Higher Education and Assessment: What is Information Literacy
The Framework
Foregrounds conceptual understanding, not skill-building:
Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
Information Creation as a Process
Information Has Value
Research as Inquiry
Scholarship as Conversation
Searching as Strategic Exploration
This shift in focus reveals new educational priorities:
- Critical thinking
- Habits of mind
- Collaborations
- Working across disciplines
Totally changes the way we think, frame, and teach research.
- Framework for Information Literacy for Higher EducationFrom the Association for College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association. This is an in-depth look at the factors that go into discerning the reliability of a claim.
- Information Literacy at the Claremont Colleges: Engaging Critical Habits of MindDiscusses how to use information literacy education to develop critical habits of mind including: inquiry, evaluation, communication, attribution, and insight
Metaliteracy
The Framework pulls from concept of Metaliteracy: learning concerns itself with four areas of information engagement.
Behavioral: skills, competencies
Cognitive: comprehension, organization, application, evaluation
Affective: (changes in learners’ emotions or attitudes through engagement with learning activities)
Metacognitive: reflective understanding of how and why they learn
Metaliteracy in Practice by Representing multiple disciplines from a range of educational institutions, this book explores relationships among metaliteracy, digital literacy, and multimodal literacy; incorporating the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education; the metaliteracy model and emerging technologies; flexible course design and social media; students as creators of information; application of metaliteracy in specialized environments, such as nursing education; metaliteracy and institutional repositories; LibGuides as a student information creation tool; the metacognitive dimension of research-based learning; metaliteracy as empowerment in undergraduate learning outcomes; agency and the metaliterate learner; and metaliteracy, agency, and praxis.
Embedded Librarian eBooks
Embedding Librarianship in Learning Management Systems by A How-To-Do-It Manual for implementing an embedded librarianship program.
Becoming an Embedded Librarian by Offers strategies for relationship building, setting goals, and honing a teaching style; and discusses embedded librarianship and branding.
Reinventing the Library for Online Education by Offers a thorough examination of the virtual library infrastructure crucial for an online learning program, with a special look at the particular needs and responsibilities of online librarians. Also looks at the evolving relationship between higher education and copyright, and posits how educational technology will bring further changes.
Defining Information Literacy
Library profession has re-conceptualized
- information literacy
- librarians' roles in information literacy education
- Framework for Information Literacy for Higher EducationFrom the Association for College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association.
How the profession defines its educational priorities. Framework defines information literacy as:
The set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning.
Before the Framework, we had the ACRL Information Literacy Standards. It defined information literacy as:
[The skills needed to] recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.
- Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher EducationACRL's competency standards for information literacy education in higher education. ACRL seeks endorsement and promulgation of these standards from professional and accreditation associations in higher education, approved in 2000 and rescinded in 2016 and replaced by the Framework.
Information Literacy eBooks
Curriculum-Based Library Instruction by This volume describes and provides examples of librarians' varied roles in the curriculum of education programs. These roles include semester long or multi-session instructor, web-based course designer, problem-based learning facilitator, and member of a curriculum committee. In addition to describing the roles that librarians have in supporting curriculum, the book describes how to carry out those roles with sections devoted to adult learning theory, teaching methods, developing learning objectives, and working with faculty to develop curriculum. Examples of library sessions devoted to information literacy, evidence based practice, information literacy, and biomedical informatics are included.
Critical Library Instruction by A collection of articles about various ways of applying of critical pedagogy and related educational theories to library instruction.
Information Literacy Instruction That Works by Readers will find strategies and techniques for teaching college and university freshmen, community college students, students with disabilities, and those in distance learning programs.
Teaching Information Literacy Reframed by Offers more than 50 classroom-ready exercises, guiding instructors towards helping students cross each information literacy threshold.
Critical Literacy for Information Professionals by ISBN: 1783300825Covers critical literacy in relation to different user groups such as: critical literacy and mature students; physical and digital disability access in libraries; teaching critical literacy skills in a multicultural, multilingual school community; teaching media literacy; developing critical literacy skills in an online environment; and new media and critical literacy in secondary schools.
