#ECIL2023 Building knowledge across the curriculum

Pam McKinney live blogging from the ECIL conference. This is a panel session led by Emily Zeken Brown and Susan Souza-Mort, with the directive energy of Laura Hogan who could not be here today. They started off by asking the audience about the flavour of their information literacy training, and how it is delivered e.g. as a one shot session, or a multi-session format, or as a credit bearing course. There is a lack of time for librarians to deliver comprehensive information literacy education for community college students. The presenters work at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts in the US. Students are often 1st generation, non-traditional and working full time, and 68% graduate without debt. A recent law has made it possible for any 1 year resident without a degree can go to community college for free, which has massively improved access to education in the state. Many learners need a lot of support with digital and information literacy, the college is open for everyone, including students who really struggle with formal learning. This affects the library IL offer, as it has to be tailored for a large range of abilities. 

There is a first year seminar course in study skills a college success seminar, and this seemed like an ideal place to develop information literacy. The class can be attached to any research heavy course, and the library team offered to tailor it to different subject contexts. The focus was on scaffolding the research process, and also promoting  academic writing support. Research help, writing help and academic support is provided in the library. Many students think these services have to be paid for, but in fact they are free. The ACRL framework was used as a guiding principle for the course. There was a lengthy administrative process to go through to create this as a credit bearing course in the college, which involved getting feedback from a variety of teachers and administrators in the institution. The way that courses are designed at community colleges in the US seems quite different from the way that courses are designed at British universities!

There was a remuneration issue in that if librarians are going to lead a credit bearing course they should be paid as adjunct teaching staff, and these librarians requested this increase in pay for this course. In order to be a librarian in the US, you are required to have a masters qualification in library and information science. This course was positioned as not needing students to buy text books, so all the resources were open educational resources. The course will hopefully  run for the first time in spring 2024, but there seem to be some issues with the placing of the course, and proposed changes to how it is positioned in the context of other courses at the college. The abstract of the panel is here.

Photo by Sheila Webber: cafe window in Krakow

#ECIL2023 Data Literacy for Master Level in University of Helsinki

Pam McKinney blogging from day 3 of the ECIL conference. Tuija Korhonen spoke about data literacy in higher education, which is very important as students do independent research, so need to understand data management and citation practices. These are also skills for the workplace. Helsinki university is large, with 11 faculties across 4 campuses. There is a research data support network featuring specialists from the library, IT, research affairs and legal affairs.
Various tools and services are offered, e.g. a data management planning tool and workshops. The library data management team teach research data management for doctoral students and researchers, but following the implementation of GDPR in 2018 they needed to provide this training for students at all levels. This presented an issue of scalability, who was going to teach data management to all these students?
The solutions were to provide self study material, and a personal data test, a teaching pilot with faculty. Self study material was created using lib guides in 3 languages - Finnish, Swedish and English and covered topics such as where data should be stored. The teaching pilot with faculty took place in the context of a masters course, and focused on open science principles and practices. There has been very positive feedback from students and staff regarding the teaching pilot. And other universities have asked to adopt the personal data test quiz.
The abstract for this talk is on this page (scroll down)

Social Media and Information Literacy: Reaching Students Where They are #ECIL2023

Pam McKinney live blogging from the first afternoon session of the 3rd day of the ECIL conference in Krakow, Poland. Jennifer Jacobs from Texas Tech university is an information literacy teaching librarian, and one of her courses looks at social media and information literacy.
People make split second decisions about information they find on social media and decide whether and how they are going to use it. Social media has fundamentally changed how we interact with information, and it’s important to reflect on how we share information we find on social media, as much Mis and dis information is found on social media.
The mid-term assignment for students is to go on their social media and find a video that has information in it. They have to decide if that information is truthful, and what value it has for them. The focus is to capture how students interact with social media, before trying to teach them about evaluation skills.
Some students showed good evaluation skills and had videos that were truthful. Some posters had expertise in the subjects they were sharing videos about, and students recognised this. Several students chose very emotional videos e.g. about the use of animal testing in cosmetics, because this video was shared by PETA, an animal rights pressure group, it was probably biased.
Students usually accepted information on social media without checking the source. Truth can be blurred by high emotion videos. Without fore-knowledge, students struggled to articulate how they judged the truthfulness of information. Students had to present their videos to the class and talk about the,, which students liked as an activity. The activity could be adapted to many contexts, and can inform the development of learning materials about information evaluation.
The abstract for this talk is on this page
Photo by Pam McKinney

#ECIL2023 New clicks: developing user led digital literacies in older adults in Scottish public libraries

Pam McKinney blogging from the second presentation in the doctoral forum at ECIL. Andrew Feeney from Edinburgh Napier university presented a summary of the beginning stages of his PhD research. He intends to use participatory methods with a peer supported approach to understand his topic.
There is a huge range of literature on participatory methods, older adults and public libraries. Older adults are disproportionately and tangibly affected by gaps in digital literacy development. Digital by default negatively affects older adults e.g. public policy often focuses on developments for younger people in schools or the workplace. There are no equivalent policies for older adults. Public Libraries are ideally placed as sites for development as trusted locations.
Participatory methods are useful for meeting older learners on their own terms, and peer supported approaches are under explored in this context. There is a need to address intersectional approaches to information literacy development, and sustainable change needs direct engagement, and the public library is a good place for this to happen. Andrew’s research questions focus on how older adults determine their own digital literacy needs, and how they might address these without formal intervention. How could participatory and peer supported methods address these needs? Andrew is hoping to work with a group of around 40 adults that he already engages with in his professional practice.
He hopes to examine the CILIP definition of information literacy through the research, which prioritises empowerment and engagement. One of the impact areas outlines by CILIP is information literacy in everyday life, and this is key to the research. Participatory research involves the research hers giving up power, and become a participant themselves. Recent studies have shown that targeted engagement work best with older adults. These methods can reach out to older adults that may not have engaged with traditional learning.
Ageing is a non uniform process, and this means that methods should have a range of outputs. The ladder of participation presents a range of ways that participatory research can be conceived, and Andrew is aiming for the top of the ladder which gives more power to participants. An initial establish cohort of participants will help Andrew design the research, and a pilot series of workshops with this cohort will trial and develop new approaches.
Some early conclusions are that current policies do not address the varied and compound digital literacy development needs of older adults. User-led methods proposed can address this, and can develop scalable solutions. Public libraries are already active in this space, but lack a holistic vision that is supported by government policy.
The abstract for this talk is on this page

#ECIL2023. Approaches to exploring the information worlds of women engineering students

Pam McKinney here live blogging the 3rd day of the ECIL conference [posted later due to wifi issues], this session is the doctoral forum, and Laura Woods, who is studying for a PhD with Sheila Webber and me, is presenting the beginning stages of her PhD research into the information words of women engineering students.
Laura began by stating that she is early in her PhD journey and will present today by exploring the theoretical approaches underpinning her research. The aim of Laura’s PhD is to explore the information experiences within the lifeworlds of female engineering students, taking a phenomenological approach in an interview based study. Women’s ways of knowing (WWK) is a model developed by educational psychologists to understand women’s experiences of learning in higher education. It is an extension of an earlier scheme of intellectual development of college students in the 1950s, that was probably developed from participants of quite a narrow sociological background. The women’s perspective in this research may have been quite limited. The WWK study recruited participants from a broad range of backgrounds, and outlined 5 ways of knowing.
The first way is “silence”, and these women did not see themselves as capable of creating knowledge. The second way, “received” where knowledge is a passive process, received from experts in the discipline. They see knowledge in a binary right or wrong way. The 3rd way is “subjective knowledge “ where education is seen as an artificial process, it is personal, private and intuitive. The 4th way is “procedural” where women learn new strategies for knowing. The 5th stage is “constructed” where knowledge is seen as constructed and contextual, where many different strategies are adopted. This model is not intended to be seen as a linear model, and people can more fluidly between stages.
Critiques of the model have focused on the perceived hierarchy of the model, and reflects the masculine bias in epistemological models. The next criticism focuses on gender essentialism, and assumes a common experience to all women. However other research has shown that these are not exclusive to women. The final criticism is that it ignores considerations of race, and centres whiteness. This is fairly common for feminist research at the time.
WWK has been used in LIS research, and has potential considering the role of women. Laura has found around 20 pieces of research, but often it is only mentioned in passing. 4 articles have adopted the model in a more significant way: for example, Anna Fields compared the WWK with the ACRL competency standards for information literacy. In 2003 Annemaree Lloyd described information literacy as a “way of knowing”. In 2007 Hope Olsen uses connected knowing to propose a connected knowledge organisation scheme.
Intersectional feminism is another model that Laura is drawing on. This model proposes that people experience marginalisation across a range of protected characteristics, and recognises the varying life experiences of women. This model has also been used in LIS, but is under-used as an approach. Research into women’s information behaviour has focused on the differences between men and women, there is a limited literature that takes an intersectional approach.Laura hopes to use these approaches in her research.
Laura hopes to use WWK as a sensitising concept in the analysis phase, to investigate the role of affect e.g. the role of uncertainty in information the search process. The role of authority and expertise, e.g. how a subjective knower understands authority. Laura intends to combine WWK with a intersectional approach and not take a binary view of gender, and to take a purposive sampling approach to recruit participants with a variety of characteristics.
There was a lively discussion of Laura’s plans for her PhD research, and lots of interest in the approaches outlined bin the presentation. Sheila and I are excited to see the research unfold. The abstract for this talk is on this page.

Media Literacy Interactively and for All #ECIL2023

Pam McKinney blogging from day 3 of the ECIL conference. [Due to wifi issues at the conference we will post some liveblogs retrospectively!] Kristy Paulova from Czech university of Life Sciences Led this presentation.Some people still believe that the moon landings are fake, and that there are aliens living on the dark side of the moon. But the people in the audience did not believe these conspiracy theories.
We live in a world of fake news, and we will all know people who believe it. 10% of the Czech population regularly consume conspiracy web sites, and 10% support the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Chain emails are used to spread misinformation. Czech libraries have a range of media literacy training opportunities, and the university of life sciences is ready to help develop them further.
The main target groups are seniors and high school students. The courses should be completely free, easy to use and partially in English. MOOCs were created, as well as resources for teachers and librarians. 6 video-based courses for seniors were created, focusing on the history of mass media, critical thinking, manipulation in the media, and fake news. People would watch the video and then answer questions on it. It was hard to create the videos, it isn’t everyone’s preferred activity.
The course for high school students focused on traditional and new media, and critical media on the future books system that held the videos and interactive exercises. They also created an escape game, on the theme of “AI tries to take over the world”. They used an AI to generate fake images and videos and students were asked to spot the fakes. They have had some positive feedback already from students. The abstract for this talk is on this page (scroll down)
Photo by Pam McKinney

Design Thinking; Citation styles #ECIL2023

As my final session at ECIL I attended and liveblog Information Literacy in the Design Thinking process – A Preliminary Research was presented by Dorota Rak (Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland). She identified that design thinking can be seen as a mindset, a methodology or a problem solving philosophy. Rak say that it was “a manifestation of collective intelligence” where students are designers and also use innovative designs. There are three aspects – the institutional area, the operational area (e.g. with tools supporting the design thinking process) and the didactic area. Rak said that librarians had recognised the value of integrating DT, that DT can be a driver of information behaviour, and also that DT can be used to develop practice and learning. Rak identified that IL was “a vauable competency for nuturing social capital”. 
The research problems that Rak addressed were – what information competencies do students need for DT; what tools do they need; what skills do they need. Data was collected through a questionnaire administered to university students and also examination of the literature. The majority of the respondents had a good understanding of both “Information Literacy” and “Design Thinking”. The majority also were able to define their information needs across the DT process. However, some stages were seen as more difficult and in more need of support.
The students were asked how useful they found obtained information across the stages of the Design Thinking process. There were differencies across the stages and also between students on the 2 different programmes surveyed. There were also differences in terms of organising information, and use of different tools. Conclusions included designing a curriculum that effectively integrated information management principles with the dynamic iterative nature of DT. 

The second presentation was “Who Cares?” Defining Citation Style in Scholarly Journals from Pavla Vizváry (Masaryk University, Czech Republic) and Vincas Grigas (Vilnius University, Lithuania). Grigas started by identifying that there are more citation styles (10 thousand) than species of birds! The identified problem is that there are all these styles, you have to follow a style strictly in published journals, people are not expert in all styles, so so authors make mistakes. This is a problem as it’s a burden to authors, but inconsistency makes it more difficult to find articles etc. Their aim was to identify citation styles required by journals in SCOPUS. They had questions such as how cleraly the journals express their requirement. They analysed 270 journals, looking also for types of mistake in citation. They were aiming to understand how different stakeholders (e.g. authors, publishers) are affected. Also they used cognitive load theory – worries about formatting can divert energy from the main task of writing.
Vizváry took over to return to the question of “Who cares”? The answer included publishers, editors, librarians, authors and teachers. Introducing SCOPUS, they looked at Lithuanian and Czech journals and also sampled journals published in other countries, comparing their statistics (such as H index). From this statistical point of view the Czech and Lithuanian journals were similar to each other, but had a slightly different profile to the international sample. Vizváry also noted that there were more English-only journals published in Lithuania and Czech Republic than national language ones, and there were differences in the patterns of open publishing. Moving on to differences in form of intext references (numbers or author names) there were significant differences by subject, and this was more important than differences from country to country.
The most common journal reference style is, sadly, “unnamed” i.e. they just give examples, next was APA. They noted that the ISO format was strong in the Czech Republic, but not elsewhere. In social sciences APA was named a lot, but “unnamed” was the most common in some subjects. 84.4% of journals give example references (others tend to link to the style’s website). They also noted that not all journals include DOIs in their reference styles. There was a question afterwards about whether the “unnamed” styles were actually specific styles, and the authors said that they’d tried some unnamed styles in ChatGPT and it had said in each case that it was like style X, but with these differences. They were thinking of doing more of this ChatGPT-aided diagnosis.

Photo by Sheila Webber: sleepy pigeons in Krakow

#ECIL2023 Library instruction for mis/disinformation: French and US perspectives

Pam McKinney live blogging (with an unusually stable internet connection!) from the final day of the ECIL conference. Jouma Boustany has had to step in at the last minute to give this presentation, but it was very accomplished nonetheless! There is a rise in mis/disinformation globally, and it isn’t only limited to social media or political arenas. There is a lack of research h on how mis/disinformation is addressed in the classroom. Misinformation is inaccurate information by accident, and disinformation is inaccurate information shared on purpose. News literacy refers to critical skills to analysing, and judging the reliability of news and information, differentiating between facts, opinions and assertions. The media landscape is often controlled by rich men, and it can be tricky to understand the biases that might be inherent in any one media outlet. The research questions focused on understanding librarians perceptions of misinformation. A survey was distributed, to find out how misinformation is taught by librarians, and sent out to librarian list serves. 189 US librarians responded, and 125 French librarians responded. The vast majority of respondents had higher level qualifications, and worked in the university sector, although there was a big range of the type of institutions represented in the sample. 

French and US librarians had quite similar views, all of them are concerned about mis and disinformation in news media, and the threat of this to democracy. Most think that human fact checkers are important to combat mis and disinformation. 75% considered that it was part of their role to teach about this, and there were some differences between librarian roles between the two countries that could be the reason for some of the discrepancy between answers.

Librarians in both countries are concerned about the spread of mis and disinformation on social media, and they think this should be regulated. There was a lot of agreement that it is the librarian role to teach news literacy to combat mis and disinformation. There was a lot of scepticism about the role that AI could play in improving algorithms to combat mis and disinformation. 68% of French librarians already teach about mis and disinformation, and 79% of US librarians. Some librarians are constrained by a lack of faculty support and a lack of time.

#ECIL2023 Social Project of Media And Information Literacy Knowledge Improvement among Academic and School Librarians in Kazakhstan

Pam McKinney here live blogging from the final day of the ECIL conference. This presentation from Yelizaveta Kamilobva and Zhuldyz Orazymbetova from Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan  is a country in Central Asia, and it is the 9th largest by area in the world. Astana is the capital city and is home to 19 million people.

There is a lack of state level standards for information literacy, and a deficit of materials in the Kazakh language. Materials that do exist, but they are often irrelevant to local user needs. These problems led to the creation of this social project “educated generation” to educate school children who will be the university students of the future. There was a small budget, but they tried to use it all wisely to support participating librarians. The aim of the project was to develop Media and information literacy skills in school librarians in Kazakhstan. A project  team of 7 librarians, 2 experts and 3 partners was formed in October 2021, and the project began, it was completed in November 2022. The pandemic made it apparent that many children lacked digital literacy, and this was an important problem to solve for the project. 417 librarians registered for the programme, and in the end 365 librarians and 2500 children were trained, some librarians had issues connecting online for the workshops. 24 online and face-to-face workshops took place (majority online). The training materials and media and information literacy manual (180 pages) were provided online in Kazakh and Russian, to make them accessible to everyone. 

In order to create the training materials they did a preliminary survey of librarians to understand their knowledge needs. They asked how confident librarians were with various aspects of media and information literacy, for example could they create graphics, how confident they feel in information search. The respondents said they are confident, but their responses revealed that their confidence was maybe misplaced. Based on these results a MIL training programme was created. Module 1 featured an introduction to MIL, module 2 featured specific competencies e.g. searching for information, evaluating information and the ethical use of information. Module 3 focused on the development and usage of media and information content, including creating interactive quizzes and tools, creating presentation and online graphics, and using Microsoft office and Google services. As part of the “homework” participants had to create their own MIL training event.

The MIL manual was based on the training programme, and it contained really practical guidance on how to create MIL training for children. School librarians then ran training sessions in collaboration with the project team, and were supported to develop engaging training materials. A post training evaluation survey was used to identify the 10 best librarians, who were then invited to the university for enhanced training, and their travel and stay was paid for out of the project funds. Another function of the project was to tray to break some of the typical stereotypes of librarians by encouraging them to create modern dynamic video content. 

Academic librarians are not treated as faculty members, but they are trying to change this perception and be recognised as expert teachers. The project team won a university teaching award this year for their work on this project. 

The Experience of Information and the Formation of Information Culture #ECIL2023

The final keynote at the ECIL conference in Krakow is Interdisciplinary and Methodological Aspects of Diagnosing the Experience of Information and the Formation of Information Culture from Monika Krakowska and Sabina Cisek (at the host institution: Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland). This was a rich presentation and I had lots of thoughts about it, but I will will just note here the main points of their presentations.
They had done a search (not a systematic review) to start to scope the area of information experience (on Web of Science, LISTA and Google Scholar, also chaining from relevant items). In introducing theoretical aspects of information experience Monika used the famous Leonardo drawing of a man, which is idealised, whereas one’s behaviour and experience is not idealised. She started with John Dewey’s theory of experience who said that “experience is the basis of everything in life”, and she connected it with Wilson’s concept of information behaviour as he “treats information behaviour itself as the real life of human beings, who cannot survive without information” – including consciousness and knowledge building.
Monika included also personal construct theory (quoting Smith & McMenemy), phenomenology, social constructivism, Chatman’s theories, Threshold concepts. She also quoted (I think) from the book Information Experience by Christine Bruce and colleagues, referring to people’s life-worlds, people’s interrelationship with the world and phenomena around them (arising from the phenomenographic non-dualist approach).
Of course examining the theoretical approach also encompasses reflecting on what information is. Monika highlighted:
- The social constructivist approach = experiencing through learning and observing
- “A process through social and environmental interactions, where the exchange of knowledge, information, experiences must take place in a mutually created social context”
- “A holistic (multidimentional approach)” including embodiment, observation of the environment, sensory information experience, cognitive and emotional experience, sense-making (“making sense of reality” using all ones senses and observations of the world around them)
Monika identified an anthropocentric approach to information experience, characterised by:
- person in context
- personally meaningful activities (including experience of flow)
- auto hermeneutics (or I would say, auto ethnography)
- first person perspective
- phenomenological approaches (referencing Budd asserting that the “world has no meaning beyond consciousness”)  [I wouls also add phenomenographic approaches here]
Then Monika reflected about whether information experience is a subdiscipline or an umbrella concept.
Sabina then took over to talk about methodological aspects, and identified how she defined some terms. For her a strategy was whether it is qualitative, quantitative, mixed. Methods/research approaches were what I’d call approach such as phenomenography, case study. Units of analysis were individuals, features, groups etc. There were techniques for data collection. Overall, she defined the methodology of a particular field as meaning the way in which a discipline etc studies “its” part of the world.
Sabina identified qualitative strategies as dominant in studying information experiences, with no quantitative and some mixed strategies, with use of bricolage to assemble an appropriate strategy for investigating a specific problem. Sabina listed various approaches used, from action research through to phenomenography.
In terms of units of analysis (“What do we study?”), Sabina identified:
Behavioural units (such as types of information behaviour);
“People” units;
Objects (including one piece of information, an information source);
Time units (e.g. when does an experience start).
In terms of data collection, Sabina mentioned – card sorting; documents, materials or texts (which can be e.g. tweets, fan fiction); interviews of all kinds; observation; workshops including participatory. She said she hadn’t seen visual techniques so far (but I know that they have been used).
In terms of data analysis she mentioned constructivist grounded theory, thematic analysis; phenomenological analysis (I’d add phenomenographic analysis). She felt that there were not any novel methodologies being used, from her observation and she thought that information behaviour research was not being used as much as it could be.
As I said at the start I found this a really rich, interesting talk to debate with, but I’ll just add one question that arose for further discussion – chairs and their arrangement in a room may give you information, but is examination of that information part of our field? (what do you think!)
Photo by Sheila Webber: portraits in one of the rooms on the first day

#ECIL2023 Students’ Perceptions of Using Artificial Intelligence in Written Assignments – Is Information Literacy Still Needed

Pam McKinney live blogging from the ECIL conference in Krakow. Krista Lepik from Tartu university in Estonia. Krista’s opening slide featured a picture of her created by an AI programme! AI chat bots are becoming increasingly popular and available, and students use them to help create their written assignments. There are mixed feelings about the use of AI chatbots in education activities by university administrators and faculty members, and as a results Tartu university has created some guidelines on the use of AI chatbots in teaching. Students have to write a short literature review in the course “information behaviour theories and practices” that uses a minimum of 3 scholarly sources. They had to use an AI chatbot to help write the assignment, and also to write a reflection on how they had used the chatbot and whether they thought it was a useful tool. Reflections from 26 students were analysed thematically.
Students did trust the results from the chatbot, but did go through a process of verification. Initially students were optimistic about the use of the chatbot, and the process seemed smooth and the interface was easy to use. But later they became more cautious. They encountered fake references, and there was an illusion of high quality text.
The material created by the AI was often off topic, and the quality of translation into Estonian was poor. Students advised caution particularly if they were not very familiar with the topic. Relevance is subjective, and students questioned whether they would summarise the same points from the text. It takes an unexpectedly long time to verify the information generated by the AI. However they valued the opportunity to use their own language, and felt that they could discover new ideas, perspectives, and inspiration.
It is better to use a chatbot to explore topic where you have some previous knowledge. Banning AI generated content does not help, also it is difficult to identify AI generated content. It is better to work in partnership with students to explore the affordances and limitations of chatbots. These programmes are here to stay so it is important to be aware of how they work and what they do.
Photo by Pam McKinney - tram ticket machine

Developing online research skills; Young people creating texts and literacy #ECIL2023

Continuing liveblogging from ECIL (from Sheila) Tuulikki Alamettälä (University of Oulu, Finland) talked about Developing Online Research Skills in a Lower Secondary School: The Viewpoint of Students. She identified that onlne research skills have been described in different ways (information literacy, digital literacy) but she used “online research skills” as she was specifically focusing on searching done online. These skills can be challenging for young people to learn, and also teachers are not always confident in teaching them.
Alamettälä then outlined Kuhlthau’s model of Guided Inquiry as a process to develop information literacy, inquiry learning and social skills. The stages of Guided Inquiry are: open, immerse, explore, identify, gather, create, share and evaluate. The process has students as discoverers and co-creators of knowledge, and sharing is an important part. For this intervention, Alamettälä collaborated with language and history teachers, and they incorporated the Guided Inquiry (GI) process into the curriculum. The teachers introduced inquiry logs and emphasised the first part of the GI process. There were 3 classes, 58 students, aged 13-15. There were 3 interventions at different stages of the students' pathway through school.
Alamettälä used a quasi-experimental design (with pre and post tests), including a control group of students. Teachers were able to integrate some of the elements of Guided Inquiry and it was in accord with a learner-focused approach in Finnish education.
While the GI group did better in a post-test shortly after finishing it, a follow up a while later did not show a difference between GI group and control group. Alamettälä also reported further results not included in reporting her doctoral research previously, involving questionnaires after the 3 interventions. Some points were that there were differences in reactions to the three interventions, which could be attributed to a variety of factors such as novelty, the way the activity was introduced by the teacher, the exact nature and requirements of each intervention. The most challenging part was seen as sharing in presentations.
Looking at statistical correlations, one finding was that if the student engaged with instructions (about what to do in class) then there was a more positive feeling about learning experience. Conclusions included that the teachers were able to use GI as a source of inspiration and incorporate some of it into teaching. The model also seemed to work for the students as they were able to engage with the interventions and didn’t experience major challenges.
The last paper in a session about “New Generation education” was Fearing for Their Lives: Implications of Children and Youth as Generators of Informational Texts and Literacy from Barbara McNeil (University of Regina, Canada). The focus was If I go missing by Brianna, a 14 year old indigenous girl (Jonnie et al., 2019). McNeil referred to Lupton’s phenomenographic research which discovered three conceptions of information literacy: as backing up an argument; developing an argument; in the process of learning as a social responsibility. This is an example of the last conception.
McNeil then talked about facts and campaigns to do with missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, particularly in Canada (e.g. that they are statistically more likely to be abused and murdered). These are not new concerns, but not much has been done about the situation. The graphic novel by Brianna Jonnie and colleagues is a response to this situation, and McNeil showed us pages from the novel and highlighted particular parts of the book, for example how the images and words aim to disrupt ideas about indigenous women, and indict the police and their lack of action and insight.
McNeil showed how the novel was educating us about what the situation was, what was being done wrong by the public, police, media etc. and what should be done by the media and police. McNeil identified how the book was humanising indigenous women and girls, urging people to humanise the women and girls if they went missing (not treating them as a stereotyped statistic).
In terms of implications – this young woman had evidenced her information literacy in her production of a multimodal publication and evidenced her power. McNeil urged us to enable young people to exercise power by using information literacy and developing information literacy to take action and protest – “honestly and openly confronting” bias, injustices and misrepresentation. Thus they can be empowered in civic engagement, and also learn collaboration and other skills such as the use of storytelling and advocacy. The book by Jonnie can be used as as example and evidence of the ability to apply information literacy in this active way.

Maddie Is Online in an elementary school #ECIL2023

The next presentation I (Sheila Webber) am blogging at ECIL is Maddie Is Online: Embedding Creative Audio-Visual Resources to The Teaching of Information Literacy in an Elementary School in Greece from Konstantina Martzoukou (Robert Gordon University , Scotland) and Evi Tramantza (Anatolia College, Thessaloniki, Greece).
I have blogged about the excellent videos series Maddie is online before and the channel is here https://www.youtube.com/@maddieisonline2579. After introducing the Maddie is Online series, the presenters explained how they used Maddie is Online series 2 and decided to integrate it into primary school lessons at Anatolia College Elementary School in Greece (it is an American school and therefore the students can cope with English language). This was done in collaboration with teachers, and sessions were in the library (with teachers also attending).
Tramantza examined material to select and contextualise it for the students. Lesson plans and assignments were developed. They surveyed both students and teachers after the last lesson. Benefits included
- interactive and video material appealed to student
- the quantity and quality made it easier to select and introduce material
- storytelling aided the effectiveness of the learning, including describing feelings
- Maddie herself was a good role model
Interaction included students reciting key messages together – they enjoyed this. They also enjoyed competing in groups to produce fake news posters. Another activity was students taking on a character in the series and exploring that character in more depth.
From the post-class survey, student and teacher feedback was positive overall, and they think the activity should be repeated. Tramantza herself also reflected that she enjoyed using different ways to teach information literacy. Some challenges were also identified. Recommendations included sharing lesson plans; the need to discuss Miss Mason’s deceitfulness (she's a teacher in the series), how even usually trusted people may be untrustworthy and the need to be careful; that Maddie can be used by both teachers and librarians; that the videos are engaging.
Photo by Sheila Webber: brochure in the presentation room

#ECIL2023 Artificial Intelligence and Information Literacy: Hazards and Opportunities

Michael Flierl from Ohio State University began by saying that chatGPT has some impressive features and has only got more powerful. [This is a delayed-due-to-poor-wifi post from day 2 of ECIL] Flierl presented a summary of Microsoft AutoGen that has a network of AIs that interact with each other in order to answer a user query. ChatGPT now has the ability to understand image information and can analyse images provided by users and use the information to respond to user queries.
AI is a dual-use technology in that it can be used for good and ill, it is in-built to the technology. Some researchers used AI for drug discovery, and used it to drive down drug toxicity. However it could also be used to create a very toxic drug, and overnight the AI discovered thousands of very deadly compounds. There are concerns that AI can be used to create convincing fake news and inundate social media platforms with machine generated misinformation.
There is lots of interest in the interaction between the ACRL framework and AI, but AI has the potentially to fundamentally disrupt society, so perhaps we need instead to adapt IL to AI. There is a likelihood that AIs will achieve sentience before the end of this century. We need to engage in some tough questions about the future of humanity. There are scenarios in which humans will come to a point where we cannot control an AI. Should IL professionals advocate for the control of advanced AI? AI systems are already being used to streamline hiring practices that perpetuate existing biases such as sexism and racism.
There is a black box problem in that even researchers do not understand in detail how the AI works. ChatGPT 4 has the tendency to “hallucinate” and produce information that is clearly false. Social media has been shown to negatively influence teenagers’ mental health, but this has been largely ignored by social media companies. State actors (e.g. China, but not only China) have been using AI to monitor individuals, and create a surveillance state.
However there is some good news. AI could transform learning, and tailor learning for the best student outcomes. It is possible for LIS professionals to advocate for new AI systems that are safe, reliable, transparent, controllable, explainable and predictable
Photo by Pam McKinney

#ECIL2023 ”A personal doctor will not be replaced by any robot service!” - Older adults’ experiences with personal health information and eHealth services

In this final health literacy themed session, Pam McKinney here live blogging from Day 2 of the ECIL conference. Heidi Enwald presented a research project focusing on older adults funded by the academy of Finland. The project looked at adults aged 55-70, who have an increasing need to access and manage health information - Personal health information management is the term used to describe this activity. Older age is associated with barriers to using technology and digital services.
Based on a systematic review it was identified that there is little research on the storing and management of health information. This project used a postal survey issued to 1500 individuals aged 55-70 in Finland. Questions looked at health information management and in, used both users and non-users of eHealth services. 345 responses were received, 60% were women. This presentation focuses on 2 open-ended questions on the survey. Some answers were quite short.
People were asked about how they store health information, storing information in paper format was still popular, papers were stored in boxes and diaries at home, and digital information was printed for preservation. Preparing for a doctor’s appointment was one reason for checking the information or bringing the papers with them to the appointment “just in case”.
Some people stored their own information about their health e.g. their blood pressure on paper. If people moved house a lot there was an increased need to record information in paper format at home. Others did not see a need to record their own health information - this is the job of the doctor. The management of medicine was seen to be the most concerning aspect of health management.
At the end of the questionnaire people were asked to imagine what an e-health service would look like. Some were happy with the status quo and could not imagine new services. Some thought they had no need for digital health services. Wishes and development ideas focused on ideas such as fixing mistakes quickly, and to have access to video services from home, a fast internet connection was vital for this. The need for services to adapt to ageing patients was seen to be important, people were worried about not keeping up with technological developments. Findability and presentation of information was seen to be important, and the need to maintain human contact and face-to-face in order to address loneliness and mental health problems.
So the study showed that older adults had divided views about ways to manage their health information, and the use of digital health services. A good digital health service should contain versatile health information. People valued physical contact with health professionals. People need health information literacy in order to manage their health information.
Photo by Pam McKinney

#ECIL2023 How Students Seek Information in the Context of Fitness and Physical Exercise

Pam McKinney live blogging from the final session of day 2 at the ECIL conference. [Note, due to wifi problems some liveblogs are being posted later] Jose Teixeira from Abo Academi university Finland, where they have a strong research interest in health information and young people, presented about some recent research looking at student information seeking in the context of fitness and physical exercise. There is lots of research into students’ exercise, but there is little looking into this from an information science perspective. Interviews were conducted with 8 students on-site after exercising, 5 male and 3 female. All participants found information on YouTube, TikTok and instagram. There is a university sports centre which is free for students, and many used gym classes as a source of information.
Many of them liked to record their workouts to share in social media, but also to monitor their performance and check their progress. Every student consumes information in a completely different way, social media platforms are highly personalised, interactive and intrusive. Social media and in-person role models were selected on the basis of their physical body. Fitness influencers have a lot of followers and therefore a lot of power, but there was evidence that participants evaluated influencers asking questions about who the content is aimed at.
Photo by Pam McKinney

Sociocultural Approaches to Information Literacy #ECIL2023

Sheila here, and the keynote at ECIL today is Sociocultural Approaches to Information Literacy: Space Races, Wish-Cycling and Squabbling Siblings from Alison Hicks (University College London, UK). I'm liveblogging, so there is the usual caveat that this is my immediate impression of Hicks' talk.
Hicks asked us to cast our minds back to 2005, which she saw as an important date for Information Literacy - the publication of Information Literacy as a sociotechnical practice which she identified as signalling a change in the trajectory of IL. The article proposes that IL is embedded in and inseparable from the activities of particular groups and communities, with a constructionist approach, and shifting focus to the social and cultural (rather than seeing IL as an individual activity). Hicks mentioned some other influences that led to a sociocultural approach e.g. the work of Bruce, Lloyd or Kapitzke.
Taking 2005 as a starting date, Hicks posed a number of questions such as - what aspects of the sociocultural approach have been integrated? how have the ideas been developed? where does more work need to be done?
Hicks went on to address some of these questions through analysis that used citations (the the above article) as a jumping off point (whilst recognising that there are some limitations to this approach). In Web of Science there were 191 citing papers, 129 of which were focused on IL, narrowed down to 109 after examination. Hicks then identified the extracts relevant to her topic, coded the material and categorised those into three themes, each of which had subthemes. Note that she gave example references for each of her themes and subthemes (which would make an interesting reading list), but I wasn't able to copy these down as well for this post!
The first theme was Picking up Ideas. The first subtheme was "Beyond the academic" where authors talk about focusing on IL in contexts outside formal education (e.g. workplace, everyday or exploring IL in specific cultural/national contexts). The 2nd subtheme was "Beyond the academic curtain" (looking at the "role that context plays in shaping school or academic information literacy"). The 3rd subtheme was "Social relationships" - looking at "how social information sources shape the development of situated knowing". These sources includes people, particular spaces and social media.
The second theme was Running with the ball: expanding on ideas in the original article. The 1st subtheme was "Tools and materiality" - concentrating on the way artefacts, documents, infrastructures and tools are used in, and affect, IL practice. The 2nd subtheme was "Discursive space" - emphasising the importance of social relationships, as opposed to the individualistic idea of IL. Hicks further identified librarian/teacher narratives, cognitive authorities and positioning as foci. The 3rd subtheme was "Power" - exploring issues of authority and legitimisation, including those critiquing current models of IL and examination of barriers to developing IL.
The third theme was Seizing the Day. Firstly, Hicks identified authors who has explored specific "Activities" (e.g. sharing, storytelling, reframing, avoiding, creating or recording information/practices). The 2nd subtheme was "The body", with emphasis on embodied information and sensory information and knowledge gained through experience. The 3rd subtheme was "Challenging context" - reflecting on what context actually means, for example looking at how practice travels, transitions or changes.
Having outlined the above nine areas, Hicks moved on to the "Squabbling siblings" of her title. She reflected on how scholarly disagreements can be a productive part of the field as well as divisive, but need to be supportive/reflective rather than divisive. Hicks identified the mainstreaming of many sociocultural ideas, but warned against stgnation where there is more formulaic exploration of IL in specific contexts, or investigation of information experience in isolation.
Hicks had some finishing questions for us (apologies, I didn't manage to capture all of them!) - for example "how are our understandings of information literacy driven by wished or hoped for truths, rather than the broader consideration of the complexity and messiness of practice". What would it mean to reconceptualise IL in the light of sociocultural insights? What would it mean to centre it around evolving insights into information practice?
However Hicks noted that (on the positive side) "key sociocultural principles are shared across contexts" and she probed the implications of the professional-practice orientation of IL (including the practice-research relationship), noting the need to create spaces for more complex and nuanced conversations.
Finally, Hicks identified the sociocultural approach as a dynamic way forward!
Photo by Sheila Webber: lanyards at ECIL

#ECIL2023 The Relationship between Game Literacy and Information Literacy

So this is slightly weird, reporting on Sheila’s presentation on Sheila’s blog, but I really wanted to hear Sheila speaking about this interesting topic. Sheila began by asserting the popularity of gaming, and using the guided inquiry framework as a way to understand information literacy in games. Research about video games has historically focused on the negative consequences of gaming, so it is useful to present an alternative view. There is still not a lot of research into information behaviour in gaming, and information literacy research has often focused on using games to teach information literacy. Sheila presented a definition of video game literacy by Bourgonjon 2014, and will look at the 3 literacies present in the model and will define the information literacy dimension in those. Sheila has supervised 60-70 masters dissertations looking at information behaviour in gaming, and has drawn on 4 example studies in this presentation. Students looked at a variety of game contexts, but the studies reported here focus on 3 games - League of Legends, Elden Ring and Dread Hunger.

Operational literacy corresponds to functional reading, so being able to play a game, understand the rules and contextualising what you find in the game. The information literacy dimension here is in being able to use the full range of information sources in and outside the game, and combining this with your own understanding to play effectively. In Elden Ring there is a message function, but it’s quite restricted to specific words, and if other players find your message they can give you feedback on your message, and popular message shine brightly in the game. Information literacy in this context is shown through being able to interact with messages and understanding the format and limitations of them.

Cultural literacy is about understanding the technical context of the game e.g. that servers exist in different countries, and they have different cultures, and understanding the game within the landscape of gaming generally, and within the wider cultural world. Information literacy is about using knowledge of conventions and plots of similar games to interpret messages and information in the game.

Critical literacy is understanding the social, economic and political context of the game, and the practices and norms in game design. The information literacy dimension is about understanding the power structures underlying the game, and the political landscape in which the game operates. Sheila presented some examples of the way in which gamers recognise that information is falsified or is misleading. Deliberately misleading others can be seen as part of the game, and some game roles require players to give misleading information. It also therefore involves learning strategies to identify false information.

In conclusion information emerges as a really important aspect of gaming, and gamers can easily articulate the information required or important in the games they play. Information literacy contributes to all three aspects of game literacy. Making more connections between video game literacy and information literacy could contribute to the "Third Space" (where learners' experience meets new knowledge) in the classroom. Sheila will be posting her presentation to Slideshare later in the week and will blog the link.

Using Early Responses to Wikipedia and Google to Consider ChatGPT #ECIL2023

At the ECIL conference (Sheila here) I just attended a talk on Using Early Responses to Wikipedia and Google to Consider ChatGPT by David A. Hurley (University of New Mexico, USA). He identified a number of questions that are being asked about generative AI, such as: where is the authority? what should be the heuristics for assessment? should we teach prompt engineering? should we prohibit students from using AI? Hurley identified the similarity between these fears and questions, and the questions raised on the introduction of Google/the web and Wikipedia.
Hurley had done a search for commentary on Google and Wikipedia to identify how they were being talked about when they were introduced. For example in 1999 Google was still being talked about as something you may not have heard of. Hurley identified the number of workshops, advice about how to search it well, noting structural issues (such as the way in which popular pages get brought to the top, and implications of that). As I was giving frequent workshops about how to search search engines at that time I got quite excited at this point.
Hurley noticed that catastrophising that went on, and there were also debates about the issues around having one interface to multiple databases, and the impact of users not having to make so much effort to search. Hurley identified librarians seeing critical evaluation of information being less central to information literacy. Hurley referred to A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto and had found references to Wikipedia being framed as evil, not just unreliable. Hurley identified three pedagogical approaches
(1) Rejection (e.g. notices forbidding Wikipedia use; exercises designed to show Wikipedia/Google were not as good as books and journals);
(2) Reinforcing - incorporating Google/Wikipedia into existing ways of teaching (e.g. using poor websites to teach information evaluation)
(3) Revolutionising e.g. using Wikipedia's talk pages to show a process of consensus; encouraging students to edit Wikipedia entries. There were also more questionable activities involving spreading misinformation.
Hurley noted that some of the early criticisms no longer apply e.g. it indexes pdfs etc. that were originally not accessible, also the criticism that "Google doesn't give you an answer" and "Google doesn't know you like a librarian does" are no longer true (indeed the idea that Google doesn't know you raised laughter in the room). Differences to this earlier time include:
That Google/Wikipedia were more democratising - anyone can edit and create; however ChatGPT is centralising.
On Wikipedia/Google you can usually see who has written something and when; In ChatGPT the origins and authors are submerged.
There is a different user context: whereas in the early days of Google etc. librarians were the search experts, now that has changed - librarians may not be the best prompt engineers.
There is a different environmental context, with more awareness of the impact of these tools. Conclusions included - not to confuse curiosity with a mandate to teach; scope for collaborative exploration (with students) of these tools. 

This was part of a session on algorithmic literacy: the abstracts for the session are here. Unfortunately I missed most of the first two talks, but you can see the informative abstract on Algorithms, Digital Literacies and Democratic Practices: Perceptions of Academic Librarians by Maureen Constance Henninger, Hilary Yerbury and Algorithmic Literacy of Polish Students in Social Sciences and Humanities and Łukasz Iwasiński, Magdalena Krawczyk from that link above I will mention that the in the latter talk, the researchers were using Dogruel et al's(2022)  scale, and they identified that some items on the algorithm literacy scale were unclear e.g. "Humans are never involved when algorithms are used" and so they recommend reviewing these questions and adding some examples. Also the researchers felt that an algorithm literacy scale should not be restricted to considering algorithm literacy in the internet. They thought that it would be better to take the Framework catalogue of digital competencies and add items to do with algorithm literacy. You identify area of life/benefit/competency needed to achieve the benefit.
Reference: Dogruel, L., Masur P., & Joeckel, S. (2022) Development and validation of an algorithm literacy scale for internet users. Communication Methods and Measures, 16(2).
Photo by Sheila Webber window in Krakow

Visualizing Online Search Processes for Information Literacy Education #ECIL2023

The final presentation I (Sheila) will be blogging from this morning was Visualizing Online Search Processes for Information Literacy Education was presented by Luca Botturi – a presentation co-authored with Loredana Addimando, Martin Hermida and Chiara Beretta. Botturi talked about their project LOIS which had 500+ school student participants. The students were presented with scenarios, for example one where a friend is worried about eating pesto because they have heard basil causes cancer. The researchers asked participants to share their search logs, as well as recording their thoughts about the success of the search.
The researchers used visual methods so they could inspect the research stories and also because they could be useful for teaching information literacy. The visualisation includes notation for length of time doing different actions, what the actions are such as reading, searching, searching for the same word, clicking on a hit. The visualisations show that some people search for the same word again and again, others a different word each time, some spend a long time reading and never click on a hit: so the stories for the same scenario can be very different. However, in broad terms, 40% just type in a question, tinker with it, find an answer and select it. They are displayed in such a way that you can work through each search story seeing what is done.
Once the students have done these searches, they are asked to reflect on what they’ve done and they can see what others have done. The students were very satisfied with this activity: the the students with higher academic performance and those who found searching easy rated the activity higher. Concerning were those students who identified that they had learned more about searching but didn’t intend to change their behaviour.
- The researchers identified five guidelines
- There is no best online search method
- Everyone has one or two preferred search practices
- A poor search can be worse than no search
- Search tasks matter and are not all alike
- Effective online searching takes learning 

They will be sharing the plugin and the server application that they developed. The next step for them is Reflective Online Search Education (ROSE) currently starting within FNS/Weave programme with the Leibniz Institut, Germany. This will develop ways of using this search story approach, which sounds very interesting.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Art garden, Krakow