Transcript Document

Information Literacy: more than
just a library induction
Michele Davies & Lori Havard (Library &
Information Services)
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
Outline
• What is information literacy?
• Why are information literacy skills important?
• Students’ information skills at Swansea
• Swansea’s Information Literacy Strategy
• Delivering IL at Swansea University
• A way forward
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
What is Information Literacy?
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
Everyone can search – so what’s the problem?
Overuse of Google
• Horizontal information seeking
• Navigation
• Viewing time
• Squirreling behaviour
• Only accessing full-text when
available online (ignoring print
even when it’s the only source)
•
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
Why Information Literacy is important to Swansea
• Equips students with the skills needed to search, retrieve and
evaluate information for their academic work.
• To support SU’s Learning & Teaching strategy.
• To develop research PG students.
• Aids student retention.
• To meet the requirements of educational bodies in the UK .
• To develop lifelong learning skills.
• To ensure employability in a knowledge economy.
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
Why now?
Provision of IL has been a focus of LIS for many years (user
education or information skills)
What has changed?
• Increase in numbers of overseas students (different
educational and cultural backgrounds.)
• Increase in usage of internet information – the “google
generation” and ease of “copy’n paste” (plagiarism).
• Complexity of range of electronic sources.
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
Information Literacy at Swansea
• Provision is patchy
• Delivered by LIS subject team librarians
• Some IL is embedded in the curriculum
• Some is optional
• Provision is non-existent in some sections of some schools
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
Swansea LIS Survey: IL skills
• Ten new information literacy-related questions
included in the annual LIS Satisfaction Survey which
takes place every February
• Only visible to the “UG and PG student” respondent
category. Other groups of respondent were routed past
these questions
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What % of current undergraduates do you think
attended a LIS induction at Level 1?
67%
1. 80%
2. 60%
3. 40%
33%
%
40
%
60
80
%
0%
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What % of SU students consider themselves successful in
finding information for academic assignments?
100%
1. 80%
2. 60%
3. 40%
%
0%
40
%
60
80
%
0%
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
Conclusions from Swansea’s student IL survey
• Students overestimate their ability to search for and find
scholarly information
• Take-up of IL sessions needs to be improved
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
Swansea’s Information Literacy Strategy
Dec 2006 – Director of Library & Information Services (LIS)
asked the LIS Teaching Group to write an Information Literacy
strategy.
April 2007 – draft strategy finished after much consultation and
participation between LIS subject teams, Careers etc..
June 2007 – passed by the University’s Learning and
Teaching committee as part of the L & T strategy.
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
How do we achieve the goal of making every
student information literate?
• by making IL sessions timely and relevant.
• by embedding IL in the curriculum.
• by creating content on Blackboard which can be embedded
in course modules – online tutorials, guides, links to web
resources
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
Delivering Information Literacy: a librarian’s
approach
•Demonstration and hands-on teaching of search strategies,
databases, web resources, evaluation of resources
•Using Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs to keep students
up to date with new resources and services
•Participating in Schools’ Learning & Teaching Committees
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
Case Study: Pre-registration undergraduate degree in
Nursing
• Information literacy skills needed for NMC Code of Conduct
• Close working between the library and the School of Health
Science
• Library skills embedded into the curriculum and are
mandatory
• Seven sessions spread over three year period
• Sessions concentrate on what knowledge is needed, how to
get the knowledge and evaluating the knowledge for use
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
What we can do for your students!
We can improve your students’ Information Literacy Skills by
providing classes on:
– Effective searching techniques
– Subject specific literature searching
– Bibliographic referencing
– Web searching and evaluation
– Finding specific types of literature (theses, statistics,
official publications, patents, conference papers, etc)
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
What we can do for you!
• Help with embedding information literacy into your course
• Share LIS created content with your Blackboard module
• Attend School Learning & Teaching Committee
• Advise on copyright and plagiarism
• Help your students become more information literate
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis
References
Dawes, M. et al (2005) “Sicily statement on evidence-based practice”, BMC Medical Education, 5 (1).
[Online at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/5/1]
SCONUL Information Skills Task Force (1999) Seven pillars of information literacy model, Society of
College, National & University Libraries . [Online at
http://www.sconul.ac.uk/groups/information_literacy/seven_pillars.html ]
Swansea University (2007) Information Literacy strategy, 2007-08. [Online at
http://www.swan.ac.uk/media/Media,19199,en.doc ]
University College London (UCL) CIBER Group (2008) Information behaviour of the researcher of the
future, UCL. [Online at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/resourcediscovery/googlegen.aspx]
May, M. (2004) “Google is not enough” (cartoon), Wisconsin Association of Academic Librarians
newsletter, 21 (1) [Online at www.wla.lib.wi.us/WAAL/newsletter/211.html , accessed 19.5.09]
www.swansea.ac.uk/lis