Staff development for IL

Mark Hepworth recently posted information that JISC have published a report, i-Skills: An investigation of the staff development issues relating to i-skills development, based on a study carried out by a team including Mark Hepworth, Marian Smith, Ruth Stubbings and Andrew Wilson (from Loughborough University) and Melissa Highton, Helen Howard and Angela Newton (from the University of Leeds). It looks at information literacy from the perspective of people in the Finance Department and the Research Office at Loughborough University, with data collected through interviews and focus groups. At http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/iskillsdevelopment.aspx there is an executive summary and a link to the full report.
Photo by Sheila Webber: snowy tree, Blackheath, April 2008

LILAC conference: 2nd report

This is the second report on the LILAC (UK information literacy) conference which is taking place in Liverpool, UK, 17-19 March. In this post I’ll concentrate on workplace information literacy. Firstly, the photo is part of a poster which gave results of a survey of Australian Government librarians, that was carried out a few months ago (authors are Jennifer Kirton, Lyn Barham and Sean Brady, Wollongbar Agricultural Institute).

Some of the questions asked the librarians the extent to which they saw each of the six information literacy standards (as outlined in the ANZIIL framework) as being their job to develop with departmental staff. They also asked about the information literacy training that was carried out.
On Monday of the conference I attended a presentation from John Crawford on the study Christine Irving and he had been doing into workplace information literacy. This is part of their overall project in Information Literacy looking at the spectrum of sectors and including development of the Scottish Framework for information literacy (which I’ve blogged about before and which was the subject of a conference keynote). Their project website is at http://www.caledonian.ac.uk/ils/ and there is a page specifically on workplace IL.

John started by highlighting some of the previous research into workplace learning, giving a summary which stated that “All theorists (e.g. Lave and Wenger) agree that learning in the workplace is a form of social interaction”, but that there is disagreement as to whether learning is exclusively situated in the particular workplace (or whether it is more amenable to influence from and to the outside world). John noted that the library literature and educational theory literature don’t connect (well, actually he talked of a “complete disjunction”) and one aspect which pedagogic literature neglects is that of intellectual property.

Another couple of points I’ll pick up are that he felt that “the daily round of tasks” could substitute for the curriculum in developing information literacy. This fits in with things I’ve blogged before about tying IL training in with workplace tasks or forms (such as linking into project cycles). The issue of “professional ideologies” was also raised, and I think there are parallels here to study of academics, where conceptions of information literacy are seen from the perspective of someone within an academic or professional grouping (e.g. a chemist’s perspective of information literacy).

John reported on findings from interviews with care home staff, staff at the Scottish Tribunal, Scottish Government, and Social work and NHS staff. As I would have expected, people were an important source of information in all cases, and this means that the role of human relationships in information activity needs to be taken into account. Adult literacies training was seen as "powerful driver" that might encourage information literacy.

Also unsurprisingly (I'm afraid), public libraries were not seen as relevant to people's workplace information needs. One point made in the conclusion was that "an understanding of what constitutes information literacy is widespread in the workplace but is often implicit rather than explicit and is based on qualifications, experience and networking activity." There was a lot of interesting material in teh presentation and John & Christine intend to write it up and also are pursuing follow up activities.

Finally I will briefly mention the i-skills in the workplace initiative, which Netskills have been carrying out. (NB for US readers this is not the ETS iskills, it is something that was called "i-skills" first ;-) This initiative is aimed at non-academic staff in further and higher education in the UK. There have been a number of workshops (firstly free, latterly with a modest fee) in which staff could reflect on their own i-skills and aim to develop them further. One tool that has been developed out of this work is a self-evaluation form online, so that people can identify which information literacy or information management skills they most need and how well they think they are doing in them. This is not a test, it is self-rating, but the profile gets stored online so you can refer back to it. This is in the final stages of development and should be made freely available. The website for this initiative (with information on resources and workshops) is at http://www.netskills.ac.uk/content/
themes/infoskills/index.html

Free stuff on Online site

Just got an email from Online Information about new content (mostly podcasts, some free, some priced, and the odd white paper) being available each month. This month the theme is social media. There are free podcasts as follows: Wikis and the lightweight software revolution (presentation by someone who sells wikis): The value of social media in 21st century organisations (round table discussion chaired by Euan Semple) : Enterprise wikis and employee collaboration (talk by JP Rangaswami, formerly Head of Alternative Market Models at DrKW and now CIO at BT Global Services, he has a blog at http://confusedofcalcutta.com/)
I listened to some of the latter (part of the problem of podcasts is they are difficult to skim!) and he does give some examples of why wikis are used in business (e.g. for deciding meeting agendas, as well as building up opinions or perspectives on a business problem, and capturing the context of contributions).
I'll also mention that there is a call for papers for the 2007 Online conference in London 4-6 December (http://www.online-information.co.uk/), ending 9 May. There is a minor theme "Information literacy as a core competency", but Web 2.0 and information discovery are more central themes.

NB There is a link to the podcasts on the above online-information webpage.

Photo by Sheila Webber: White and pink blossom on grass, Sheffield, 2007

Information use in NHS24

Today Ruben Toledano O'Farrill visited to lead this week's Information Literacy Research module session. Ruben is a research student and Ad-Hoc Lecturer in the department of Information Management, Robert Gordon University (RGU), Aberdeen. His supervisor is Professor Dorothy Williams and I am external supervisor. Ruben aims to "research conceptions of effective information use in NHS24, exploring the relationships between information literacy and knowledge management in the context of a knowledge-managed organisation". NHS24 is operated by the National Health Service (NHS) in Scotland, and through it trained nursing staff provide advice and information over the phone.
Obviously this is interesting because of the workplace context (where there is little research when compared to research in educational contexts), and also because of the linkage with knowledge management. Ruben is in the data collection phase at the moment.

Photo by Sheila Webber: I forgot to take a photo of Ruben & can't find my photos of RGU, but at least this is in Scotland (like Aberdeen): Glasgow University viewed over the Kelvin river, April 2007.

American Competitiveness in the Internet Age

I don't think I picked up on a short report that emerged from the Information Literacy Summit held in the USA in October 2006. It has brief accounts of three panels on three themes: The Global challenge; The student and worker challenge; The public policy challenge. One of the interesting points I picked out was the contribution of Jan Magill (Director, Workforce and Education Programs Institute for a Competitive Workforce, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce). "Magill described the Chamber of Commerce’s efforts to create a work readiness credential. It was developed to help evaluate entry-level workers’ ability to think critically and to use information effectively in decision-making." Unfortunately, when you go to the website of the initiative (launched in January) at http://www.workreadiness.com/, information use is not one of the nine skills which are highlighted. The National Work Readiness Credential is based on the Equipped for the Future (EFF) "applied learning standards" e.g. the 9 skills are a subset of 16 described by EFF. Information literacy isn't in these 16 skills either, but it does include Gather, Analyze, and Use Information as one of the 13 common activities for people in any of the three roles identified in the EFF material (which are citizen/community member, worker, and parent/family member). This all looks worth more investigation.

Another nice quote from the report in the Public Policy challenge section is from Patrick Callan (President, The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education) who "suggested that perhaps information literacy does not have a high profile because nobody is against it; it is, in fact, rather universally approved. However, its general acceptance means that there is no debate, no discussion, no conversation about information literacy—as there is with other more controversial curriculum issues. Callan remarked, 'Information literacy isn’t sexy; it’s just essential.' "

Perrault, A.M. and Roth, L. (2006) American Competitiveness in the Internet Age. National Forum on Information Literacy. http://www.infolitsummit.com/Documents/InfoLitSummit16Oct2007B.pdf

Photo by Sheila Webber: Cherry blossom, Greenwich park, April 2007.

The Scottish Information Literacy Project

The Project Information literacy: the link between secondary and tertiary education is now The Scottish Information Literacy Project: working with partners to create an information literate Scotland. "The project was originally set up to devise an information literacy framework linking secondary and tertiary education, the (Scottish) National Information Literacy Framework. The first draft of this is now almost complete and it is hoped to pilot it with partners in academic year 2007-8. The Project has now expanded to include the role of information literacy in the employability and workplace agendas, in lifelong learning, in continuing professional development and the adult literacies agenda. Advocacy workhas also been undertaken including a petition to the Scottish Parliament. Project funders include Eduserv and Learning and Teaching Scotland." The website is at http://www.gcal.ac.uk/ils/

Photo by Sheila Webber: Sheffield morning, Feb 2007.

Request for workplace partner

I am passing on this request from John Crawford: "I am interested in undertaking a small(ish) scale study/ies on the use of information literacy in the workplace and problems encountered in promoting the understanding of it. It is part of the project Information literacy, the link between secondary and tertiary education. See http://www.gcal.ac.uk/ils/
I am looking for partners in the work situation either in not for profit or commercial organisations and would welcome outline expressions of interest from workplace librarians or people with appropriate contacts. If it proves possible to recruit a partner(s) it would then be a case of seeking funding and prospective partners would have to be prepared to be named in Applications. "
Please contact Dr. John Crawford , Library Research Officer, Glasgow Caledonian University,
Room 302, (3rd floor) 6 Rose Street, Glasgow, G3 6RB . Email: jcr@gcal. ac.uk

Photo by Sheila Webber: Tree & telephone wires, dusk, Couthurst Road, Blackheath, December 2006.