IL for product design engineering students

Another short report from Creating Knowledge IV held last week. Ola Pilerot presented a paper authored with Viktor Hiort af Ornäs, a lecturer at the University of Skövde called Design for information literacy: Towards embedded information literacy education for product design engineering students. You can find the complete paper here. One useful idea I'll pluck out is actually looking at the texts on the student reading list, and seizing on diagrams/ ideas/ quotes that will illustrate to the students how information literacy fits in with the subject of study. In this case, there were diagrams of the product design process that Ola used.

The abstract says "This paper describes improvements in how information literacy is taught on a design methodology course. The change is presented in the light of four approaches to information literacy education suggested by Bundy (2004). Our guiding principle has been that information literacy should be contextualized and embedded in the curricular activities of design. There are parallels in the design process and the information seeking process, and using these is one way to help students relate to the subject. Statements indicate that the students found the assignments worthwhile and became familiar with resources that they will use in the future. While we have strived for an embedment of information literacy, the course is probably more correctly described as one in which information literacy has been integrated. We describe how the course has developed over years and point to potential future improvements that may lead to a design of the course where information literacy can be seen as truly embedded."

Photo by Sheila Webber: Chr. Havens Canal, Copenhagen, August 2006.