Information Literacy & CILIP Professional Knowledge and Skills Base

Have you looked at the CILIP new Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB) ? If not then it is worth a look. It covers a variety of knowledge and skills including Literacies and Learning which incorporates information literacy. I thought it would be useful to share what is in this area / section particularly those relevant to information literacy and our own CPD.

Literacies and Learning
Supporting users and teaching them how to work independently. Incorporates information literacy, reading literacy, digital literacy and learning and teaching skills, and includes reader development and training users.

8.1 Information literacy - Knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner.

8.2 Digital literacy - Appreciating the set of attitudes, understanding and skills needed to find, communicate and use information effectively in a variety of media and formats.

8.5 Frameworks and curricula for education and training  - An understanding of these aspects relevant for any particular environment or user group.

8.6 Teaching and training skills - Understanding and apply skills for effective teaching and training; awareness of how people learn and understanding of the learning experience, design and deliver a range of learning activities for specific audiences/users; undertake assessment and give feedback; evaluate experiences.

8.6 Supporting users - Helping users to find the information they need; help them to appreciate, understand and evaluate information/resources and enable then to help themselves in future

So how do you rate against these basic, good, comprehensive or advanced?  I think the teaching and training skills is an area that we need more training in.

I’m currently involved in some CILIP CPD Market Research Survey about their training offer linked to the PKSB. If you would like to have your say then the survey is at http://www2.napier.ac.uk/UltimateSurvey/Surveys/TakeSurvey.aspx?surveyid=1989 It is open until 9am Monday 25^th March.

Two information literacy resources

Notification from Mark Hepworth re two publications that he thinks should be useful for people who do information literacy training.

1.     The first is a book I published in collaboration with Geoff Walton. This is called Teaching Information Literacy for Inquiry Based Learning. This has recently become available electronically and can be found at: http://www.woodheadpublishing.com/en/book.aspx?bookID=1830&ChandosTitle=1

Unfortunately it is not open access

The book is aimed at teachers of information literacy (encompassing, to an extent, media literacy). The book is structured into two parts.

a)     The first half of the book gives the theoretical pedagogical knowledge that a teacher or librarian needs to know to teach information literacy; common knowledge for many teachers, but here applied to the teaching information literacy which is new.

b)    The second part is a practical guide to planning lessons to teach information literacy, including lesson plans and learning outcomes – some further work would need to be done to integrate these into different subject areas and relate to levels of information literacy.

2.     I would also like to alert people to a publication, freely available via Open Access. This identifies the challenges associated with developing information literate, independent learners and building research capacity in Higher Education. It also proposes an institutional strategy that  could be applied to help ensure that this takes place.

It is based on research I did last year in Africa, working with the University of Botswana, the University of Zambia and Mzuzu University in Malawi. The work was funded by the Institute of Development Studies and done in collaboration with Siobhan Duvigneau, Information Literacy Manager, British Library for Development Studies at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton, as well as people at the three universities who contributed to the research design and enabled access to academics, librarians and academic support staff.

Although aimed at providers of higher education I think the principles are relevant to secondary education – specifically the need to build the capabilities of staff (both in terms of appropriate pedagogy and knowledge of information literacy) and also the infrastructure that supports IL and Media and Information Literacy capacity building. This can be found at:

http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/123456789/2301?show=full

I would appreciate any comments on these two works and more than happy to get into discussion.

A collection of Information Literacy (IL) Resources from around the world is now available on UNESCO’s website

© UNESCO

A collection of Information Literacy (IL) Resources from around the world is now available on UNESCO’s website in e-Pub and PDF formats. The publication titled “Overview of Information Literacy Resource Worldwide” is divided into 42 language lists and includes selected resources – from websites, books, journals and other kinds of publications – that were provided by contributors from different countries and institutions and compiled by Dr Forest Woody Horton Jr.

I haven't had time to look at this yet but it sounds good.

Dundee College's Literacy Information Skills Project

At the recent CoP meeting, I gave a short presentation on the Literacy Skills Project run at Dundee College. Library staff work with the Special Programmes* Curriculum Manager to devise a 12 week course improving basic literacy and numeracy skills. The focus was on improving these basic skills for learning, life and work - pillars of Scotland's new Curriculum for Excellence which is currently being implemented for all age groups.

The activities include:

• QR code treasure hunt using iPads (incorporating library induction)
• How to stay safe online
• Ways to find out information - online and hard copy - and how to judge if it's trustworthy and relevant
• Google Maps session
• Simulated shop where students select the best offers and practice using money
• Working on a joint project like a book of poems or recipes to improve computer skills (particularly in Microsoft Office), team working and interpersonal skills
• Creating comic strip library user guide, available in all our libraries

At present the course is College certificated, though the bank of materials exists for all students of the College. The material is held on the Dundee College virtual learning environment (VLE) Moodle which promotes inclusion within the College, as all learning and teaching materials are held here.

Click here to see the comic strip user guide, please feel free to contact me with any questions.

a.mawhirt@dundeecollege.ac.uk

*The Special Programmes groups are learners with additional learning and behaviour difficulties. These students will often have a carer or support worker and will normally display below average social and intellectual development for their age group. This makes them some of the most challenging and rewarding groups to work with, and they are some of the College's best library users.

Public Library - health information literacy activities

I'm looking for examples of health information literacy activities in Public Libraries for a book chapter that I'm writing.

Much of the reported public library activities however seem to center on the provision of health information in the form of books, leaflets and bookmarked reliable health websites (such as NHS Choices and NHS Informs, and schemes such as Books on Prescription.

There may be information literacy activities within the provision offered but it seems to be implicit rather than explicit.

Does anyone offer or know of any activities that offer explicit information literacy activities either with a health element or as part of the health information service?

Thanks

Christine Irving

Update on Friday, February 22, 2013 at 4:44PM by Christine Irving

Thank you to everyone that responded to my enquiry. The information has helped me finish my chapter. 

It is good to see so much engagement in health information and some partnership working with the Health profession but disappointing that there is not more emphasis on the health information literacy skills of the public.