Information Literacy

Cosponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), EDUCAUSE, and the University of Central Florida (UCF), the Students, Technology and Learning: Strategies for Success Conference (formerly the Key to Competitiveness) provides AASCU institutions with an opportunity to learn more about the next generation of students—a group with much greater expectations for the use of technology in higher education than previous generations. The event allows teams of presidents and senior institutional leaders to explore new ways of using technology to meet student expectations and more effectively serve the next generation learner.

What does it mean for students, faculty, and staff to be “net savvy”? Many are facile with music downloads, word processing, text messaging, or Web 2.0 tools, but are they really technology literate? What does it take to build a more net-savvy campus culture for students, faculty, and staff? Share your ideas, experiences, and questions in this dialogue on a topic of critical importance to the development of a community of responsible, self-directed, lifelong learners.

Do you have a program or class at your institution that needs to be refreshed and revitalized? Could you sharpen your students' critical thinking skills by incorporating active learning techniques, information literacy competencies, and fresh, new technologies? If you can answer "yes" to either of these questions, then our program can help both you and your colleagues. Come learn how we breathed new life into our old standard of instruction by collaborating through three distinctively different groups: First Year Programs, the academic library, and teaching faculty. The result was a more contemporary yet engaging learning experience for all involved.

As international culture and commerce become increasingly reliant on visual communications, visual literacy has developed into an essential skill for 21st-century college graduates. With advancements in technology and the digitizing of information, digital literacy has also grown in importance. Digital visual literacy (DVL) is the ability to critically analyze digital visual materials, create effective visual communications, and make judgments and decisions using visual representations of thoughts and ideas. These skills, which actively engage our cognitive processing of visual images, have evolved from concepts at the intersection of a range of established disciplines. This session will discuss this exciting new literacy, showcase the free materials developed under a National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education grant, and share recent feedback from instructors who have integrated these pioneering instructional modules into their courses. The discussion will benefit faculty, staff, and administrators infusing their curriculum with fresh IT skills.

Web 2.0 is redefining what and how and with whom we learn. For example, in Wikipedia, “knowledge” is constructed by negotiating compromises among various points of view. This raises numerous questions: How do we in higher education help students understand the differences between facts, opinions, and values—and how do we help them appreciate the interrelationships that create “meaning”?

As the second decade of the public Internet reveals a desire for immediate access to greater certitude, CIOs and other campus leaders have an opportunity to rethink how questions find answers that are good enough or quick enough for the context of need.

In order to evaluate student opinion as well as the impact on students of an active learning methodology of two face-to-face presentation styles, during a 50-minute session of library research skills, participants attended either a traditional presentation or a modified one, incorporating the use of the PRS. The Personal Response System is a wireless technology in which students, equipped with clickers, respond to a variety of questions posed by the librarian in the course of the presentation. Both types of sessions, offered by the same librarian, included the same research skills content.  Created for the purpose of evaluating various aspects of the library presentation, a questionnaire completed by all students was analyzed.  In the evaluation, the PRS group not only indicated a greater enjoyment of the session but found the presenter to be well organized.  The authors also discuss aspects of using clickers versus employing a traditional classroom setting.

The Information Literacy Program at Otis College is a collaboration between faculty and librarians that includes multimedia tutorials, learning objects, podcasts, and YouTube videos. This presentation will describe how the program was developed and embedded in courses, demonstrate some of the instructional technologies used, and discuss the assessment processes and results.

As information literacy and active learning principles are being incorporated into accreditation standards, the teaching of these skills is becoming a broader campus concern. This session will feature two collaborative digitization projects that exemplify best practices in visual and information literacy and technology fluency.