Reports from #ckviii day 2: Focusing on students: Librarians and writing tutors working together; Lisa Hinchliffe's keynote

More from Pamela McKinney who is attending the Creating Knowledge conference in Reykjavik. Pam writes here about 2 talks:
(1) "Focusing on students: Librarians and writing tutors working together: Miritt Zisser and Bodil Moberg, Karolinska Institutet Universitetsbiblioteket, Stockholm, Sweden (Presenting authors)
"This is a Large library with 120 employees and a student body of 6000. Academic writing support has been located in the library since 2008. Students can get support with writing texts in either Swedish or English, and get support with information searching.
"They found that they were often referring students between the two different services, indicating that Students had difficultly in determining the nature of their own inquiry. So they have been experimenting with running various development sessions jointly with a librarian and an academic writing tutor, for example a plagiarism seminar and a 2 hour workshop where they attempt to collaboratively write an essay with a students to model the research and writing process. They also run events called "late night at the library" where they offer targeted support at assessment time from writing tutors and librarians. The collaboration is fruitful for identifying new ideas for activities they could do to enhance support for students, and gives both professional groups a wider understanding of students' working processes.
(2) "Lisa Hinchliffe, University of Illinois, USA, @LisaLibrarian, gave the final keynote talk.
"Lisa outlined the framework for her presentation with some questions. Firstly she asked us "are you information literate?" But not everyone in the audience raised their hands, which she said indicated that IL is a difficult concept to pin down and is due to the contextual nature of information literacy.
"Teaching isn't telling, it's about creating learning environments" this can be a library building as a space for learning as well as active teaching sessions.
"Lisa helped create the ACRL standards for libraries in higher education which sets out the 9 areas of library activity. Number 3 relates to the educational role of libraries but this is not just restricted to "just" information literacy teaching, but also how libraries can facilitate lifelong learning. Lisa challenged us to produce our own definitions of IL before going on to discuss the unfolding of formal definitions of IL. Christine Bruce challenged the idea that there is one view of IL with her work on the seven faces or conceptions of information literacy.
"The Prague declaration tied IL to the information society and lifelong learning, and this was extended in the Moscow declaration on IL. Is there a right way to be information literate? Given the situated nature of information needs and information behaviour this is difficult to answer positively. "Many students in the us take their entire college degree on their phone, but do they therefore have access to the right information. We like to think that information is positive and empowering but actually there are times when information is challenging and upsetting. Some of us deliberately choose to reject information, and this was one of the findings of Kondwani Wella in his research on sero-discordant couples in Malawi. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/10743/
"Lisa advocates information literacy as a way of life, to support lifelong learning."
Thanks again to Pam for her reports from the conference!
Photo by Pam McKinney: Street art in Reykjavik, Iceland, June 2016

Reports from #ckviii day 2: Partners in information literacy: The research mentor program at UNH

Pamela McKinney continues her reports from the Creating Knowledge conference. Pam writes:
"Partners in information literacy: The research mentor program at UNH: Ann Donahue, Kim Donovan, and Carolyn Gamtso, University of New Hampshire, Manchester, United States of America (presenting authors)
"The Research mentor programme began in 2002 and is a collaboration between the library and the Centre for Academic Enrichment. They make extensive use of paid peer tutors, who are trained in writing, research and how to support learning in HE. The library also then offers training in IL, as they relate to the information that tutors might need in a one to one appointment with a tutee. They use the ACRL framework to provide a conceptual and theoretical framework for the IL classes.
"The Boston marathon bombing is used as a stimulus for discussion about information sources and information quality, and this develops knowledge of the "scholarship as conversation" frame.

The presenters have published extensively about their activities and the bibliography can be seen in the photo [taken by Pam of the slide at the conference, click on it to see larger size]."

The references include this open access article:
Donahue, A. (2015) Charting Success: Using Practical Measures to Assess Information Literacy Skills in the First-Year Writing Course. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 10(2). https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/24183
Photos by Pam McKinney: Conference food, and conference slide

Reports from #ckviii day 2: Implementing Team Based Learning in an information literacy course

More from Pamela McKinney at the Creating Knowledge conference in Reykjavik! Pam writes:
"Implementing Team Based Learning in an information literacy course: Dr. Marijn Post (Presenting author), Marja Duizendstraal, Marian Van Harmelen, and Renée De Waal, Wageningen UR, Wageningen, Netherlands
"Marijn identified the challenges in motivating students to improve their IL capabilities. She heard about the team-based learning at the Lilac conference in 2014 (I also went to this session!) TBL for Il teaching has a small research evidence base, however there have been publications looking at the practical application of TBL for IL. Marijn introduced the TBL model which is available at http://www.teambasedlearning.org and outlined how they implemented TBL with 1st year students in nutrition and health.
"Students did really like using the scratch card! I remember enjoying this part of the LILAC workshop session, showing that everyone likes a gimmick! The method features lots of peer discussion and also open discussion with the tutor."
"The implementation was evaluated through student feedback and a statistical analysis of students exam results to see if their grades were higher than in the previous year. The findings were that students did score higher in their exam, and that they reported spending more time than usual preparing for the class and found the individual elements of the TBL model useful for supporting their learning. Overall the librarians thought that students were more engaged and active in the IL classes."
Photo by Pam McKinney: mossy rocks at the Blue Lagoon, Iceland

Report from #ckviii day 1!

My colleague Pam McKinney is supplying me with reports and pictures from the Creating Knowledge conference in Reykjavik. Here's her report on day 1!

"It is really exciting to be here in Reykjavik for the 9th nordinfolit information literacy conference. The theme of the conference is Practices, goals and visions for information literacy in higher education, and there is a truly international set of delegates and presenters a and I'm really proud to be representing the university of Sheffield information school. The opening keynote was given by Anneke Dirkx from Leiden University library in the Netherlands. Anneke gave a critical overview of the ACRL information literacy standards, which have widely used in the Netherlands, the new ACRL IL framework, which is still in development. The new framework reflect changing conceptions of information literacy, but universities are still determining if the framework will be as useful for them as it is more conceptual and less practical. She then went on to look at the SCONUL seven pillars model and how this has been mapped onto the vitae researcher development framework. This framework is more popular with the research led institutions in the Netherlands as it speaks to them from a researcher standpoint but in more practically oriented institutions it is less popular. It was interesting to reflect on the differing benefits and challenges of applying these models and frameworks in different contexts, and hear how they can be applied in a practical way."

"Employing students as "peer inquiry specialists" at UCLA was the focus of the presentation from Danielle Salomon, Julia Glassman and Simon Lee. It was interesting how much their positive experience of employing slightly higher level students to support the IL development of new students mirrored the experiences of project leaders in the CILASS projects (Centre for Inquiry Based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences). They also spoke about The need for librarians to work in partnership not just with academics but also other professional groups in the university and many presentations from Gothenberg university, University College Norway, Copenhagen Business School and University of Alaska Anchorage reflected this theme. It seems that these collaborations are key to embedding IL in students' learning experiences and in making IL an integral part of curricula.

"The second keynote speaker was Alison Head from the University of Washington who gave an overview of the project information literacy research that has taken place in the US over the last 9 years. One of the striking features for me about Alison's presentation was the finding that students seem fairly confident with searching for information, but struggle with defining and narrowing a topic in order to start a search. This then needs to be addressed with IL teaching and reflects a change in emphasis from traditional approaches."
Pam has already sent me a few more reports, so I will post more from her today and tomorrow
Photos by Pam McKinney: Icelandic water, and the conference venue, June 2016

Teaching the next generation of Information Literacy educators: pedagogy and learning #ckviii

My colleague Pamela McKinney is attending the 8th Creating Knowledge conference, taking place 2-3 June 2016, in Reykjavík, Iceland. She is presenting a paper today, co-authored with me, Teaching the next generation of Information Literacy educators: pedagogy and learning, which I have embedded below. She may also provide me with reports on the conference for this blog! the hashtag for following the conference is #ckviii

Teaching the next generation of Information Literacy educators: pedagogy and learning from Sheila Webber