Information-literacy programmes and course curricula:
the case
for integration
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Information literacy benchmarking – international
Academic library and information centres throughout the world have
been evolving for some time into what is described as the ‘hybrid
library’. This refers to the merging of the old with the new
– the books, journals and physical space of the traditional
library combined with the vistas opened up by digital technologies
and electronic resources. In the ‘library without walls’
a user can access high-quality information at the drop of a click
either from a library computer, their office desktop, remotely from
home or anywhere else. Students have greater choice in how, when
and where to access information. In theory it should now be easier
than ever to locate and access key learning resources. Without the
necessary information-handling skills, however, students are in
general ill-equipped to exploit this amazing array of resources
effectively and productively. Recognising this ‘information
gap’, academic libraries now regard the teaching of information
skills as an integral part of their mission.
It is generally accepted in the academic-library community that
US and Australian colleges are the undoubted leaders in implementing
information-literacy courses. These colleges have also recognised
the need for the embedding of such courses into curriculum design.
Course-integrated instruction programmes are commonplace and fully
accepted in US universities. A great deal of work has also been
done to include the concept of the information-literate graduate
as a key objective in institutional strategic planning. In Australia,
Queensland University of Technology, for example, has aligned its
library-information literacy programme with overall university policy
and embedded it in institutional teaching and learning plans Webber,
2002. There is a general acceptance that the ‘generic’
programmes, while better than nothing at all, fail to make any real
impact on students. Since 1995, library staff at Sydney Institute
of Technology (SIT) have moved from the delivery of traditional
library education workshops to programmes designed to develop information
skills in students. SIT relates its programmes to specific and current
student assignments. Courses are delivered ‘within the framework
of a real information task and are designed to answer the questions
identified by the student at the time of need’.
The Big Blue project in the UK identifies a number of case studies
of information-literacy programmes on offer at UK universities,
including programmes at Cardiff, Leeds, South Bank, Aston, Sunderland
and the Open University. The latter offers an integrated, fully
online and accredited programme to all OU students, called ‘MOSAIC:
Making Sense of Information in the Connected Age’. While the
amount of individual programmes on offer is impressive, the Big
Blue project report stresses the need for a coherent national policy
on an information-literate student population. It is clear that
international educational institutions are increasingly accepting
the importance of information literacy as a fundamental basis for
academic success and lifelong learning.
Current initiatives in Irish third-level institutions
All Irish academic libraries, including DIT library, offer a variety
of ‘user education’ programmes to students and staff,
ranging from the ‘library tour’ to more specific workshops
on research in the library or using electronic resources. These
courses are traditionally stand-alone, generic and often unrelated
to specific course work. They are usually not compulsory, assessed
or evaluated and are very often not uniform or standard across courses
or types of students. Even the most supportive academic staff member
finds it difficult to allocate precious curriculum class time to
library training. Consequently, librarians are often faced with
the prospect of trying to cover everything from basic research skills
to complex search strategies across electronic databases in one
annual 60-minute session.
‘The times they are a changing’, however, and some
interesting work is being done in several Irish academic institutions.
University College Dublin’s library, in conjunction with the
Student Welfare Service and the professor of psychology, has recently
acquired HEA funding to support a research project on the teaching
of study skills, information-literacy skills and critical-thinking
skills to course tutors and demonstrators in the departments of
physics, chemistry and psychology. The project aims to show that
this type of intervention helps to retain students. The project
team are working with the academic departments to integrate these
skills into existing curricula, and the methodology proposed is
that tutors would be trained to pass these skills on to their respective
students. This is seen as possibly more effective and feasible in
terms of staff/student ratios.
In Trinity College Dublin, the library and the department of pharmacology
have received funding from the Centre for Learning Technology to
develop a programme ‘using web-based learning to provide B.Sc.
(Pharm.) students with the fundamental skills to solve drug-related
case-based problems using optimal search strategies’. The
library hopes to use the Medicines Information Retrieval (MIR) project
as a template on which to model subject-specific information skills
courses applied to other academic disciplines.
In Dublin City University a number of the information courses offered
by the library are fully embedded in course curricula, are assessed
and accredited. A course entitled ‘Effective web searching’,
for example, is delivered as part of an IT module for 150 first-year
science students. The learning outcomes for the course were set
by the librarians in collaboration with the module co-ordinator.
The assessment relates directly to the outcomes, and accounts for
approximately 20% of the overall marks for the module. Another course
on library research databases is presented as part of a second-year
chemistry module entitled ‘Visualization & validation
of laboratory data’. This too is assessed and accredited.
The library is currently reviewing its courses in collaboration
with academic staff in order to identify and agree broader information
skills learning outcomes.
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