Looking forward to our #FestivIL panel! The UK agenda for Information Literacy Research #FOILResearch

I had a great zoom call this morning (how often can you say that!) with fellow members of FOIL: Forum on Information Literacy, a collaboration of academic researchers based at UK institutions, working our initial draft of a research agenda for Information Literacy in the United Kingdom. This will be the topic for our panel session at FestivIL by LILAC (if you have a ticket - they are now sold out - our session is at 11am UK time on 7 July 2021 - the programme is here).

I am chairing the panel, and the other FOIL members, who will form the panel on the 7 July, are: Dr Pam McKinney (a colleague in the Information School, University of Sheffield; Professor Annemaree Lloyd, Dr Alison Hicks and Dr Charlie Inskip from University College London, Bill Johnston from University of Strathclyde, Dr Drew Whitworth from Manchester Institute of Education, Manchester University, and Dr Geoff Walton from Manchester Metropolitan University.
We are putting together a document with position statements and ideas on the focus for IL research in the UK, and aim to collaborate with others to develop it further. I will be posting more about this in the future!

The use of Web 2.0 tools to teach information literacy in the UK university library context #FOILresearch #GlobalMILweek

 

This is my final blog post from the second FOIL webinar , entitled Masters’ Class: Emerging Voices in Media & Information Literacy Research. The final presentation was: William Shire (working at Magdalene College, Oxford and dissertation submitted to University of Sheffield): The use of Web 2.0 tools to teach information literacy in the UK university library context 

Shire's research questions included finding out what Web 2.0 tools were being used, why people were using them, whether they were connected with pedagogy and how they perceived the tools.  He gathered 110 questionnaires from academic librarians and did three follow up interviews. Librarians were using a wide variety of tools, with Virtual Learning Environments, Libguides and quizes coming up most frequently. In terms of the intended use, improving student engagement was more frequently mentioned, closely followed by course delivery. When examining the link with pedagogy, the research revealed that some tools were used more intrumentally (e.g. for advertising) but many were using them in a more complex way: "79% use tools for student engagement, 48% to enable students to share information with the teacher" and the qualitative research revealed constructivist approaches.

A small minority of the respondents did not find Web 2.0 tools useful and did not use them, but the majority found them "useful" or "very useful" (and responding in this way correlated with reporting use of more Web 2.0 tools, in the earlier question). Some respondents said they would like to explore more use of Web 2.0 tools, but did not have time/ management support for this exploration. Shire finished by talking about the ways that his own library had used many more of these tools for the online delivery of services, induction etc. in the current pandemic.

 

The place and role of workplace information literacy in a corporate environment #FOILresearch #GlobalMILweek

 More blogging on the second FOIL webinar , entitled Masters’ Class: Emerging Voices in Media & Information Literacy Research, hosted by Dr Drew Whitworth. The second presentation was:

 - Tsveta Rafaylova (working at RSM UK, dissertation submitted to University College London): The place and role of workplace information literacy in a corporate environment: exploring the information literacy capabilities of knowledge workers in a professional services firm  

She started by explaining her motivation for the research, wanting to focus on the less-studied workplace context and being encouraged to focus on her own workplace. Her research question was: what does Information Literacy look like for knowledge workers in a tax and accounting firm? She focused on workers in the tax faculty, and used Lloyd's 2017 IL model. She got 149 questionnaires returned (20% of those workers) and did four interviews. Useful in recruiting responses was the presentation of the research as a collaboration between the Information Department and the tax Knowledge Manager. The findings were shared with the tax faculty afterwards. Rafaylova identified some limitations of the research (e.g. that is was mainly descriptive) but interesting findings emegred. The first finding was the social processing of information, with junior colleagues reaching out to colleagues more than senior colleagues did. Information processing emerged as a shared team activity. The second set of finding related to challenges and barriers. These did not seem attached to particular to job roles, but were specific to the tax work context. Challenges included assessing internal information and finding andd applying external information. Because tax work involves interpretation and judgement, just finding the information is not the end of the story, it has to be combined with the worker's knowledge and applied to the specific problem. The process of acquiring knowhow and sharing and guiding colleagues has become more difficult in a working-from-home situation. One of the recommendations was to focus more on the IL of junior tax employees.

Approaches to Integrating Media Literacy in the K-12 Curriculum: The Case of Qatar #FOILresearch #GlobalMILweek

The second free webinar that the University of Sheffield Information School (my department) was involved with for Global Media and Information Literacy was today, entitled Masters’ Class: Emerging Voices in Media & Information Literacy Research. This was hosted by Dr Drew Whitworth (University of Manchester). This session was another event organised by the Forum on Information Literacy (FOIL), which is committed to sharing Information Literacy research and providing opportunities for new researchers to participate. I'll blog a little bit about each of the presentations. The first was:

 - Dona Fernandes (working at Hamid Bin Khalifa University, dissertation submitted to University of Manchester): Approaches to Integrating Media Literacy in the K-12 Curriculum: The Case of Qatar  

She started with an introduction to Qatar and the schools (K12) sector. There are a range of curricula in independent and private schools, catering to the different nationalities in the student body. Fernandes presented a timeline of Media Literacy in Qatar, relating it to other developments in education, politics (e.g. the opening and closure of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom & Doha News, issues to do with fake news) and outlined her conceptual frameworks e.g. aligning with local interests. Fernandes' research questions focused on the challenges to developing media literacy in the school curriculum and she explored them by analysing the literature. She identified the overarching challenges as. The first was lack of media freedom (although by itself it does not enable media literacy (ML) education) - from that point of view it is important, therefore not to import unrealistic Western models of ML curricula. The second challenge was an absence of national policy for ML, linked to the third challenge, a lack of multilateral colaboration in the region. The fourth challenge was a lack of technical training opportunities, including the contextual ML skills of being able to navigate the media landscape of Qatar without breaking the laws. In her final slide, Fernandes presented a diagram linking the conceptual framework and these challenges.