INFORMATION LITERACY  in 2007 : some reflections

Peter Godwin

 

 

When SCONUL first began work in this area, UK HE lagged behind other developed nations in articulating the concepts and in developing a strategic position on IL. However, the enthusiastic welcome accorded to the first Briefing Paper ‘Information skills in higher education’ http://www.sconul.ac.uk/groups/information_literacy/papers/Seven_pillars2.pdf  showed that the time was ripe for an examination of the issues around information skills.  The paper provided an opportunity for the profile of already extensive but largely un-trumpeted activity in the UK to be raised within the Library community and beyond. The Briefing Paper received a wholehearted welcome from SCONUL members and further afield.  Work continued, initially by means of a short term ‘Task Force’ and later through the establishment of  a SCONUL ‘Advisory Committee’. Then in 2005 the Group became the SCONUL Working Group on Information Literacy.

In the early stages, the Task Force was wary of using the ‘Information Literacy’ label already adopted in the US and Australia. When the Task Force became a fully-fledged SCONUL Advisory Committee, the environment for the adoption of the new term had become much more hospitable. Indeed, the issue now is not that a term  ‘information literacy’ might not be widely acceptable, but that all kinds of new, sometimes competing,  ‘literacies’ are now being identified – e.g. media literacy, financial, statistical, digital etc. The recent use of the term ‘e-Literacy’ in the context of ICT applications is also widespread (see, for example, the DfES e-Learning strategy  http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/e-strategy/).

 

The SCONUL Working Group remains convinced that the appropriate term is Information Literacy, and that this denotes the whole range of knowledge and skills required to function in the ‘information age’.  Practical information skills to exploit information in the range of technical formats, both print and digital, are easily identifiable. However the skills alone are insufficient without knowledge and understanding of the complex socio-economic context in which information (in all its varied manifestations) is created, manipulated, re-presented and applied in the modern world.

 

 

A model of Information Literacy

The SCONUL Task Force made a major contribution through the development of a specific model of information skills for higher education, based on seven ‘headline skills’ The model has subsequently become known as the ‘Seven Pillars’ model. The Task Force members were pleased that the seven headline skills (and accompanying diagram) was taken up by practitioners as the basis for practical pedagogic activities in a range of HE contexts, It is rewarding that the model has shown itself to be of practical assistance to those working in the area, and continues to be robust enough to do so in 2007.

 

SCONUL – developing the idea, promoting and disseminating

The model, albeit an extremely important contribution, is by no means the only significant contribution by SCONUL to Information Literacy and pedagogy. Dissemination of the ideas in the briefing paper has been a continuous thread of activity. This has happened through SCONUL-hosted meetings and through working in partnership with other agencies.  (e.g. UCISA TLIG)

 

Examples of our involvement with key IL issues include :

 

1. The ‘Generic’ or ‘Embedded’ debate

Are information skills are best developed by students as part of their subject discipline or through a generic ‘skills-based’ approach? Best practice theory tends towards ‘embedding’ : that students should receive their information literacy development as part of their subject study. Pragmatic librarians have however taken whatever opportunities present themselves, thus following multiple learning routes. Examples of every degree of ‘embeddedness’ were apparent from an informal SCONUL e-mail survey by N Whitsed, 8/2/06.

 

2. Recognising and accrediting IL

A difficulty identified early on in the work of the SCONUL group was that whilst ‘embedded’ approaches carry recognition of assessed work as an element (certainly in the better examples), ‘generic’ approaches ran the risk of being regarded as an optional ‘extra’, or be seen merely as ‘training in the use of the library’. 

The case studies in our Learning Outcomes and Information Literacy publication http://www.sconul.ac.uk/groups/information_literacy/papers/outcomes.pdf, where the University of Bradford provides examples of accredited modules at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, University of Wales, Newport shows how attempts were made to fit a generic module into students’ learning needs, and Cardiff University shows how learning outcomes can be embedded into those of subject modules.

The University of Huddersfield and some others have used Information Skills benchmarks, based on the SCONUL Seven Pillars model, which define skills at 5 levels. The issue of how to raise awareness of the importance of IL and get it acknowledged at institutional level remains.

 

 

3. One size fits all?

 

In 2002, the Open University’s short course in information literacy (IL), U120 MOSAIC (Making Sense of Information in the Connected Age), was launched.  A version of the course was used in other SCONUL universities to assess the feasibility of a re-useable shell across HE. Discussions were held within SCONUL and with Open University to see if it could be badged and made available across the sector. Meanwhile it had been customised for use in the School of Continuing Education University of Reading, and student use had led to improved levels of IL, as evidenced by student comments:

 

“before I jump in and start searching I should focus on planning the search, spend time looking at alternative ways of phrasing the question and carefully choose the resources… I also need to be confident the resources I use are objective and have a good provenance”

 

“I have also found that there are many more sources of information available to me than I realised.”

 

Regrettably, after substantial discussions the difficulties of making a shell version available across the sector via SCONUL proved too great and the project fell into abeyance. However, other initiatives like the INFORMS project  have shown that collaboration can be achieved.

 

 

4. IL in Learning & Teaching Plans

The drive towards greater explicitness in Learning and Teaching strategy articulation has led to some institutions adopting a strategic approach to skills development and/or personal development portfolio work. In some cases, active engagement with the strategies by library staff at both Head of Service level and through senior practitioners, has resulted in some distinctive strategy formulations, for example at the University of Abertay and in the Law School at Cardiff University. However, only half of those institutions responding to an informal survey in 2006 said that their Learning and Teaching strategy included explicit information literacy elements

 

 

5. An ECDL for IL?

At one stage it seemed that the exemplar of the European (later International) Computer Driving License might provide a model. The ECDL, while providing an attractive model of ‘brand recognition’ and international currency remains a sub-degree level programme despite attempts to develop an ‘advanced’ mode. 

In the international arena, there has been a move sponsored by IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations) to develop an International Information Literacy Certificate. Whilst supportive of the move, SCONUL cannot foresee swift progress toward this Certificate in the HE community in the near furure.

 

6. How to evaluate progress towards the achievement of information literacy?

In 1999 the group worked with the SCONUL Advisory Committee on Performance  Indicators to address how to measure information skills education. An instrument was devised to measure this and used at a number of workshops across the country, including University of Southampton in July 2001 and South Bank University in January 2002. The use of the instrument revealed the critical success factors which needed to be in place to ensure the best results for IL education.

See

Town, S. (2001)Welfare or wisdom, performance measurement of information skills education.Proceedings of the 4th Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services  http://www.libqual.org/documents/admin/town.pdf

 

7. Working with the Higher Education Academy

 We have worked with the HEA  : beginning with the inclusion of an outline of information literacy in the curriculum in the skills section of their website, and the provision of funding in 2005/6 for a literature review of the impact of information literacy on the student experience.  SCONUL were involved in drafting the project outline and in assessing the bids.  The project was awarded to the CILASS team at Sheffield University. Sheila Webber presented the outcomes at the 20076 LILAC Conference.  http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/lilac-2007-webber.pdf

 

Updated February 2008 by Moira Bent Moira.Bent@ncl.ac.uk