CONUL Teaching and Learning Seminar - Report

Naomi Van Caillie has been a Library Assistant with DIT for the past 8 months. She is a 2016 MLIS graduate from UCD with previous work experience in the public library sector in Canada. 

This was a daylong seminar in which a variety of guest speakers presented on a multitude of topics relating to Teaching and Learning in relation to libraries, librarians and the demographics we as Librarians are trying to reach and assist.  My main reason for attending was that I feel even in my position as Library Assistant there are daily opportunities for teaching and learning interactions with the students. I want to better equip myself with knowledge that will assist me in more successful and rewarding interactions with our library visitors. I want to be able to deliver information and resources to meet their unique and individual needs effectively.  I want both the students and I to always have an opportunity to engage and learn from each other.  There was so much wonderful information shared from all of the speakers. I have chosen to comment on the four that impacted me the most. You can find the PowerPoint presentations for all presenters here.

David Streatfield, Global Libraries Initiative Consultant, started the morning off by sharing with us ‘How can you tell if it is working? Evaluating the impact of educational innovations’. From this I gathered that regardless of what innovation you are creating or using to interact with your demographic, it is crucial and beneficial to be able to evaluate the impact of your services, whether the results are positive or negative; intended or accidental. He argued that we need to be looking and analysing the change(s) as a result of what we are doing also known as impact evaluation.   He describes this method as a simple logic model providing both illuminative evaluation and impact evaluation which makes up a contribution model. To put things simply the common factors are that the theory of change creates a framework for focus. We must remember that our innovations, no matter the scale, should be plausible, doable, and testable.  From this I think I am approaching my work and daily interactions with our users from different vantage point so I am better able to reflect and analyse for continued growth and improvement. 

Another stand out for me was Barry Houlihan, Archivist at NUI and CONUL Teaching & Learning Award Winner of 2016. The more Barry spoke the more intrigued I was by NUI’s, his and Dr Paul Flynn’s, innovation and success. What I took from it was that at the core of their project was the creation of a tangible experience which came to life by building a teaching plan based on schools’ perspectives and experiences. In order to bring the experience back to self and make it personal the focus was directed to hands on learning and interacting with primary resources and the students being able to answer the questions: where did it come from?, how to it get here?, what is it?, and all the while being shown tips and tricks regarding what to look for when searching for the answers to these questions. Barry made a great point about how we perceive this current generation as digital natives because they are growing up linked to digital technology. However, he cautioned us to think that perhaps they are social media natives who can navigate Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other platforms. Their use of social media platforms doesn’t necessarily make their skills transferable to the level of being a digital native. By involving the students in activities that get them interacting with primary sources the hope is to teach them invaluable skills that will lead them towards being a better-rounded researcher and digital native. 

Brendan Devlin from DIT provided us with an overview of L2L and where they were at. This solidified the knowledge I had gained from a previous L2L day long workshop I had attended. Hearing Niamh Hammel from Dundalk Institute of Technology share her personal work experience, being involved with L2L, and how she is looking forward to how engagement with this framework will help those of us starting out in the library field continue to further our skills, remain relevant in the ever changing library landscapes, and plan for our professional growth. This really resonated with me as I want to continue to grow and evolve as a Librarian and further my career.

After lunch Dr Emma Coonan, FHEA, Academic Librarian (Information and Digital Literacies), Library, University of East Anglia presented us with a zoo full of identities as she talked about ‘New Tricks? Negotiating the librarian identity’.  How we are perceived by others and how we are perceived by ourselves can be showcased by a wide variety of characteristics. She discussed multiple ‘identities’ painting elaborate pictures of different animals.  Are you a labradoodle? The fetch dog who goes and gets what is asked of them?; or the Cheshire cat, who pops up when needed and is an agent to an individual to help meet their needs whatever they may be? Or maybe you’re the platypus, the off cuts of many other animals/identities, who is flexible and able to support a large group but doesn’t have enough time to specialize because he/she covers more areas than the days of the week?  Dr Coonan was very engaging and definitely got me to thinking about myself and my own perception of myself as a Librarian. I can’t say I know who my spirit animal is just yet because I feel,  like the profession and the field, I am having to continuously evolve. 

I am so grateful for the opportunity to participate in this day. It was great to see familiar faces as well meet some new library colleagues. The day’s presenters as well as those of us that sat and absorbed reflect very much the theme of the day in as much as we are a community who have to constantly create, deliver, evaluate, restructure and deliver again. We are so lucky to be part of a library ‘family’ that is willing to share and collaborate together so not all of us have to reinvent the wheel.

For more information on CONUL Teaching and Learning check out their website

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Critical Media Literacy: Who Needs It? - Conference Review

Guest post by Sarah-Anne Kennedy, Dublin Institute of Technology. Sarah-Anne holds a BA (Hons) from the National University of Ireland Maynooth (MU) in English and History and a Masters of Library and Information Science from University College Dublin (UCD). She has been with the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) since 2006 and is currently supporting the College of Business, the School of Media and the School of Law. Sarah is interested in engaging and supporting students through blended learning and looking at new ways of bringing the Library to the student. 

The Centre for Critical Media Literacy hosted their inaugural conference Critical Media Literacy: Who Needs It? On Friday 20th October and Saturday October 21st in DIT Aungier St., Dublin. The conference was supported by DIT School of Media and the School of Multidisciplinary Technologies as well as a dedicated team of volunteer students of journalism.

I was unable to attend the opening Keynote on Friday 20th October from Richard Barbrook from the University of Westminster discussing ‘Critical Media Literacy & Digital Democracy’ with responses from Niamh Sweeney (Facebook) and Martina Chapman (Media Literacy Consultant). You can listen to a recording of the keynote and other sessions from the day on the DIT School of Media Facebook page.

The majority of proceedings took place the following day and it was a jam packed schedule with a range of topics discussed from Media Literacy (ML) education to citizen journalism to surveillance and privacy.

David Buckingham (London University) opened the day’s proceedings by giving an outline of the Media Literacy landscape in the UK. By not aligning Media Literacy (ML) and Media Education (ME), UK government policy has missed the mark. Essentially, ML policy was not part of ME policy and so was not reaching those who needed to be educated on ML essentials.
He argued that there was a focus on ‘media use’ rather than ML and that there was a disconnect across the educational landscape. David argued that there had been a “strangulation” of Media Studies and that educators were battling against policy from the government. Curriculum in UK schools was moving towards a ‘knowledge-based’ curriculum which essentially means that media studies survives but in a reduced (and easier!) form.

What do we need to tackle this? David argued that we need policy documents that align ML and ME, resources (not just textbooks), teacher training on ML, professional development networks, partnerships, research and evaluation and ME and media reform. While I would not be an expert on the ML issue in primary and secondary education in Ireland I could recognise the issues that David raised.

You can find out more about David Buckingham’s work and research on his website

Next up was Sheena Horgan talking about her involvement with MediaWise. MediaWise is a new education resource to help teach primary school children about media, advertising and fake news. The resource was developed to help media literacy education move away from only focusing on media skills development to empowerment. Sheena argued that we all have a collective responsibility when it comes to educating children -parents, the media industry, the government and educators. Librarians were not mentioned however. Why?

The next talk came from Kate Shanahan (Head of Journalism, DIT) and Róisín Boyd (School of Media, DIT) and they showcased the excellent work being carried out by DIT journalism students in delivering CLiC News. CLiC News is a free student produced rolling news service set up through collaboration between the DIT School of Journalism, Access & Civic Engagement Office (ACE) and Students Learning with Communities (SLWC). It is essentially media literacy in practice.

Clare Scully (School of Media, DIT) presented on the idea of ML usually being taught within the context of a ‘one-size fits all’ module. She argued that this is not effective when it comes to teaching students studying a range of media subjects. A module needed to be developed for media students that uses the language of the discipline and is based on pedagogical aspiration and approach. Clare argued that there was a conflation between general literacy and ML literacy problems and that the one-size fits all model goes against the aspiration of an ML module. Her research shows that students rank soft skills of academic writing etc. over critical thinking and evaluation which is opposite to how academics rank them. Ongoing development is needed and one module for all box ticking does not work.

The first break out session I attended looked at Social Science Experts and the Media. Barry Finnegan was first up to discuss Critical Media Literacy (CML) and trade agreements. He focused on TTIP and CETA and showed that despite CETA being the trade agreement that Ireland operates under there was more news coverage for TTIP. News coverage was primarily in the finance section of newspapers and the balance was pro-TTIP. Barry questioned why was it presented primarily as a finance story despite being a public interest story?

Next up were DIT researchers Joseph K. Fitzgerald and Brendan O’Rourke who are looking at the prominence of economists in Irish public discourse. They outlined how, since 1910, economists have slowly been granted authority by the media. Their research shows that economists have moved away from only governments granting authority to the media now granting that authority. Essentially moving from an academic order to a political order and now on to a media order.

Leena Ripatti-Torniainen (University of Helsinki) presented her research on public pedagogy. Leena’s research looks at public pedagogy as an approach to teaching experts to act in the political public sphere. She argues that we need to support student autonomy and judgement and that we can promote the teaching and learning of ML through acting in the public sphere.

Following Leena we had Henry Silke (UL), Maria Rieder (UL) and Hernik Theine (WU Vienna) presenting on the representation of ‘celebrity economists’ in the media, focusing on Thomas Piketty. They showcased the alarming trend of economists going unquestioned with their opinions being presented as fact. Their study looks at news coverage in four countries and how there is little disagreement with Piketty. The study uses a Corpus Linguistics methodology and alarmingly, when economists are discussed in the media words like ‘star’, ‘celebrity’ and even ‘messiah’ appear quite frequently. Looking closer to home, there is generally large agreement with Piketty across the Irish press showcasing a lack of protest and theory presented as reality.

The next break out session I attended looked at Truth or Data -Accuracy, Privacy and Surveillance at which myself and my colleague Róisín Guilfoyle also presented. Sarah Kearney (BL) opened the session looking at recent data protection cases in Ireland such as Schrems v Data Protection Commissioner which looks at the transfer of data from the EU to the US. and Digital Rights Ireland v Minister for Communication & Ors which looks at data retention and IP tracking. Sarah also spoke about the Fennelly report (March 2017) and the new General Data Protection Regulation which will come into force 25th May 2018.

Next up was Dr. Eileen Culloty (DCU) who presented on why fake news succeeds and how to oppose it. Her research looks at the online reasoning abilities of 2nd year undergraduate journalism students. Eileen used two control groups in her study, secondary school students and also secondary school students from the Centre for Talented Youth (CTYI). Eileen’s findings show that the journalism students in her study are over-reliant on heuristic principles/thinking and therefore fail to identify fake or biased websites.

Myself and my colleague, Róisín Guilfoyle (DIT) were up next and we presented on the similarities between ML and IL and that our experience matches the findings of a lot of literature and also Dr. Culloty’s (DCU), in that the majority of students lack critical thinking and evaluation skills. We also presented on the premise that our academic peers do not know that Librarians teach IL, and in particular, we teach critical thinking and evaluation. We argued that librarians and academics need to collaborate in teaching Digital Literacy based on the JISC Seven Elements model (see image). This is a term that will resonate with future students as Digital Media Literacy is now a subject on the Junior Cycle at second level and is also a DIT graduate attribute.

Courtesy of Sarah-Anne Kennedy

Our suggestions were strengthened by the next presenter, Isabelle Courtney. Isabelle has just recently finished the MLIS in DBS. Her dissertation looked at the role of information literacy in journalism education in Ireland. Her findings suggested that again there are similarities between the literacies and that collaboration is required between academics and librarians. She argued that there is a lack of awareness among media academics of the ‘teaching librarian’.

The last to present in this session was Cliodhna Pierce (DIT) whose research looks at the comparison between models of surveillance in East Germany and Northern Ireland and examining their relevance to the securitisation of today’s society. It was fascinating to see the similarities between data collection and surveillance during the past and present. Cliodhna argued that the public seem to be more concerned with surveillance over personal privacy.

The closing session focused on Journalism, Technology and the Public Sphere. Jen Hauser (DIT) presented on her research looking at amateur journalism with a focus on the coverage of the Aleppo offensive. Jen showcased how collaboration between professional journalists and amateur news coverage or footage is now commonplace. There is a new role for professionals in managing this collaboration and managing impartiality and bias that may exist in citizen journalism.

Next up was Kathryn Hayes (UL) who presented on freelance journalism in the age of social media. Kathryn argued that freelance journalism is the largest growth area in journalism. The precarious nature of the role of freelance journalists was outlined. Her findings show that younger journalists are more engaged with social media and technology to source information. They show less distrust of the medium. Older journalists rely on the older methods of interviewing people face to face. Kathryn questioned whether reliance on freelance journalists was sustainable and what are the implications for journalism?

My overall take away from this conference was the need for partnership and collaboration between librarians and academics. We all have a collective responsibility to enable students with the relevant skills to be media literate in an ever-confusing and complicated media landscape. The majority of presenters throughout the day mentioned the need for critical thinking and evaluation skills to be taught to students. There seems however, to be a complete lack of awareness among our academic peers and others that Librarians teach just that. As a profession we need to take control of how we are perceived and communicate our skills and expertise to those with which we can collaborate. Rather than waiting to be invited we can invite ourselves and ask to be involved in developing modules, programmes and curricula that supports media literacy and information literacy. We need to promote ourselves as stakeholders in this area on a national level.

One such way is getting involved with the Irish Media Literacy Network through the Broadcasting Association of Ireland (BAI). http://www.bai.ie/en/bai-launches-media-literacy-policy/

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Fake news is an Oxymoron and a LibGuide won’t cut it - review

Guest post by Siobhan McGuiness. Siobhan is part of team @uklibchat & @rudai23 for 2017. Siobhan has recently been appointed Chair of SLA Europe Digital Communications

Photo by Siobhan McGuinness 

Fake news is an Oxymoron and a LibGuide won’t cut it, was the title of Alan Carbery’s very popular talk recently held in the Royal Irish Academy. The talk was organised by the Library Association of Ireland

Alan began his inspirational talk about the many changes, good and bad, he has seen happen in Ireland over the last few years. His place in a liberal arts college in the U.S. allows him to keep abreast of issues such as homelessness, the marriage referendum, and abortion.

In a world where all these serious issues are at the forefront of every country, I have questions, for instance; What information is the next generation absorbing? How can teachers and librarians make sure these kids are getting the right information and a are getting a balanced view on these issues? Is the technology we are all using doing more harm than good? 

In a world where the President of the United States uses tweets to inform the world, tweets that are in so many ways contradictory, how are these kids meant to know what is true, false or even fake?

Teaching students today about credible sources needs to be more than about how to search numerous databases. Teaching students today should be about illustrating that credible and popular are two very different things. Get the student to think, are the authors credentials making it a credible source. In the same way, because it is a popular source is it a credible source? Each student should be given the tools to critically analyse the source and to be able to make that decision. Alan states that we could make Information Literacy meaningful and genuine by placing it within a real-world context. We can take our library tools and real world knowledge and use the two for good IL practice. 

So, let’s look at those real-world problems. Alan shows archival documents dating back to a time where the language used in policy documents surrounding the topic of immigration was discriminatory. He then points out how in today’s world with “a Muslim ban” being enforced in the U.S., how policy documents today are also showing this same discrimination. Showing this important information to students and allowing this conversation to take place is how we teach our students information literacy in the era of fake news.

However archival documents are not enough today. We also need to look at social media  tools like Twitter - a force / source of information that spreads ideas and knowledge - to see how we can use these tools to look at information relating to issues such as gender inequality. 

Alan sees that students want to talk about the issues that surround them. For example, explaining to students how the Spanish version of the White House website was removed soon after President Trump came to power shows them a live relevant information literacy topic in action. It shows a real-world issue of how one ethnic group is being treated in the U.S.Other examples like this can be found to teach students information literacy.

Again, students are challenged with technology. With filter bubbles they only see what the search engine thinks they want to see. This gives a narrow unchallenged view of the world. We all need to see all sides of an argument before we decide where we sit. If students are getting most of this information from the internet then how are they making informed decisions based on that information?     

The onus is on teachers, librarians, educators to bring the real world and critical information literacy together to teach our students how to make informed decisions about the information they are seeing and the issues surrounding their society.

Photo taken by @ibelle

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Invisible librarians have contributed to the post-truth era: a debate

Below is a verbatim account of one side of a debate which proposed that 'This house believes that invisible librarians have contributed to the post-truth era'.

Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow debater, moderator and distinguished guests I am here to convince the house that invisible librarians have contributed to the post-truth era.

When it comes to invisible librarians, I can literally say ‘I wrote the book’ which is on sale tonight at a bargain price, come and talk to me later – sales pitch over!

I feel I need to clear up a few concepts here.  Invisible meaning ‘not seen’.  Post-truth era meaning circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.  The president of Harvard University Drew Faust described it just last month as an era when “evidence, critical thinking, and analysis are pushed aside in favour of emotion and intuition as bases for action and judgment”.  Much talk of fake news has amplified the fear around a post-truth era. We are living in unprecedented times where there have been significant social and political upsets, in the USA a president was elected with no previous political experience or political position.  He is, in the words of Noam Chomsky “a showman”.  In the UK the people voted to leave the European Union.

Both upsets are linked to fake news, where the ultimate headline ‘We send the EU £350m-a-week let’s fund our NHS instead, vote leave’ was everywhere and was believed to be true.  Such headlines gave people hope and people vote for hope.  Some people and some politicians are opportunists and they have always lied and will continue to lie.  Post-truth, misinformation, disinformation and propaganda have fuelled many political campaigns, however the difference today is that the Digital Age we are living in has allowed the news and the story to be amplified.  Fake news is churned out as fast as it is retracted, but nobody reads the retractions.  One exception to this is a French newspaper, Le Canard Enchaine, whose editor refuses to make the paper digitally accessible.

The editor argued that when the Internet came along other newspapers made content available online and pushed out alternative facts only to retract them later.  They found that it was the only way to keep sales figures up, by selling fake news.  Le Canard continues to be only available in print. This is in a country which values freedom, equality and democracy.  A country which brought us the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789, a fundamental document in the history of human and civil rights with a major impact on freedom and democracy.

Last year at a health conference I heard a professor of organisational behaviour and a leadership thinker (Gianpiero Petriglieri) state the following: “Whoever controls the story, controls the people”. If we take democracy to be an acceptable and equitable way that people have a say in how they are controlled, by casting their vote and by electing a government to represent them, then what we all need to ask is “who is controlling the story?"

The story is largely controlled by the press, the media, journalists.  Who controls them?  Big business and government.  According to Forbes 15 billionaires own American's news media companies.  According to the EU Commission, Ireland is exposed to a "high risk" over its concentration of media ownership.

Professions in academia and in the press are exercised about the post-truth era.  Why?  Because it is touches our values.  What has any of this got to do with librarians?  We share values with scholarship and the press – the value of intellectual honesty – in other words - truthfulness and we have a social responsibility to uphold our values. 

“We are living in a time of universal defeat when telling the truth is a revolutionary act” (G. Orwell).  Librarians have largely been invisible and apart from the fact that it is leading to the demise of the profession, it is also leading to the distortion of the truth.  The truth is something that cuts to the core of our profession. Veritas is our raison d’être. Librarians are defenders of intellectual freedom, of rational decision making and of democratic values.  We are defenders of the truth. If we remain invisible, and if we remain neutral, arguably so will the truth.

We are invisible in the following ways: by remaining neutral, through staffless libraries, by having low social media presence and by continuing to market the ‘library’ over the ‘librarian’.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT… NEUTRALITY. There is nothing neutral about librarianship, as Wendy Newman a Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto has said ‘Librarians are anchored in values’ and our values are democratic, not neutral. She says librarians are rooted in timeless values. I agree with David Lankes, Director of the School of Library and Information Science at University of South Carolina when he says "Good librarians aren't neutral: they are principled".  The underlying principles of both journalism and librarianship are to be truthful.  According to the IFLA Code of Ethics, we have a social responsibility to society and to individuals to assist people in finding information, factual information, peer-reviewed research.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT… SOCIAL MEDIA. Many Librarians in Ireland are invisible on social media. I can count on one hand how many health librarians are on Twitter. My esteemed colleague and immediate past president of the LAI is equally invisible on Twitter. I found a Philip Cohen intern but I don’t think that was you. There is no excuse left in the book for librarians to remain invisible on Twitter, believe me I have heard them all.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT… STAFFLESS LIBRARIES. Let’s be clear that a library without any visible staff is a reading room. Equally a digital library without any visible librarians is just a gateway. The link is not being made in the general public or among the majority of library users/non-users about what it is that librarians do and the library – be it physical or digital. Our skills are largely un-communicated, misunderstood and invisible. We need new service models where the visibility of staff and staff skills are clear for all to see and to understand. It is not just our skills but our values and we need a revolutionary act to start communicating what these are.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT... MARKETING. Why we continue to market the library over the librarian is beyond me.  Certainly in the case of public libraries I can see a rationale, but not for other types of libraries. Yes I’m talking about academic libraries, yes I’m talking about special libraries, yes I’m talking about health libraries. The shift in emphasis needs to move from ‘library’ to ‘librarian’ otherwise our profession and the values that we hold high will remain invisible. We need to guide people to the truth through education and empowerment. Information literacy is one of our core skills, we need to start telling people this is what we are about. The ALA defines IL as “The ability to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information." This is where we add value, this is part of our social responsibility, this is most likely one of the reasons we became librarians in the first place. If people don’t know about what it is that we do, if they can’t see it, they won’t value it. And we want people to value the truth don’t we? And we want people to value librarians, don’t we? 

Michael Moore who brought us the film ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ said ‘I didn’t realize librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group. They are subversive.  You think they’re just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything.  They’re like plotting the revolution, man”.

Our revolution is to hold our values high, to take part in revolutionary acts, in this time of deceit and to rebel against untruths and most important of all, to be visible. 

CLOSING ARGUMENT
We need to market our skills, talk about our value, become highly visible and defend the truth.  We must empower people with the skills to critically appraise information and give them the confidence not to believe everything that they read.

We have heard about grey areas, but the truth is not grey.  It can be ugly and it can be beautiful, but it is never grey.  The truth illuminates, the truth is worth defending and upholding.  As librarians we have a unique position in society to speak the truth, to uphold the truth, to defend the truth and ultimately to control the story.

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Bursting the Filter Bubble: Pro-Truth Librarians in a Post-Truth World

Guest post by Claire McGuinness, assistant professor in the School of Information & Communication Studies, UCD.
Claire has a long-held interest in information and digital literacies, new media, and the role of the teaching librarian. In this post, she examines filter bubbles, fake news and the effect of social media in the “post-truth society” and asks whether librarians have a responsibility to their users and students to point out where the line between fact and fiction has been blurred. 

Image Source: By Brocken Inaglory via Wikimedia Commons

Depending on your perspective, the social media chickens have been either coming home to roost, or learning to soar recently. For information professionals, these are fascinating times. While the world has been contemplating the unprecedented results of the Brexit referendum in June and the recent US Presidential election, the simmering debate around the influence of social networking sites such as Facebook on the outcomes of elections and referendums has reached boiling point over the past few weeks. The outcome in both cases, which was the opposite to what was predicted by multiple polls, has led to suggestions that the polling systems seriously underestimated a number of factors, including the “power of alt-right news sources and smaller conservative sites that largely rely on Facebook to reach an audience” (Solon, 2016), and failed to take into account the deep polarisation that has been evident on social media sites, in particular. In the weeks since the US Presidential election, social media has been under the microscope, and there has been a flood of articles, polemics and opinion pieces, signalling varying degrees of concern about the apparent blurring of the lines between social media sites and traditional news channels, and the perceived effect that this has had – and may yet have - on national and global politics. Although emotions have been running high, particularly in the wake of the bitterly fought US campaign, it is helpful to sift through the hyperbole, and break down the key arguments that are shaping the discussion. What are the main issues emerging from this debate – and why do they concern us?

• Firstly, that the number of people who now consume news primarily via social media sites rather than traditional, editorialised media channels is increasing exponentially, with many turning directly to sites such as Twitter, Reddit and Facebook to keep up to date with current affairs. There does appear to be some evidence for this, although traditional channels have not been entirely jettisoned – for example, the most recent annual Reuters Institute Digital News Report found that 52% of Irish consumers now get their news from social media sites (BAI, 2016), while a Pew Research Center report on news consumption across social media platforms in 2016 found that a 62% majority of US adults also turn to social media for their news (Gottfried & Shearer, 2016). When broken down to examine specific sites, results showed that 66% of Facebook users get news on the site, while 59% of Twitter users get news on Twitter. Context is important for findings such as these – for example, the Reuters study also confirmed that TV is still the most popular news source in Ireland, while the Pew study showed that only 18% of respondents get news “often” from social media, while the demographics point to a primarily white, young and well-educated population who consume news in this way. However, caveats notwithstanding, the trend is notable and cannot be ignored.


• Secondly, that the circulation of “fake news” items on social media sites has had a disproportionate effect on the outcomes of the US election and Brexit referendum. This point has driven much of the recent media discussion, although in the wake of the US election result Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg publicly rejected the argument, referring to it as a “pretty crazy idea” (Shahani, 2016). Nonetheless, shortly after this, both Facebook and Google announced that they will be making changes to try to restrict the spread of fake news, in Facebook’s case by banning fake news sites from using its Facebook Audience Network (Murdock, 2016). While it is difficult to measure the actual effect of fake news on voter behaviour, there is certainly a lot of uncertainty and unease around this issue.


• A wider perspective is the suggestion that fact-checking and “truth” in news items circulated via social media is now considered to be less important than content which appeals to the emotions, generates “clicks,” and can be monetized. It is no coincidence that “post-truth,” which encapsulates this concept, has been declared by Oxford Dictionaries as its international word of the year (Flood, 2016), its usage having spiked during the events of 2016. In exploring the impact of this trend on journalism, Declan Lawn in the Irish Times describes the “post-factual society” not as a society where facts no longer exist, but rather “a society where they exist, but don’t matter.” This, he argues, has had a profoundly damaging effect on journalistic practice, as sticking to the facts no longer produces the impact that it used to.


• Alongside the concerns about misleading information and clickbait, is the more general sense that users of social media are shielded from content that does not chime with their own views, while links, videos and articles that reinforce their beliefs and preferences are channelled towards them in a continual stream. This is known as the Filter Bubble effect: “The more we click, like and share stuff that resonates with our own world views, the more Facebook feeds us with similar posts” (Solon, 2016). “Filter Bubble” was coined in 2011 by Eli Pariser in his book of the same name. Spurred on by concerns about the potentially reductive effects of personalised search, and predictive algorithms that customise social media content streams to satisfy user preferences (and, naturally, encourage more lucrative “clicking”), he raised a number of flags: to quote a passage from the book,
  

  “The new generation of Internet filters looks at the things you seem to like – the actual things you’ve done or the things people like you like – and tries to extrapolate. They are predictive engines, constantly creating and refining a theory of who you are, and what you’ll do and want next” (p.9).

  This, he argues, has fundamentally transformed the ways in which people consume information, as they are exposed less and less to ideas that oppose or challenge their own worldviews. Instead, through interacting only with content that reinforces their existing beliefs, they become trapped in this reverberating, digital echo chamber that serves only to strengthen their convictions, and irrevocably narrow their perspective on the world. Some media reports claim that it was this “red” and “blue” filter bubble effect that was the defining story of the US election; one piece in the Guardian newspaper in the UK even sought to investigate the effect, albeit in a spurious way, by asking five conservative-leaning and five liberal-leaning US voters to deliberately restrict their social media interactions to a stream (created by the journalists for the purpose) containing items that opposed their views (Wong, Levin & Solon, 2016). Results were predictably mixed, with some claiming more influence than others. In reality, it is a difficult claim to prove, and it also raises questions about individual agency – surely people have always “clicked” on sources that fit their worldview, and avoided others, no matter the medium? The recognised cognitive effect of confirmation bias supports this; it refers to people’s tendency to actively search out information that confirms what they already believe, and to avoid or reject information that conflicts with those beliefs. It seems that the speed and reach of social media has amplified this effect, and raised it to public consciousness in the wake of the election and the earlier referendum.

Whose responsibility?

All of these issues have inevitably turned the spotlight towards the social media companies, and what their role should be. Do they, for example, have a moral responsibility to moderate content, to check facts, and to ensure that their users are fed a balanced diet of information? This is a tricky argument, as the companies tend not to define themselves as “media organisations” in the traditional sense, but rather as technology neutral platforms, which are not bound by editorial control. Of course, the counter-argument to this is that they do, of course, already exert some form of editorial control by setting rules and standards about what is acceptable and permitted content – the recent furore over the apparent removal of breastfeeding photographs on Facebook confirms this. And even if they are eventually defined as media organisations, how then are the boundaries between blocking or removing unacceptable content, and censorship to be drawn? These are big questions, with no easy answers.

Image Source: By kropekk_pl [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

Pro-Truth Librarians

However, while these issues have been thrown into brilliant relief by the events leading up to November 8th, they are not exactly new to those of us who have been walking the information and digital literacy path for the past decade and more. We already know that the bedrock of the work that we do is the inculcation of a healthy kind of information scepticism in our students - or “crap detection,” as it is more colloquially known. Social media has been moving the goalposts since the mid-2000s, and “new” literacies such as those identified by Howard Rheingold (2010) have emerged; for example, attention; network awareness; critical consumption, amongst others. This is embedded in all of the frameworks and models that we use to inform our approach, most recently in the ACRL Framework: “Authority is Constructed and Contextual.”

As an information professional and long-time teacher of information and digital literacy, the public debate on the potential effects of social media is one of the most heart-thumping, genuinely thrilling moments in a more than a decade of working with undergraduates and future library professionals – in a strange way, it feels like a coming of age. We know this stuff. We knew what was coming down the line. We understand that education, education, education is the key. But it is also exciting because it demands that we re-appraise our role, and reflect deeply on what it is we are charged to do. It asks that we confront the issue of our responsibility towards our students in light of our growing awareness of the effects of social media – or consider whether it is our responsibility at all?

Because I am a teacher, I tend to frame these issues in terms of how I could, or should, address them in my modules. Following the US election, a story emerged about Melissa Zimdars, a communications professor in Massachusetts, who took the approach of compiling a list of misleading or questionable news organisations in a Google Doc of "False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and Satirical ‘News' Sources” to distribute to students in her communications module (Dreid, 2016). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the list was shared and quickly went viral, followed by widespread questioning of the inclusion criteria that determined the sites on the list, as well as concerns about potential legal action from the site owners. That’s one way of addressing it; a top-down approach. However, while an interesting idea, it is far from certain that maintaining a register of questionable resources can really solve this problem; for me, this is the equivalent of placing a finger in the crack in the dam. You can hold back the deluge only for so long. My instinct has always been to turn the responsibility over to the students, although I try to equip them with the tools to make reasonable judgements. Since introducing a revamped Digital Literacy module for undergraduates in 2012, I have increasingly been aware of a new tone creeping into my classes; often, I seem to find myself exhorting my students to Be Alert! See how you are being manipulated! Understand that YOU are the product! Know what clues to look for, and avoid pitfalls! Always check the facts! These exhortations are typically grounded in explorations of digital footprints, online reputation management and cybersecurity. I explain that as individuals, they must decide for themselves where they stand on these issues, and what they are willing to accept. However, to do this in a balanced way seems challenging; I frequently feel like I am searching for that fine line between preaching, paranoia and common sense. I also wonder if I am somehow overstepping the mark?

The fallout from the social media furore has also led me to look again at the concepts of critical information literacy (CIL), or critical pedagogy in library instruction, which are rooted in the broader notion of the social justice work done by librarians. CIL “aims to understand how libraries participate in systems of oppression and find ways for librarians and students to intervene upon these systems” (Tewell, 2016). Its goal is to highlight inequalities and injustices with regard to information access, to ask students to consider the ramifications of these injustices and to explore what might be done to address them. This can be powerful and transformative practice. But like the social media issues discussed above, it does also ask us to reappraise our role as teaching librarians, and to question whether this is or should be our responsibility?

While I am not sure what the answer is, I apply the same reasoning as I have always done when advocating for information literacy: If not us – then who? I would be very interested in hearing other perspectives on this. It truly is an exciting time for information professionals.

Relevant References:

BAI (2016, June 15). Over half of Irish Consumers (52%) now get their news via social media sites. Retrieved from: http://www.bai.ie/en/over-half-of-irish-consumers-52-now-get-their-news-via-social-media-sites/

Dreid, N (2016, Nov 17). Meet the professor who’s trying to help you steer clear of clickbait. Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from: http://www.chronicle.com/article/Meet-the-Professor-Who-s/238441

Lawn, D (2016, Nov 16). Journalists are helping to create a dangerous consensus. Irish Times. Retrieved from: http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/journalists-are-helping-to-create-a-dangerous-consensus-1.2868638

Solon, O. (2016, Nov 10). Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected? Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/facebook-fake-news-election-conspiracy-theories

Flood, A. (2016, Nov 15) 'Post-truth' named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/15/post-truth-named-word-of-the-year-by-oxford-dictionaries

Gottfried, J., & Shearer, E. (2016). News use across social media platforms 2016. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from: http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/05/PJ_2016.05.26_social-media-and-news_FINAL-1.pdf

Murdock, S. (2016, Nov 15). Facebook, Google Take Small Steps To Stop Spread Of Fake News. Huffington Post. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/google-facebook-fake-news-election-2016_us_582b7955e4b0aa8910bd60e3

Rheingold, H. (2010). Attention and other 21st Century Social Media Literacies. Educause. Retrieved from: https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM1050.pdf

Shahani, A. (2016, Nov 11). Zuckerberg denies fake news on Facebook had impact on the election. All Tech Considered: Tech, Culture and Connection. Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/11/501743684/zuckerberg-denies-fake-news-on-facebook-had-impact-on-the-election

Wong, J.C., Levin, S., & Solon, O. (2016, Nov 16). Bursting the Facebook bubble: we asked voters on the left and right to swap feeds. Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/16/facebook-bias-bubble-us-election-conservative-liberal-news-feed

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Three useful librarian webinars in December

2016 is finally (and mercifully if I might frankly say so) drawing to a close, and I thought it’d be a sensible idea to direct you to some forthcoming librarian webinars that might be of interest to you too.

The covered themes include in date ascending list-order below: change-managing tactics and avoiding associates stresses, introducing the ‘kitchen classroom’ in the library for the purposes of Literacy instruction in the community, and running technology classes for public library patrons.

Three Steps to Thriving in Chaos
Thursday, 1st December, 19:00 – 20:00 GMT
The turbulence of current events increases stress, drains energy and reduces productivity. In this webinar you’ll learn three essential steps for not only surviving but thriving in the chaos.
As a result of participating in this session you will:
•    Identify the three phases of change and how to manage them effectively.
•    Discover how behaviour style impacts the change process.
•    Apply three tools to increase your ability to thrive.

Culinary Literacy: A Library Recipe for Cooking Up Literacy and Community
Tuesday, 6th December, 20:00 – 21:00 GMT
Opening in 2014, the Free Library of Philadelphia's Culinary Literacy Center offered the country's first commercial-grade kitchen classroom in a library. It is revolutionizing the way Philadelphians think about food, nutrition, and literacy. The Center reaches to every corner of the community. It teaches math and science to kids through measuring and mixing, builds English language skills and nutrition education for non-native speakers, empowers adults with disabilities to cook with confidence, and much more. Hear how this innovative idea was transformed into reality through strategic community partnerships and institutional support. Learn how your library can start teaching community residents everything from butchering a goat to making a vegan stew, boosting literacy and nutritional health for all.

Technology Classes at Your Library
Wednesday, 7th December, 16:00  – 17:00 GMT
In the past three years, the Iowa City Public Library has tripled their patron involvement in technology classes taught by library staff, without increasing staff or budget. Technology is an ever changing landscape and classes are a great way to help patrons become savvier technology users. Learn how to grow interest in your library’s technology courses with strategies for assessment, marketing, and curriculum development.

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Information Literacy a Concept in Transition: a Critical Pragmatist Perspective

Guest post by Brendan Devlin,  College Librarian in DIT Kevin Street He is interested in a critical perspective of knowledge and holds that many issues in librarianship can usefully draw on the wisdom found in American pragmatist philosophy.

Introduction
I was asked to write a short summary of a presentation delivered at the DBS Library Annual Seminar on June 10th 2016.  However I believe that it is better to emphasise the framework in which this analysis was conducted. I started with the idea that philosophical resources more specifically the pragmatist perspective of John Dewey might provide a suitable lens to re-imagine the construct of Information Literacy. I started with the premise that many models of Information Literacy rely implicitly on an understanding of the subject as a “thinking subject receptive to an unchanging world”. What I offered for consideration in the presentation was John Dewey’s alternative view of the subject as an embodied subject transacting in an unfinished universe.

This restructuring of philosophy by Dewey presents a different way of understanding the mind, perception and knowledge.  This alternative perspective then allows a different model of Information Literacy to emerge.  More specifically it seeks to decentre the certainties around knowledge and to present it as something endlessly contestable. Many very fine scientists including Richard Feynman (2010) acknowledge the role of imagination in the process of questing for knowledge. Knowledge is thus viewed as constructed not found.

Contrasting different definitions of Information Literacy
It is a useful exercise to contrast two alternative definitions of Information Literacy one apparently informed by a cognitivist perspective the SCONUL model.  SCONUL offers this definition of Information Literacy:

 “Information Literate people will demonstrate an awareness of how to

 gather, use, manage, synthesise and create information and data in an

 ethical manner and will have the information skills to do so effectively”

 

If we contrast this definition with that offered by Lloyd (2006 p.182) what is absent or not significant in the SCONUL model becomes obvious. 

 

 “Information Literacy is a way of knowing, of being in the world and

interacting with it through engagement and interaction with signs,

symbols, artefacts, and from which information relevant to the

context – and thus meaning can be drawn.” 

 

Lloyd’s definition considers the subject as an embodied, transacting subject in a specific context. The tension between these alternative definitions of Information Literacy highlight what is at stake in re-describing Information Literacy premised on an embodied, transacting subject. Such a restructuring redefines the nature of mind and knowledge, both critical concepts in understanding Information Literacy.

John Dewey’s position
Dewey’s main challenge to the prevalent philosophies of his day was to contest the nature of the subject and to present a new understanding of experience or perhaps more accurately described as “educative experience”.  He offered as an alternative to the thinking person the person located within an environment with the resources of embodiment, culture and mind. What is radical about how Dewey incorporates these resources is that he understands them to be operative organically within the existential situation.

Unified situation
A situation here has a technical meaning and is usefully considered as involving an organism in an environment where there are changes that are demanding some response from the organism. This metaphor offers a radical departure from viewing the subject as a thinking subject dispassionately looking on a fixed universe. The dynamic imperative is a central motif. This has dramatic implications for epistemology described by Sykes (2004 p.21) as “…what constitutes knowledge and what it is possible to know and understand”.   Dewey’s (1896)  “Reflex Arc” article provides the codex for understanding Dewey’s entire corpus and is described in the next section. It reveals cognition as both situated, embodied and distributed.

The reflex Arc Model of engagement.
Dewey (1896) contests the reflex arc model of environmental engagement. His exploration takes the example of a child looking at a candle and reaching towards it.  The traditional understanding of this interaction is that the child sees the candle “the stimulus” and reaches towards the candle “the response”. This is the research arch model of interaction see Figure 1.1 below.

                                                          

   

Once the child reaches for the candle he is burned and this causes him to withdraw his hand. Here again the burn is understood as “stimulus” and the withdrawal of the hand as “response”.  The assumption associated with this interpretation is that the child is a passive subject responding automatically to predefined stimuli.

 

Environmental situatedness
Dewey (1896) argues that one should understand that the child is already situated and tuned into the environment. When this position is taken what is to account as a stimulus or response are determined within an overall coordination of the child in its environment. This shift in perspective means that the entire episode is unified as part of a coherent coordination which has an internal unity. It is this unity within experience that ensures that learning occurs. On the surface this article may seem to be discussing things that are trivial and obscure but provides a codex for understanding Dewey’s entire corpus.

 Implications
 However this article opens up for reappraisal the nature of the mind neither as external to the body nor to the environment. Mind and body are conceived as integrated forming a unity. Similarly the mind is conceived as an extended mind including as part of its processing capacity the material and cultural resources in the environment. Perception within this framework is a process worked out by engagement in the environment not as something received as given.  Dewey’s view of cognition as embodied and situated is echoed in the work of Harris (2015).

Conclusions
 What was urged in the presentation was that this reappraisal of subjectivity offers a boundary on what we can know and how we come to know.  It also includes a democratic imperative acknowledging that a perspective is always “a view from somewhere”. This reappraisal de-centres our understanding of knowledge not as something “out there” but as involving an interpretative and fallible process. These ideas support the notion that texts are endlessly reinvented by different readers depending on purpose and their prior experience.  These ideas offer a fruitful and challenging framework within which to reimagine the construct of Information Literacy. 

Memories – Unison

And so to join the bits and pieces   
Of experience into one
Where body mind and sense
In harmony join to work it out

 

Memories mark my body
My present way of being
My way of thinking and believing
Yet all is flux and change.

 

As an artist with my craft
I hold the elements in suspension
Permitting easy play and orchestration
Allowing the music to emerge

 

It was never about reclaiming
Memories clear and simple
But to concede that its
About the future not the past

 

Yet a future written in the past
And so I relax in memories
Soft and liquid malleable
And changeable as the flowing tides

Bibliography
Bent, M and Stubbings, R. (2011) SCONUL seven pillars of Information Literacy: Core model of higher education. Online: http://bit.ly/29b3ps4
Dewey, J. (1896) Reflex arc concept in psychology. Psychological Review 3(4), 357-370. Online: http://bit.ly/297elGU
Feynman, R. et al. (2010) Feynman the Feynman lectures on physics: the new millennium edition Vol 1: mainly mechanics, radiation, and heat. New York: Basic Books Online: http://amzn.to/29a5uEi
Harris, A (2015)   Embodied Situated Cognition: The cognitive iceberg.  Online  http://www.embodiment.org.uk/topics/cognitive_iceberg.htm  
Lloyd, A (2006) Drawing from Others: Ways of knowing about information literacy performance Paper presented at Lifelong Learning, partners, pathways and pedagogies Conference Yepoon,Queensland, 13-16 June 2006 Online:  http://acquire.cqu.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/cqu:589
Sikes. P. (2004) In Opie, C. (ed) Doing Educational Research.  London: Sage Publications Inc p. 15-33.  Online: http://bit.ly/292ZKsE

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Measuring value: the impact of information literacy and its evaluation

Guest Post by Genevieve Larkin, Assistant Librarian at Marino Institute of Education Her professional interests include information literacy & continuing professional development for librarians and educators.

Photo courtesy of Genevieve Larkin

Measuring the outcomes of information literacy education has become increasingly important for academic and research libraries as they seek to assert the value of their contributions to graduate outcomes and employability, research output and communities of practice at their institutions.  Bodies such as the ACRL have produced reports providing evidence that "collaborative instructional activities and services between the library and other campus units (e.g., writing centres, study skills and tutoring services) promote student learning and success" in measurable ways such as improved grades and student retention. But according to Research Libraries UK, “the paradox may be that that the more library services are integrated with academic activity the more difficult it will become to determine a direct relationship.” Many librarians continue to seek examples of best practice in this complex area. 

On the 4th May Birmingham City University hosted a timely and engaging conference called Measuring value: the impact of information literacy and its evaluation (known on Twitter as #BCULIBCONF which showcased some practical and inspiring ways for academic librarians to grapple with measuring the impact of the academic library on student learning. With its three overarching themes of student progression, supporting research students, and enhancing employability, the conference provided ample scope for reflecting on the difference that innovative practice in information literacy instruction can make within our organisations and how we can capture evidence of such.

The conference was held in the colourful and interesting Curzon Building - a new state-of-the-art addition to the BCU City Centre Campus. The 24,300m² Curzon Building is home to a student support hub as well as a new library, teaching and IT space, plus other student-facing facilities.

Photo courtesy of Genevieve Larkin

There were three keynote presentations which demonstrated exciting approaches taken at Edinburgh Napier University, NUI Maynooth, and the University of Bolton, as well as multiple parallel sessions offered in the morning and afternoon which forced delegates to choose between several interesting looking presentations. The morning began with Keith Walker (business librarian) and Stephen Robertson (lecturer at Edinburgh Napier Business) describing how they had collaboratively mapped digital literacy to assessment criteria and embedded bespoke library resources to module assessment guidelines within Moodle. Doing so allowed them to measure online engagement with these materials and assess correlation with improved grades.

Next up, Lorna Dodd showed how the Library at NUI Maynooth developed an information literacy framework which was strategically aligned with a new undergraduate curriculum and focused on the development of critical skills.  The Library seized opportunity to collaborate with a critical skills co-ordinator to change the way information literacy instruction was carried out so that it was tied with graduate outcomes and gave evidence of the Library’s impact on student learning.  I was impressed by how the IL framework chosen by NUIM Library blended models such as ACRL’s new framework for IL in HE and ANZIL’s framework to achieve a flexible and progressive framework with a set of ‘five key competencies for undergraduates.’

Photo courtesy of Genevieve Larkin

Photo courtesy of Genevieve Larkin

I was equally inspired by Maria Mawson from the University of Sheffield’s talk Demonstrating the value of information literacy for employability which described how the Library sought to coll aborate with other University departments in a “Join up your skills” module which derived from close scrutiny of the University’s employability strategy. It seems that successful embedding of IL tuition into curricula is often grounded in strategic policy documents such as these and undertaken collaboratively with stakeholders including career guidance services and academic skills support teams. Through a series of case studies, Mawson investigated the information literacy of graduate students who were now working and found that they sometimes lacked the skills necessary in their workplaces. She suggested that information literacy be broadened beyond academic and research skills to include concepts such as commercial awareness and other attributes which are sought after by employers.

Photo courtesy of Genevieve Larkin

I was particularly interested in how online platforms could be leveraged to support new students – so I attended Erica Swain’s presentation Measuring progress using a ‘before and after’ evaluation of online compared with face-to-face library induction. The project team at Cardiff University (which included librarians and a data analyst) gave a group of 1st year dentistry students either online or face-to-face library orientation and conducted pre and post tests measuring their attitudes towards, and knowledge of, the library. They found that the face-to-face group had a slight advantage over the online group, and Erica discussed the implications, while also pointing out the limitations of the study.

The final keynote of the day was given by Sarah Taylor from the University of Bolton and explored what usage statistics of the web-scale discovery tool Summon could tell us about patterns in how research is conducted by the average student. She argued for the broadening of the term ‘researcher’ to include anyone systematically investigating any topic and (echoing some of the other speakers) emphasised that effective information literacy instruction should go beyond academia and prepare students for other information challenges they may face in work and in life. There was much agreement that libraries need to be part of the solution instead of accidentally becoming part of the problem by providing (but not curating) multiple information resources and multiple pathways to accessing these resources.

Photo courtesy of Genevieve Larkin

The day was neatly tied together by Steve Rose (Deputy Director of Library & Learning Resources at BCU) proposing that we need to base academic library strategies in institutional strategies and link information literacy to improvements in employability, graduate attributes, and learning outcomes for students. He suggested that we pay close attention to ways we can collaborate with our alumni, academics, teaching and learning departments, research development officers and other colleagues to both improve and demonstrate our unique value and impact.

My own key take-aways from the conference were that students are strategic learners and therefore information literacy education must be timely, useful, and flexible in delivery format, and that the evaluation of library services and teaching is as important as the design and delivery stages.

See my Storify of the Conference here and download the slides here.

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Conference report - LILAC 2016; Dublin, 21st-23rd March

Guest post by Isabel Fleischmann, Dublin Dental University Hospital

LILAC is the Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference (http://www.lilacconference.com) is organised by CILIP’s Information Literacy Group.  Information literacy development and teaching is a significant part of my role as Librarian at the Dublin Dental University Hospital, so I was delighted to be lucky enough to be awarded a bursary to attend LILAC 2016 in University College Dublin.

LILAC runs a format of multiple parallel sessions, so attendees can choose from multiple sessions. Sometimes that was a straightforward choice, other times more difficult.  The majority of sessions were interactive and full of audience participation. Really enjoyable!

To begin with I chose several sessions on using games in teaching. “The students run the session: hands-off one-shots with a library game” https://blogs.uoregon.edu/annie/lilac_2016/ by Ngoc-Yen Tran, Miriam Rigby & Annie Zeidman Karpinski from the US focussed on devising the Research race for interactive, team-based learning. Like the majority of sessions this was very hands-on with groups of us playing a short version of the game (and getting prizes!), followed by developing our own game. An online treasure hunt by Catherine Radbourne from City University, London followed (https://city.adobeconnect.com/treasure). She developed the treasure hunt after the time allocated for induction for nursing and midwifery programmes had been drastically reduced and is using a story as a starting point, taking the player through various tasks designed to teach library skills. The result was very impressive and kept low-cost by using significant in-house expertise, including graphic design skills for making a cartoon and Catherine’s acting skills!

Continuing the same theme the keynote by Nicola Whitton and Alex Moseley, authors of “Using games to enhance learning and teaching”, had a whole lecture theatre playing a game during “What can play do for you?” Their way of delivering the message that game play allows for socialisation, allows for mistakes and learning from them was very impressive.

Other game focussed sessions included “Transform-IT: on the magic roundabout” discussing various ways of offering play and game based safe environments for learning and a session on developing questioning skills through comics (“Is it a bird, is it a plane?). Like some of the other innovative teaching and learning ideas, this was a specific teaching and learning requirement being met in new ways inspired by the personal interests of a Librarian, in this case comics.

Another strong theme of the conference focused on the overall information literacy offer, design and fit within the curriculum. I found those sessions very useful and applicable. It included a session on using professional standards as a basis for information literacy offerings. I’m planning to use this as part of my approach in the future as it is particularly applicable in my institution. “Exploring the need: re-examining our information skills offering” discussed identifying current information literacy offerings at DeMontford University, identifying need and re-aligning it with the curriculum. “Perceptions & understanding of the ACRL framework for information literacy” was not what I expected, discussing Librarian’s perceptions and use of the framework, rather than the application of it. I still found the discussion around the new framework and existing standards useful.

Connecting with this theme was Tuesday morning’s keynote by Char Booth from the US. Another interactive session involving the audience, Char used examples from everyday life to make us think about reflection in information skills programmes and teaching. One of the easy to implement suggestions from this session, which I’m going to implement is a simple refection form to be used after each teaching session: What worked?; What didn’t work? and What can I do better?

Other sessions included Danielle Carlock  on information seeking behaviour & e-health literacy,  “What actually happens: an ethnographic investigation of student library use” and a final keynote by James Clay focussed on a digital skills framework within organisations. While these were interesting, I found it more difficult to see the applicability to my own institution.

LILAC 2016 was a very friendly conference, easy to make contacts with colleagues from different areas and several networking events. The social event in the Chester Beatty Library, the conference dinner at the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham and lunches, tea & coffee allowed for lots of opportunities to make contact with Librarians from around the world, including former colleagues and other bursary recipient, Genevieve Larkin.

Overall, I learned a huge amount and came away with many ideas to implement. Following the conference, I have developed my first library game on search skills and information literacy and will use it for the first time this month. While I arrived at the conference particularly interested in the games and online teaching aspect, I came away with a whole new approach for structuring and approaching the total of our information literacy programme as well as simple approaches to improve my teaching practice.

Isabel was successful in applying for the Academic & Special Libaries' National and International Library Conference Bursary Scheme 2016. To learn more about this award, please visit http://www.aslibraries.com/#!conference-bursary-2015/cttn

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Peerwise: a social platform for information literacy assessment?

I use multiple choice quizzes a lot in assessing my information literacy classes with DCU Business School (an example described here). The downside of MCQ quizzes is that they’re a bit boring, they can be easy to bluff your way through and they arguably encourage (or can only assess) surface  learning (Nicol 2007 p.54). 

An interesting twist on MCQ quizzes is to instead get the students to write the questions, share them among a class and ask them to answer, rate and comment on the questions. Assessments like this have been tried for a while without tech. (Denny 2008) and for a few years there has been a free social platform, PeerWise which does all this online. 

In a recent webinar, DCU’s Eamonn Costello spoke of his own success using PeerWise:

• Students enjoy it - it can get very high participation rates. Many students surpass requirements - creating and answering extra questions because they enjoy it and find it slightly addictive. 
• It encourages a higher level of learning. Designing a question demands a clearer, deeper understanding of the topic, forcing students to “made explicit their understanding of the complexities of the subject matter” (Fellenz 2004)

Eamonn’s experiences have been shared by others: research shows strong correlations between PeerWise use and improved exam performance (Sykes 2011, Denny 2008). 

Here’s an example or how PeerWise might be used in an assessment. A lecturer might ask students to use it to:

1. answer 10 MCQs written by other students

2. write 3 MCQs of their own

Not all the questions created by students will be great - some will be poorly phrased, be unclear, or a student who wrote it might accidentally set a wrong answer as the correct one. Peerwise addresses this by also allowing  students to rate and comment on each other’s questions, so in this example the class could also be asked to:

3. rate all the questions they answer (good to bad, easy to difficult)

4. comment on 5 of them (“I think this Q might have been better if you had instead written....”, “good question - I had been unclear on that idea but answering the Q forced me to understand this. I found a good explanation from this web page...”)

Participation is anonymous among the class, but the instructor can export the data with each profile linked to an identifier (say, their student numbers) for marking. 

I'm considering using this tool for assessing library orientation for a large cohort of first year undergrad students later this year.  As far as I'm aware, Peerwise has never been used in an info. lit. library context before. 

With this in mind, I’d like to invite any subject librarians / liaison librarians / IL practitioners interested in it  (or anyone else for any reason) to play around with a test Peerwise class I’ve set up. This may inspire your to try Peerwise in your own work. If enough librarians try it out, it could become a useful shared resource - a pool of test-driven MCQs to be reused elsewhere. It’ll just take you a few seconds to register. Once you’re in you can take a look around, answer a few questions and add some yourself - I have already added a few questions to get things started. Here’s a guide to registering and getting started with it. 

Let me know what you think, either with comments below or on Twitter. Do you think it can work for an info. lit. assessment?

References

• Denny, P. et al., 2008. PeerWise. Proceeding of the fourth international workshop on Computing education research - ICER ’08, pp.51–58. Available at: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1404520.1404526.
• Fellenz, M.R., 2004. Using assessment to support higher level learning: the multiple choice item development assignment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 29(6), pp.703–719.
• Nicol, D., 2007. E‐assessment by design: using multiple‐choice tests to good effect. Journal of Further and higher Education, 31(1), pp.53-64.
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