Information literacy - the link between secondary and tertiary education project

The Information literacy skills - the link between secondary and tertiary education project is an innovative national pilot to develop an information literacy framework with secondary and tertiary partners which, at the end of the project, can be rolled out to other participants. It will aim to produce secondary school leavers with a skill set which further and higher education can recognise and develop or which can be applied to the world of work directly.

Project Objectives & Outcomes

Specific objectives

1. Focus groups will be held with first year students at GCU to identify what information literacy skills, if any they bring to university
2. Interviews will be held with university subject librarians to identify what information literacy skills, if any, they believe new students bring from secondary and or further education
3. Working with partners identified information literacy skills will be converted to an information literacy framework extending from secondary into higher education
4. The developed framework will be piloted and tested with secondary and tertiary participants
5. Barriers to and constraints on the development of a national information literacy framework will be identified
6. The link between information literacy, progression and retention and the employability agenda will be further tested to explore whether information literacy supports these agendas
7. The project will contribute to the university's employability and development agenda and contribute to the development of GCU's IL training strategy into an integrated strategy which combines ICT and IL skills.

Outcomes

1. to developed a viable, tested and piloted draft framework
2. pilot model of higher education’s understanding of current school information literacy skills.
3. contribute to curriculum development in Scotland and to the teaching and learning of information literacy skills within education
4. contribution to the understanding of the role of information literacy in the progression/retention and employability agendas.
5. creation of expertise which can be rolled out further in secondary and tertiary sectors
6. contribution to the development of the secondary/tertiary interface by encouraging partnership activity
7. contribute to information literacy research within tertiary and secondary education
8. an input to the development of GCU's current ICT strategy to include IL training.

Project Timescale

October 2004 - October 2005

John Crawford & Christine Irving