By Diane Smith
Information literacy differs from other education initiatives such as computer literacy, media literacy, critical literacy, cultural literacy, and across the curriculum programs like writing, research, and critical thinking. Although information literacy incorporates aspects of all of these programs, it should not be misperceived as being synonymous with these efforts.
Information literacy activities and exercises develop skills and offer strategies for managing, coping, and benefiting from ever increasing amounts of available and accessible data. They encourage and support the information user's ability to nurture efficient and effective methods of organizing and manipulating available data for purposeful application.
In the Progress Report on Information Literacy from the American Library Association (1998), considers information literacy in relation to today's business world which is of particular interest to community colleges.
The workplace of the present and future demands a new kind of worker. In a global marketplace, data is dispatched in picoseconds and gigabits, and this deluge of information must be sorted, evaluated, and applied. When confronted by such an overload of information, most workers today tend to take the first or most easily accessed information-without any concern for the quality of that information. As a result, such poorly trained workers are costing businesses billions of dollars annually in low productivity, accidents, absenteeism, and poor product quality. There is no question about it: for today's and tomorrow's workers, the workplace is going through cataclysmic changes that very few will be prepared to participate in successfully and productively unless they are information literate. (Breivik, Progress Report..., pg. 10)
The community college librarian and faculty collaboration is the bridge making information literacy initiatives possible. Community colleges have long been recognized as the arena where true investigation and innovation of education initiatives take place. Information literacy activities are an excellent example of how quality is enhanced by a willingness to adapt to change. The challenge is in discovering how to embrace the changes the advances in technology continue to bring to teaching and learning while meeting the needs of educators and students along the way.
The teaching and learning paradigm is not what it was and it is not yet what it will be. What was the rule is now the exception. Faculty members who are considered repositories of knowledge delivering their messages via the traditional lecture method are getting harder and harder to find. Libraries used as storehouses staffed with custodians charged with gathering and caring for printed materials are things of the recent but already distant past.
Community colleges are recognizing as its students and the society that ultimately employs them changes, so must they. The Department of Education, the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology, and others promote and support the idea of librarians working with faculty to design and deliver instruction that incorporates the new information sources and technologies. Enough research and application surveys are available to help educators, faculty, and librarians to apply to teaching and learning the best of what is being made available via electronic means.
One of the main advantages of the new technologies, for example, is connectivity to the Internet and ready access to the World Wide Web. Its potential to incorporate current information, while not necessary to some coursework but essential to most, is invaluable in terms of addressing the problem of teaching from outdated textbooks on topics relating to current events. Real-world data adds an element of immediacy and practicability to coursework that does much to address engaging and motivating the community college adult learner. Across the curriculum from law, the social sciences, medicine, physics, and music to mathematics, language, and literature, incorporating timely materials into lessons plans enhances the level of delivery and response.
Over the past several years, the BHCC library established and continues to develop a workshop program based on the information literacy objectives. Faculty members collaborate with librarians to develop course related resource based assignments incorporating paper and electronic sources to varying degrees moving the students beyond the textbook and classroom experience. Faculty members see the changes technology brings to the library and work with librarians to make the new and full range of alternative resources and access methods meaningful to students.
A collabrorative assignment designed and carried out in two class periods in the Spring 1999 semester involved the English As A Second Language Department and the library at BHCC. It is one of many examples demostrating the positive effects of such synergistic relationship building. The course instructor prepared the class a week before the library sessions were to be held by familiarizing the students with the assignment which would be due following their second library session.
One of many examples that demonstrated the positive effects of such synergistic relationship building was carried out in two class periods in the Spring of 1999. The collaborative assignment involved the English as a Second Language Department and the library at BHCC. The course instructor and the library instructor agreed on an assignment theme and instruction method, designed an assignment to meet the learning objectives and the level of the students. The course instructor prepared the class a week before the library sessions were to be held by familiarizing the students with the outcome goals of the assignment which would bbe due following their second library session. The library instructor prepared study aid sheets and a brief PowerPoint presentation to communicate the parameters of the library session activities. Materials referred to web files designed to support the exercise. In the first session, students were asked to think in concrete terms about how library materials related to their individual areas of interest. They were asked to consider how current newspaper and magazine articles might be especially useful given that they can be retrieved by registered BHCC students from any PC connected to the Internet. Accessing newspapers from around the world via the World Wide Web simplifies checking out native language publications as well as practicing their English by reading publications they've identified for themselves as being particularly interesting and credible sources of information. In both the first session and the follow-up meeting, each student decided upon and shared a primary subject to investigate based upon their individual academic interests and goals. Using a list of general Library of Congress subject classifications, rather than the online catalog, the students moved out into the physical environment of the library to identify shelf areas relating to the their stated interests. This ensured students were exposed to and experienced with using both paper and electronic resources to complete their assignment. The objectives students met over the course of the collaborative project included: increased awareness of library holdings as they relate to each student's specific area of interest, how to access the library from any computer connected to the Internet, increased familiarity with the rules of the library, how to locate specific online materials including native language newspapers and recommended practice reading lists, how to use the electronic equipment in the library and determine the value of databases and print resources located in the library in terms of parameters stated in course assignments.
Integrating library/Internet research based assignments into coursework across the curriculum is most effective using a constructivist rather than a didactic teaching methodology. Library tours offering the more traditional orientation to the facility and its resources in relation to course related disciplines are being replaced by specific, assignment based workshop sessions designed to engage the learner. The following chart highlights the cornerstone of the traditional didactic approach to teaching alongside the learner classroom aproach of the contructivist method.
| Didactic | Constructivist |
|---|---|
| Student as passive participant | Student as active participant |
| Teacher as sage | Teacher as guide |
| Little or no student choice | Significant student choice |
| Part-to-whole | Whole-to-part |
| Skills taught in isolation | Skills taught in a relevant context |
(Adapted from Abrams 1998, p. 399)
The constructivist approach is learner centered, active, moves from the whole to the part, non-linear and the skills are employed in a relevant context. The library workshop program provides a structured, predictable opportunity for the course instructor to work resource based assignments into the syllabus and relate the library activities in meaningful ways to include grading and attempts at student assessment. Faculty members do not turn over valuable classroom time for isolated library sessions related to but disconnected from actual coursework. Instead, they collaborate with librarians to develop information and research assignments that provide students with experience in becoming more self-directed information seekers and managers. Instead of parroting back pre-selected details, students approach the library or the virtual library that offers a range of answers and relevant information and encourages them to find their own ways to answers appropriate to their tasks.
Rise Smith(1997) wrote that academic librarians cannot hope to contribute to creating a "learning environments in whic students can become independent learners; to integrate information literacy thourhgout the curriculum; and to advocate for a new curriculum that encompasses information literacy " without the cooperation and collaborative efforts of the faculty.
The workshop program at BHCC is the vehicle by which faculty and librarians work together to develop and integrate information literacy into the curriculum without adding to the already overburdened existing workloads. The program is supported by a library generated web page including an Instruction section with support materials for class related library/Internet assignments. A link from the Instruction page to the Faculty Workshop offerings leads to a file titled Information Literacy with links to this paper, related bibliographic materials, samples of information literacy tools and methods.
BHCC librarians do not pull off into a corner and develop exercises and lecture type presentations separate from their audiences. Instead the library workshop program provides them with an opportunity to model the very skills of information literacy, collaboration, and constructivist techniques they are teaching by customizing workshop materials to meet the changing course and individual class needs as faculty members are ready to implement them.
A separate initiative, in keeping with the institution's goals relating to student learning, technology, flexibility, and academic quality is Information in the Digital Age , a three credit course developed by the Public Service Librarian, Med. Instructional Design, and sponsored by the English Department. The course will be ready for delivery in the Fall of 1999 as an experimental special topic offering. The Public Service Librarian will teach the class in the Division of Continuing Education for several semesters both as a web based course and in the more traditional classroom setting. Careful documentation will be kept as a basis for analysis comparing and contrasting the strengths and weaknesses, positives and negatives of both. A cost analysis and controlled assessment of student learning in both delivery mediums will be generated as a means of quantitative and qualitative measurement.
The institution's commitment to the information literacy initiative ensures that BHCC will be in position to focus and refocus as the need for change and adaptation present themselves. Initiatives incorporating the new technologies and alternative approaches to working with learners make it imperative to coordinate efforts locally, across the state, nationally and internationally. As institution efforts progress in the area of distance education, the library workshop program, library web page, the three credit information, and overall information literacy efforts ensures continuity of resource support for both students and faculty.
Awareness that strong national and state initiatives are underway in K-12 (Eisenberg, The Big 6..., pg. 15+) and four year institutions (NEBIC/ACRL, Information Literacy... ) have and will continue to have increasing degrees of influence on the students passing through the community college system. Grades and transfer agreements won't always be enough.
For example, the University of Massachusetts Information Literacy Project is a five-campus library effort that details what the four year public institutions in Massachusetts plan to move toward to address the changes in education relating to technology and information. BHCC students who expect to transfer to four year institutions to continue their studies will most likely be tested at their selected schools to measure information competencies. Levels of competencies will be based on an agreed upon research taxonomy (Stripling, Brainstorms and...) including fact finding, asking questions, organizing questions, evaluating/deliberating, integrating/concluding, and conceptualizing. Similarly, BHCC students going directly to a job, will be equally challenged by similar means in the Information Age workplace.
To properly prepare our students, information literacy theory and methods need to reach across the curriculum addressing new and evolving means and methods of dealing with the information explosion.
Last updated July 26,1999
Last reviewed February 28,2000