Since the focus in UK universities is enhancement of learning and teaching quality (i.e. that is the focus of the Quality Assurance Agency for higher education), I was particularly interested in the posting I just caught up with on the Allek Library blog. Indrani Fisher reports on a meeting she attended as part of the (US) Council of Research and Academic Libraries (CORAL). "One of the member libraries of this consortium is Trinity University, which has made the news lately as they have chosen Information Literacy as their Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) project for their 10 year accreditation renewal. ... Michelle Millet is the Information Literacy coordinator at Trinity University, and she did a presentation on Trinity's (and her) experience during this process." The blog posting is at http://txstateinfolit.blogspot.com/2007/
11/accreditation-as-impetus-for-il.html
11/accreditation-as-impetus-for-il.html
I folowed this up by Googling to find pages on the Trinity University site itself, with information about QEP and their initiative http://www.trinity.edu/departments/
academic_affairs/qep/index.htm. I only skimmed the documents very quickly, but it looks like excellent stuff (e.g. "Creating the "whole" information literate student will lead to more engaged, more responsible, more creative, and more successful lives beyond Trinity. " ;-) There is a 5 year timetable as part of their key document, which, like the whole initiative, goes under the title Expanding Horizons: Using Information in the Twenty-First Century.
academic_affairs/qep/index.htm. I only skimmed the documents very quickly, but it looks like excellent stuff (e.g. "Creating the "whole" information literate student will lead to more engaged, more responsible, more creative, and more successful lives beyond Trinity. " ;-) There is a 5 year timetable as part of their key document, which, like the whole initiative, goes under the title Expanding Horizons: Using Information in the Twenty-First Century.
Photo by Sheila Webber: View from the hotel, Konstanz, Germany, November 2007.
Hello Sheila - A friend forwarded your post and thought you'd also be interested in what we're doing at the University of Central Florida (Orlando, FL, USA). Similar to Trinity University's initiative, UCF adopted "information fluency" as a SACS quality enhancement plan project. We are now approaching our third year and are making much progress toward our goal of integrating information fluency across the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteThe UCF IF web site is located at http://www.if.ucf.edu/ and contains our plan, objective, progress and resources. Assessment plans and the library's role in the project were detailed in a recently released issue of Public Services Quarterly (vol 3, issues 1/2, 2007). This special issue was edited by Scott Walter, a well known figure in IL, and was concurrently published as a book. It's a nice addition to anyone's reading list who is interested in IL assessment.
Best,
Penny Beile