances were discovered, so it is definitely worth reading both reports.
The "want value for money" theme did not emerge as strongly in this 2009 report. The 2013 authors say that this theme emerged UK-wide (i.e. including in Scotland) but obviously there were far fewer Scottish-based students in their study, so it's difficult to say whether this is because of the worsening economic conditions between then and now, or because the (I imagine, I don't think it says) predominance of non-Scottish-based students brought the issue of fees more prominently into the data.

While I'm mentioning resources about higher education, there is a new Resource database with materials relating to teaching quality in Scottish universities: http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/resources . It includes reports, presentations, posters, videos etc. When I searched "information literacy" I just found 3 items, but one of them was a booklet pulling together key findings from the enhancement work of the QAA in Scotland by eminent educational researcher Dai Hounsell. "Communication and Information Literacy" (and it doesn't just mean IT literacy) is identified as a graduate attribute which has been adopted. "Across the Scottish higher education sector, the most prominent outcome of the work of the G21C Theme is a robust and well-articulated collaborative grasp - or understanding - of the attributes and qualities which are needed by the twenty-first century graduate."
Hounsell, D. (2011) Graduates for the 21st Century: Integrating the Enhancement Themes. QAA. http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/docs/publications/graduates-for-the-21st-century-institutional-activities.PDF?sfvrsn=34
Photo by Sheila Webber: Glasgow Botanic Gardemns, Scotland, April 2006

Student expectations and perceptions of higher education

An interesting study has just been published, commissioned by the Quality Assurance Agency, which the body which has responsibility for (as the name implies) assuring the quality of teaching in higher education in the UK (through developing standards and guidelines and carrying out evaluations of teaching quality etc.). This report is is:
Kandiko, C. (2013) Student expectations and perceptions of higher education. London: King's Learning Institute. 
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/learningteaching/kli/research/student-experience/student-expectations-perceptions-HE.aspx
The aim was "to undertake research into student expectations and perceptions of the quality of their learning experience and the academic standards of their chosen programmes of study." The researchers undertook interviews and focus groups and analysed the data using a grounded theory and concept mapping approaches. Important themes were: a consumerist orientation, expecting value for money; wanting well-trained expert staff, good organisation and facilities, socialisation (including face to face time with teachers), and an employability focus.

There were issues around transition "It was common that students felt lost, unsure of what was expected of them and not sure of where to go for assistance in their transition to higher education." and this was really the only place where the value of information literacy could be inferred (it wasn't mentioned directly). One of the participant quotes was:
"‘I was not prepared for uni, let’s say in terms of how to actually learn…that was a massive, massive shock to me in terms of, you know, how to proactively go to the library and get all this information…I think I was maybe hoping for some more guidance in the first year maybe just so you kind of knew what you were doing was okay. [Second year, Male, International Politics, Research‐intensive institution]" (p64)

There are some useful recommendations about meeting student expectations better. However, I was a bit disappointed (though not surprised) that there wasn't something about challenging some of these assumptions and expectations (e.g. whether a learner gets value-for-money from their fees also depends on what he or she is willing to input in terms of motivation and interest in learning).

For those interested in these issues, another recent publication is focused on the Scottish Higher Education scene (there are differences in English and Scottish education e.g. the Scottish 4-year honours degree and different position on tuition fees)
Mayes, T. (2013) 10 years of the Scottish higher education Enhancement Themes 2003-13. http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/sheec/10-years-of-the-enhancement-themes
Photo by Sheila Webber: Greenwich Park, November 2013

Students' educational preferences; US librarians' teaching orientation

A couple of interesting articles in a recent issue of open-access title College and Research Libraries.

- Latham, D. and Gross, M. (2013) Instructional Preferences of First-Year College Students with Below-Proficient Information Literacy Skills: A Focus Group Study. College and research libraries. 74 (5), 430-449.
They used focus groups, asking participants to describe their strategies with searches they were doing for their own interests, and searches they were doing for academic work, and also asked about teaching strategies that motivated and demotivated the participants and ways the library could encourage participation in IL education. I think the recommendations are applicable to all types of students, not just the "below proficient" ones.

- Gilstrap, D. (2013) Why Do We Teach? Adult Learning Theory in Professional Standards as a Basis for Curriculum Development. College and research libraries. 74 (5), 501-518.
Rather disturbingly, the finding of the North American study was that there was a negative correlation between knowledge of the ACRL information literacy standards and adult learning orientation. A stronger adult learning orientation correlated with more years of experience of teaching information literacy. The survey instrument, one that was developed several decades ago and has been used in numerous pieces of research, is designed to distinguish between an orientation (in educators) towards andragogy (adult learning approaches, what might be termed nowadays as a more constructivist approach to teaching at any level) and pedagogy, with "pedagogy" here meaning transmissive and directive approaches to teaching.
Photo by Sheila Webber: golden beetroots, Farmers' market, November 2013

Tranforming Information Literacy Knowledge and Skills across Practices #ecil2013

Tranforming Information Literacy Knowledge and Skills across Practices Camilla Moring at the European Conference on Information Literacy. She espoused a socio-cultural approach to IL. She questioned the idea of transfer as moving skills/knowledge from one part of life to another, as the skills/knowledge was tied to the specific practice context in which they were developed. Her ideas were informed by a research study that was looking at transition from school to university in Denmark. This aimed to improve general academic study competencies at school, as preparation for university. The competencies (divided into subject and general competencies) did not explicitly include IL, but some items in the competencies could be identified as parts of IL. Ability to seek and evaluate information was listed as a general competence whereas one could argue it is a subject competence.
In a pilot study, 8 students were interviewed at school, 4 of whom were able to go on to university (and were interviewed again), and the teachers were also interviewed, as well as documentation being examined.
Moring went on to define transfer as "the use of knowledge and skills learned in one context to qualify actions in another" - undepinning this are ideas such as - that there are general principles which can be used in both contexts. However, Moring put forward the idea of transfer of practice, which took account of social and symbolic elements that were associated with practice.
She presented a triangle of meaning (discourses, narratives etc. of the situation and practice), materials (transport, access, distribution) and competence (requiring transformation, recontextualisation and adapation). So with the example of the students: meaning for them when still at school was learning to use subject related methods, competence was related to subject knowledge and methods, and the materials were articles and a variety of other things. However, when they went to university, students were confused about meaning, and the competences they felt they needed were related to things such as "structure and write assignments", but they were struggling to fit their existing knowledge in this new situation. Also the materials they were using were more limited in university.
This all has implications for how (or indeed, whether) this practice can travel across contexts.

Affect in Undergraduates' Information Behaviour #i3rgu

Another catchup post from the i3 http://www.i3conference.org.uk/ #i3rgu conference in Aberdeen, Scotland. Heidi Julien presented a paper coauthored with Lisa M. Given: "I just felt angry...": Affect in Undergraduates' Information Behaviour as They Negotiate Research Expectations in the University. This was reporting some findings from a study which included pre and post-test of information literacy and qualitative data gathering from 10 students (through photovoice technique - asking students to take pictures of things that represented/reflected their experience with information, for reflective discussion - and interviews). Although the researchers did not ask directly about feelings, a lot of emotional responses emerged from the interviews. Mostly these were negative emotions e.g. "confusion, annoyance, anxiety, frustration, anger, resentment and feelings of being overwhelmed" - one quote "I don't even know where to start 'cause I've tried it and it's, like, scarey".

One notable thing that emerged was that there was a mismatch between the academics' expectations of the students, and their capability. Julien felt that there was a need to pay more attention to affect (feelings): both researchers and librarians. Librarians have to acknowledge the emotions the students are going through and reassure them that their experience is normal. Positive relationships with individual librarians emerged as important, so this has implications for staffing decisions.
At the end Julien mentioned the Geneva Emotion Wheel http://www.affective-sciences.org/gew which can be used to help research participants talk about emotions they have experienced in specific situations.
A just-published paper which describes the process of testing the information literacy test for this research is:
Smith, J. et al. (2013) Information literacy proficiency: assessing the gap in high school students' readiness for undergraduate academic work. Library and information science research,  35(2), 88-96.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Aberdeen University library, June 2013

Latest issue of College and Undergraduate Libraries

Volume 20, Issue 1, 2013 of College and Undergraduate Libraries has been published. This is a priced publication. Articles include:
- Contextualizing Information Literacy Enrichment Through a Common Reader in a First-Year Experience Seminar by Sarah Fay Philips & Emerson Case (pages 1-24)
- Adjunct Faculty and the Library: A Challenge for Change by Susan Avery (pages 25-39)
- Developing a Topic-Centered First-Year Seminar with an Emphasis on Information Literacy at a Large Regional University by Wendy L. Chambers, Lisa P. Smith, Jessica N. Orvis & Christopher Caplinger (pages 52-71)
- Health Literacy: A National Responsibility—Our Brothers’ Keeper by Lana W. Jackman (pages 95-106)
Details at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/wcul20/current#.UZZAyFLT7TQ
Photo by Sheila Webber: White blossom in the dusk, Lund, Sweden, May 2013

New articles in: International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education

This open access journal has a new issue, including:
- Yager, Z., Salisbury, F., and Kirkman, L. (2013) "Assessment of information literacy skills among first year students." The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, 4(1). 59-71. The authors are from La Trobe University, Australia "The development of research and information literacy skills in first year students is essential, but challenging. Approaches to developing these skills that are embedded within subject design, and use a blended approach between online and face-to-face delivery are considered best practice in this area. However research has yet to identify the most appropriate form of assessment of these skills. We used constructive alignment to embed research skills in a first year subject. Students were assessed on their research skills using a diagnostic online quiz in week one, and then in week six, their application of their skills in their assignment was assessed using a rubric. We created a matched sample of the results on these two forms of assessment that included 227 students. Our main aim was to determine whether there was a relationship between quiz and rubric scores, and to assess the practical relevance of the quiz in terms of identifying students who might be in need of additional support. We found a small, but significant, positive correlation between quiz and rubric results and conclude that both the quiz and the rubric are useful forms of assessment, and that there are benefits to using both within an embedded curriculum."

The following aren't specifically about information literacy, but caught my eye.
- Willis, E., Abery, E. and Leiman, T. (2013). "Interrogating education of the heart." The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, 4(1). 21-32. (Developing alternative assessments for health students, focusing on creative responses to the lived experience of patients etc.)
- Bone, E., and Reid, R. (2013). "First course at university: Assessing the impact of student age, nationality and learning style." The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, 4(1). 95 - 107. (In fact they were looking at students' approach to learning, rather than learning style, and found that students with a surface approach to learning were still getting good marks: they note this as a stimulus to changing how they teach "... the general finding that most students were using reproducing strategies in MGC [the module] suggests that learning activities within the course may not encourage independent learning." (p105).
Go to https://fyhejournal.com/issue/view/7/showToc

Also there is a new issue of open-access journal Practice and Evidence of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, including:
- Murtagh, P., Morris, K., and Thorpe, P. (2013) "'A fish in water’ - Supporting transition to Higher Education and Initial Teacher Training." Practice and Evidence of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 8(1). (Describes and evaluates a pre-entry module for part time trainee teachers: it doesn't mention IL as such, but problems with citation and synthesis are mentioned).
- Cunningham, S. (2013) "Teaching a diverse student body – a proposed tool for lecturers to self-evaluate their approach to inclusive teaching." Practice and Evidence of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 8(1). (Includes "a Self Reflective Tool which ... is mapped with the UK Professional Standards for teaching and supporting learning dimensions and encourages consideration of the context, preparation, evaluation, strategies for promoting learning and affective and sensory elements of learning.")
Go to:  http://www.pestlhe.org.uk/index.php/pestlhe/issue/view/23
Photo by Sheila Webber: budding bluebells, April 2013

Communications in Information Literacy: new issue

Volume 6, issue 2 of Communications in Information Literacy (an open-access online journal) is available. Articles include:
- Teaching Matters: Reshaping the Role of Information Literacy Instructional Services by Patrick P. Ragains
- Information Literacy Instruction for an Honors Program First-Year Orientation: Lessons Learned over 15 Years of a Sustainable Partnership by Anna Marie Johnson
- Adapting and Using Instruction Proficiencies to Encourage Reflection, Goal Setting and Professional Development by Uta Hussong-Christian
- Information Evaluation Instruction: A Three Term Project with a First Year Experience Course by Steve Borrelli, Corey M. Johnson
- "Turn Your Cell Phones on”: Mobile Phone Polling as a Tool for Teaching Information Literacy by Andy Burkhardt, Sarah Faye Cohen
http://www.comminfolit.org/index.php?journal=cil
Photo by Sheila Webber: Dusk, February 2013

Passing on words of wisdom

This article isn't about information literacy, but I thought that the intervention described, i.e. asking graduating student nurses to write down"letters" with advice for the new students, is an interesting idea, and the intervention is described carefully. The journal is open access.
Gibson, C. and MacDonald, K. (2012) Passing on words of wisdom: Using graduating student nurses’ experiences to influence the development of new entrants to a nursing programme. Practice and Evidence of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 7 (1), 2-20.
http://www.pestlhe.org.uk/index.php/pestlhe/article/view/128/239
Photo by Sheila Webber: above Niagra Falls, Canada, again.

George Kuh article for discussion in October

The article which the ACRL Student Retention Discussion Group has chosen for October is:
Kuh, G. and Gonyea, R.M. (2003) The Role of the Academic Library in Promoting Student Engagement in Learning. College and Research Libraries, 64(4), 256-282. http://crl.acrl.org/content/64/4/256.abstract
To join the discussion, go to http://connect.ala.org/node/189260
George Kuh is an influential figure in US Higher Education, and I think that this article is still worth reading (whether or not you decide to join in the debate!) The authors took data from the College Student Experiences Questionnaire and compared various sets of questions including the set of questions relating to library use, some key questions to do with satisfaction, and a set of questions which they selected as being a (sort of) match with ACRL standards.
The authors make some pertinent remarks about how important variables to do with previous academic achievement, ethnicity etc. are, when trying to link library use with academic success, something which some other studies gloss over.
The evidence does not support an easy correlation between academic excellence and library use, or library use and (the authors' measure of) information literacy. The final paragraph reads:
"The findings of this study indicate that it takes a whole campus to produce an information-literate college graduate. For this reason, librarians would do well to redouble their efforts to collaborate with faculty members, instructional development staff, and student affairs professionals in promoting the value of information literacy in various in-class and out-of-class activities and to provide students with as many opportunities as possible to evaluate the quality of the information they encounter, on and off the campus."
Photo by Sheila Webber: Autumn arriving, Sheffield, October 2012

Communications in Information Literacy new issue

Volume 5, number 2 (2012) of Communications in Information Literacy has been published. This is an open access journal. Articles include:
- Team-Based Learning in an Information Literacy Course: Trudi Jacobsen
- Share and Share Alike: Barriers and Solutions to Tutorial Creation and Management:Anne-Marie Deitering, Hannah Gascho Rempel
- Guiding Students from Consuming Information to Creating Knowledge: A Freshman English Library Instruction Collaboration: Carolyn B. Gamtso, Susanne F. Paterson
- Designing and Implementing an Information Literacy Course in the Humanities: Ellen Daugman, Leslie McCall, Kaeley McMahan
- Design to learn, learn to design: Using backward design for information literacy instruction: Bruce E. Fox, John J. Doherty
- Academic Libraries and the Credit-Bearing Class: A Practical Approach: Margaret G. Burke.
http://www.comminfolit.org/index.php?journal=cil&page=issue&op=current
Photo by Sheila Webber: Candytuft, Sheffield, April 2012

First Year Experience in Higher Education

A new issue of the open-access International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education has been published. This will be of interest to those readers concerned with transition to university and the experience of first year/ "freshman" students. Most of the articles don't directly touch on information literacy, but this one does describe a collaboration at Monash University (Australia) including librarians on a "getting started" [at essay writing] workshop:

Beckman, J. and Rayner, G. (2011) "Embedding academic-professional collaborations that build student confidence for essay writing: Student perceptions and quality." International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, 2 (2), 83-90.
https://www.fyhe.com.au/journal/index.php/intjfyhe/issue/view/4/showToc
Photo by Sheila Webber: Summer, August 2011

Info Skills website at UEL #delila

Another report from the Developing Educators Learning and Information Literacies for Accreditation (DELILA) project dissemination day in London, UK.
Ella Mitchell and Cathy Walsh (University of East London) gave an Introduction to InfoSkills. They talked about a resource they developed at their university, Info Skills: the website is at http://infoskills.uelconnect.org.uk/. An inspiration was UEL's Get that job website http://employability.uelconnect.org.uk/.
Info Skills is aimed at level one learners. The focus is information skills and academic integrity. To give an impact, they have included student voices, as videos, talking about why they thought it had been important to use the library or not plagiarise. Academics have also contributed. They used Captivate to create tutorials etc.
They were presenting at the DELILA seminar because the Info Skills website was open to everyone to use, and some individual resources are available (e.g. videos on Youtube, see http://www.youtube.com/user/UELconnect). Spinoff benefits have included that pre-entry students (in further education) and international students have found the site useful, so it aids transition into higher education. The initiative has fitted in with skills initiatives within the university, and the speakers also felt that the site could help "address the expectations gap for academic staff" (helping academics understand teh support that the students needed).
The website has four key sections "What information do you need", "What are the best tools and ways of searching" "How do you decide what to use" and "What are the rules on naming your sources". If you look at the website you can see they have used a good deal of carefully selected graphics (e.g. of other students), to draw people in.
One of the resources the speakers mentioned was an academic talking about using Wikipedia http://infoskills.uelconnect.org.uk/pages/videos/97/using_wikipedia.html
The speakers also talked about the planning and development process. They are aiming to improve the mobile aspect of the site (e.g. so quizzes work on phones).
Photo by Sheila Webber: A busy bee at the station this morning

Recent articles

Lumsden, E., McBryde-Wilding, H. and Rose, H. (2010) "Collaborative practice in enhancing the first year student experience in Higher Education." Enhancing the Learner Experience in Higher Education, 2(1), 12-24. http://journals.northampton.ac.uk/index.php/elehe/article/viewFile/10/18
Eckerdal, J.R. (2011). "To jointly negotiate a personal decision: a qualitative study on information literacy practices in midwifery counselling about contraceptives at youth centres in Southern Sweden." Information Research, 16(1) paper 466. http://InformationR.net/ir/16-1/paper466.html
Chu, S. K. W., Chow, K. & Tse, S. K. (2011). "Developing Hong Kong primary school students' information literacy and IT skills through collaborative teaching and inquiry PjBL [project based learning]." Library & Information Science Research, (in press, preprint). http://www.edu.hku.hk/samchu/docs/2011_Dev_HK_info_lit.pdf
Photo by Sheila Webber: early daffs, Sheffield

First Year Experience in Higher Education

Today, Bill Johnston was the guest expert in my Education for Information Literacy module here at Sheffield University. I don't think I have mentioned the book he published earlier in the year:
Johnston, B. (2010) The First Year at University: Teaching Students in Transition. Open University Press.
Amongst other things, he emphasises the importance of information literacy in the first year experience at university, and for lifelong learning. You can see a description of the book and download chapter one here: http://www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk/html/0335234518.html

Embedding research/inquiry graduate capabilities in the curriculum

There is interesting material on the La Trobe University (Australia) website. They have their information literacy strategy& related documents, and a report with details of how information literacy was embedded in a first year health sciences prgramme: Building blocks: Embedding research/inquiry (information literacy) graduate capabilities in the curriculum. They have developed two "key tools": "Library Skills Online - a set of five modules designed to introduce information literacy skills to first year students" (which there are links to) and "LibAnswers - a web based Q & A system and FAQ knowledge base that enables students to search the knowledge base and ask questions from anywhere at anytime."
http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/building-blocks/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Glasgow Botanic Gardens, July 2010

Transitioning to college

Transitioning to College is a website aimed at helping students transition between secondary and tertiary education. "In the following modules, you will follow Jason and Emily through their first year of college as they are "mentored" by Brian. You'll hear some of their tips for success and learn about the differences between academic and school libraries." There are some short videos (e.g. "talking to databases", in which Brian helps Emily use key terms and Boolean). There are also pdfs and other resources with other tips and advice from "Emily" etc., and some suggestions for educators. It is a resource created in the USA and I am not sure that (e.g.) students in the UK would exactly "identify" with the characters, but the videos are well enough done that it is a bit like a teen soap that they might watch for amusement so they can feel cooler than Emily, Jason and Brian. Or perhaps I'm wrong ... might ask my first years to critique it in the Autumn! The site was "was developed at Kent State University with input from Ohio academic and high school librarians." http://www.transitioning2college.org/ There are also some abstracts of (US) articles about transitioning here
Photo by Sheila Webber: Chestnut blossom in the Valdstejnska zahrada, Prague, May 2010