Information Literacy: International Perspectives 9783598440946, 9783598220371

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International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions Fédération Internationale des Associations de Bibliothécaires et des Bibliothèques Internationaler Verband der bibliothekarischen Vereine und Institutionen Международная Федерация Библиотечных Ассоциаций и Учреждений Federación Internacional de Asociaciones de Bibliotecarios y Bibliotecas

About IFLA

www.ifla.org

IFLA (The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession. IFLA provides information specialists throughout the world with a forum for exchanging ideas and promoting international cooperation, research, and development in all fields of library activity and information service. IFLA is one of the means through which libraries, information centres, and information professionals worldwide can formulate their goals, exert their influence as a group, protect their interests, and find solutions to global problems. IFLA’s aims, objectives, and professional programme can only be fulfilled with the cooperation and active involvement of its members and affiliates. Currently, approximately 1,600 associations, institutions and individuals, from widely divergent cultural backgrounds, are working together to further the goals of the Federation and to promote librarianship on a global level. Through its formal membership, IFLA directly or indirectly represents some 500,000 library and information professionals worldwide. IFLA pursues its aims through a variety of channels, including the publication of a major journal, as well as guidelines, reports and monographs on a wide range of topics. IFLA organizes workshops and seminars around the world to enhance professional practice and increase awareness of the growing importance of libraries in the digital age. All this is done in collaboration with a number of other non-governmental organizations, funding bodies and international agencies such as UNESCO and WIPO. IFLANET, the Federation’s website, is a prime source of information about IFLA, its policies and activities: www.ifla.org Library and information professionals gather annually at the IFLA World Library and Information Congress, held in August each year in cities around the world. IFLA was founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1927 at an international conference of national library directors. IFLA was registered in the Netherlands in 1971. The Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library), the national library of the Netherlands, in The Hague, generously provides the facilities for our headquarters. Regional offices are located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Pretoria, South Africa; and Singapore.

IFLA Publications 131

Information Literacy: International Perspectives Edited by Jesús Lau IFLA Information Literacy Section

K · G · Saur München 2008

IFLA Publications edited by Sjoerd Koopman

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Cover: 1. Picture of building: USBI VER Library, Universidad Veracruzana, Boca del Río, Veracruz, Mexico 2. Picture of people: Babakisi Fidzani, Deputy Librarian, University of Botswana Library, and Tselane Selemogwe, Senior Librarian Gaborone Institute of Health Sciences - Gaborone, Botswana - An IFLA-UNESCO Information Literacy workshop facilitated by Jesús Lau U Printed on permanent paper The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard – Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997)

© 2008 by International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, The Hague, The Netherlands Alle Rechte vorbehalten / All Rights Strictly Reserved K.G.Saur Verlag, München An Imprint of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system of any nature, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the Federal Republic of Germany by Strauss GmbH, Mörlenbach ISBN 978-3-598-22037-1 ISSN 0344-6891 (IFLA Publications)

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ............................................................................................... 7 Author information................................................................................................ 9 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 13 Sandy Campbell Chapter I – Defining Information Literacy in the 21st Century ......................... 17 Frédéric Blin Chapter II – 25 Years of a Continuous National Policy: Information Literacy Networking in Higher Education in France ........................................................ 27 Rowena Cullen Chapter III – Empowering Patients through Health Information Literacy Training................................................................................................. 49 Ingrid Iton Chapter IV – Breaking into Unexplored Territory: A Case Study of the Information Literacy Initiative at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies................................................................................................ 67 Bill Koch, Susan Porter and Beverley Forsyth Chapter V – Implementing Information Literacy Education for Undergraduate Nursing Students................................................................... 75 Estela Morales Campos Chapter VI – Information Literacy, Universities, and the Access to Information ......................................................................................... 89 Roman Tantiongco and Lorraine Evison Chapter VII – Enabling Library and Information Skills: Foundations for Entering Students.................................................................... 101 Arja Juntunen, Anne Lehto, Jarmo Saarti and Johanna Tevaniemi Chapter VIII – Supporting Information Literacy Learning in Finnish Universities – Standards, Projects, and Online Education................................ 117 Mireille Lamouroux Chapter IX – Learning to Be a Student at the University of Paris 8: An Innovative Example of Teaching Information Literacy in the First Year ........ 133 Irma Pasanen, Eva Tolonen, and Linda Stoop Chapter X – Information Literacy Programs for Virtual Mobility ................... 149 5

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Our gratitude to the experts who evaluated and selected the articles included in this monograph: Sylvie Chevillotte, Ecole nationale supérieure des sciences de l’information et des bibliothèques Villeurbanne, France; [email protected] Antonio Calderón Rehecho, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid, Spain; [email protected] Martha Castro, Universidad Veracruzana Veracruz, México; [email protected] Linda J. Goff, California State University at Sacramento, California, United States; [email protected] Mireille Lamouroux, Centre de documentation pédagogique pour enseignants Lille, France; [email protected] Birgitta Hansson, Örebro University Örebro, Sweden; [email protected] Eileen Stec, Rutgers University New Jersey, United States; [email protected] Eva Tolonen, Helsinki University of Technology Helsinki, Finland; [email protected] Maria-Carme Torras i Calvo, University of Bergen Bergen, Norway; [email protected] Christina Tovoté, Stockholm University Stockholm, Sweden; [email protected] and Carol Elliott, M.L.S., M.A., for her editorial assistance [email protected] Miguel Ángel Ríos, for his help in preparing the chapters [email protected]

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AUTHOR INFORMATION 1. Sandy Campbell is Acting Collections Manager for the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta. Alberta, Canada. Contact: [email protected]. 2. Frédéric Blin is Librarian for Libraries and Scientific Information at the French Ministry for Higher Education and Research. Paris, France. Contact: [email protected]. 3. Rowena Cullen is Associate Professor at the School of information Management of the Victoria University of Wellington. Wellington, New Zealand. Contact: [email protected]. 4. Ingrid Iton is Information Literacy Librarian at the Main Library of the University of the West Indies. Cave Hill, Barbados. Contact: [email protected]. 5. Bill Koch is Senior Lecturer (Information Technology) and Higher Degrees Coordinator at the School of Nursing and Midwifery; Susan Porter is Librarian of the Health Sciences Team and holds the Reference & Information Services at the Borchardt Library. Both from Bundoora, Australia. Beverley Forsyth is Information Services Librarian at the Heyward Library. Bendigo, Australia. These authors work for La Trobe University. Contact: [email protected]; [email protected]; b.forsyth@latrobe. edu.au. 6. Estela Morales Campos is Researcher at the University Center in Librarianship and Director of the Latin American Research Center for Latin American Studies/UNAM. Mexico City, Mexico. Contact: [email protected]. 7. Roman Tantiongco and Lorraine Evison are Reference Librarians at the University of New South Wales Library. Sydney, Australia. Contact: [email protected]; [email protected]. 8. Arja Juntunen is Head of Services at the Kuopio University Library and Jarmo Saarti is Director of that Library; Anne Lehto is Senior Adviser at the Finnish Ministry of Education; Johanna Tevaniemi is Information Specialist at the Tempere University Library. Helsinki, Finland. 9

Author Information

Contact: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]. 9. Mireille Lamouroux is Associate Professor and Coordinator for Documentary Methodology Teaching in first cycle at Paris 8 University. Paris, France. Contact: [email protected]. 10. Irma Pasanen is Associate Library Director at the Helsinki University of Technology and Eva Tolonen is Senior Information Specialist at the same Library. Helsinki, Finland. Linda Stoop is Cluster Librarian Didactics at the Arenberg Library in the Catholic University Leuven. Leuven, Belgium. Contact: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]. be.

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Dedicated to Ian Johnson (UK), Sinikka Koskiala (Finland) and Oili Kukkonen (Finland) For their early work chairing the IFLA Information Literacy Section (Formerly Roundtable on User Education)

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INTRODUCTION The chapters of this book come from two sources. They include, on one hand, works that were written especially for the book, and on the other hand, contributions that were originally presented at the IFLA World Library Congress, some of them delivered during the Information Literacy Section (InfoLit) Annual Conference Program. The selection of the papers was based on geographical coverage and quality of the content. Papers written by non-native English speakers were reviewed by an English native speaker who is also a library professional. The aim of this work is to offer a monograph with an international perspective on information literacy (IL) work, especially from countries where no related literature has been published in English. The subjects included cover a wide range of IL aspects that offer a representative sample of international information skills activity. The content of the book is useful to anyone who wishes to have a global overview of IL work. It offers an insight into practical IL approaches that can be used as examples to follow, and also serves as a general standpoint for academics to compare their own IL projects, which would in turn be useful in identifying similarities and differences in their methodology. Six of the chapters cover the pragmatic work, and the remaining four have a more conceptual content. This book is part of the action plan of the Information Literacy Section to promote the field in the international arena. Along with this monograph, IL professionals can benefit from the “Information Literacy Guidelines for Lifelong Learning” produced by the Section. The “Guidelines” offer guidance for those interested in creating IL institutional programs. They have been translated into Russian, Korean, Spanish, and Bahasa Melayu, and other language translations are in progress. They can be downloaded from www.ifla.org/VII/s42/pub/ILGuidelines2006.pdf. Along with the “Guidelines,” a second effort, funded by UNESCO, is the “International Information Literacy Resources Directory,” which offers information literacy tools, best practices, and outcomes relevant to the international community. The “Directory” is freely available at www. infolitglobal.info. Another project, also funded by UNESCO, is the compilation of the “International Information Literacy State-of-the-Art Report.” It gives an account of information skills development around the globe. The second draft is available at www.infolit.global.info. An additional UNESCO-funded project is the creation of an International Information Literacy Logo under the leadership of the Information Literacy Section of IFLA. The call is underway, inviting the education, library, and information international communities to propose an across-the-borders and acrosslanguages international logo to identify information literacy work. The Logo 13

Introduction

will facilitate communication between those who carry out information literacy projects and their communities and society in general. It will be promoted as an international symbol of information literacy around the world. Please see the Logo call at www.infolitglobal.info. In regard to the content of the book in discussion, it is not only useful to specialists, but also to educators. The opening chapter elaborates on an information literacy definition, taking into account the difference between the academic and the non-academic environment. The author, Sandy Campbell, addresses these considerations and others, such as the forces that will change the way we think about the definition of information literacy in the future and the new ways in which that definition should be applied in all environments, as well as the role of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) in forging this definition. Non-specialists will find this chapter especially useful. In the second chapter, Frédéric Blin takes us from the academic arena to public administration in France, where the Ministry of Higher Education has been promoting a cooperative network among the information literacy stakeholders. Striding through the history of those efforts, the chapter describes the implementation of information literacy actions and programs in higher education through the establishment of a network of university libraries. The paper details the creation of the seven URFIST’s, the FORMIST, and the Department of Academic Libraries of the French Ministry that comprise the network, presenting its history, the roles and attributes of the different actors, an evaluation of their activities, and the actual and future developments of French national policy on information literacy (IL). This chapter, directed to both specialists and nonspecialists, is intended to illustrate how IL has made its way into society. Rowenna Cullen’s chapter outlines some new approaches to information literacy instruction for health librarians and other information professionals. In the context of the increasing amount of health information on the Internet, the paper outlines a changing attitude to healthcare that is based on shared decisionmaking and informed consent. Health and other information professionals have a responsibility to promote health information literacy among health consumers. This includes mastering the basic principles of teaching and learning, and evaluating health information, incorporating the techniques of critical thinking. The paper summarises various criteria to evaluate health information sources and applies these to four well-known health web sites concluding that, although these four provide valuable and reliable consumer health information, none meet all the criteria advocated. Ingrid Iton describes the Caribbean experience, which differs significantly from countries in the developed world. In the Fall Semester of 2003 an Information Literacy Initiative was launched at the Cave Hill campus of the University 14

Introduction

of the West Indies. The Initiative was launched without any addition to Library resources and the majority of the Library professionals had no experience working with new students. Ion’s case study details the process followed and highlights some of the lessons learned in developing this Initiative. Bill Koch, Susan Porter and Beverley Forsyth describe the development and delivery across five campuses of the unit “Information Literacy for Nurses,” a program for first-year nursing students that contributes to new students’ understanding and appreciation of researching information sources, academic literature and scholarly writing. The program supports students in the transition to university study and addresses many of the issues new students struggle with, particularly in referencing, acknowledging the work of others, and plagiarism. The unit helps students develop scholarly values and the skills of critical thinking, analyzing, and writing. Estela Morales Campos presents Latin America’s important disadvantages in the face of the demands of an information- and knowledge-based society. Today a special emphasis is placed on the value and possession of knowledge and its application and enrichment. The region has dual scenarios because our cultural and educational development is asymmetric and our countries have, at the same time, illiterate groups and university communities with access to different information resources. Latin American universities have undertaken programs of information literacy that include the use of technologies, the benefits and applications of the digital age, and full access to knowledge. In Latin America, information literacy programs are offered mainly in universities. However, just 3% of the entire population is enrolled in universities. These universities have a great challenge: “learn how to acquire the knowledge,” “the learn know how,” and “learning to make the proper thing with such knowledge.” Mexican and Latin American universities have structured different programs to support information literacy and encourage access to information. Roman Tantiongco and Lorraine Evison present the information literacy efforts of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Academic Board. A basic online tutorial, Enabling Library and Information Skills for Everyone, called ELISE, was launched by the UNSW Library and piloted in 2005. The aim of ELISE, as successfully completed by all commencing students, is to provide a common starting point which, when combined with later programs, will assist students working toward the UNSW graduate attribute of information literacy. ELISE is one of many educative tools in the context of University strategies to promote the ethical use of information in tertiary studies. Their paper aims to document the collaborative development of ELISE as a pre-information literacy tutorial, discuss the tutorial and pedagogical dimensions of its delivery to some 10,000 entering students, and examine student assessment outcomes. It also pre15

Introduction

sents an analysis of qualitative data from student feedback, which informs improvements to the program, as well as some of the impacts on the overall information literacy program within the UNSW. Arja Juntunen, Anne Lehto, Jarmo Saarti and Johanna Tevaniemi discuss the different projects Finnish universities have implemented to create standards and teaching aids promoting information literacy education and learning. This paper focuses on the “Curriculum Plan for Information Literacy: a Joint Virtual University Project of the Finnish University Libraries 2004–2006,” the primary aim of which is to enhance integration of information literacy into the academic curriculum. The authors also provide examples of other efforts to market and evaluate information literacy in universities. Mireille Lamouroux deals with the democratisation of the access to higher education, undeniable for the past twenty years. The French university system has changed and become more and more interested in training and not only in teaching, as was the case before. One wonders about the failure or the interruption of studies in first cycle. Hence the necessity to think of accompaniment devices for the students intended to support their intellectual training. The objective is to allow beginners to discover and adapt to the intellectual processes necessary to think and seek by themselves. In the final chapter Irma Pasanen, Eva Tolonen, and Linda Stoop describe the European information literacy processes such as the Bologna Process to facilitate mobility and create a European Higher Education Area by 2010. The paper discusses the recent information literacy activities of two European university libraries in conjunction with the degree structure reform and student mobility, highlighting the experience of integrating an information literacy program into the new curriculum. In conclusion, the book offers an international framework for a variety of professional and institutional IL activities and addresses the practical and conceptual concerns in the field. As part of the work of the IFLA Information Literacy Section, this book is must-reading for those who want to either learn about or enhance their international IL efforts. Jesús Lau, PhD Former Chair, Information Literacy Section, IFLA Universidad Veracruzana, Veracruz, México. [email protected]

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CHAPTER I DEFINING INFORMATION LITERACY IN THE 21ST CENTURY∗ Sandy Campbell Abstract Considerable effort has been invested by practitioners in many parts of the world in defining information literacy. Much of this work has taken place in the academic environment. What is the relationship between information literacy as we define it in higher education and information literacy among non-academic populations? What forces will change how we think about the definition of information literacy in the future and how we will apply the definition in all environments? What is the future role of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions in defining information literacy? Defining Information Literacy Information literacy is not a term without definition. In fact, so much effort and ink has been dedicated to defining this term that Edward Owusu-Ansah (2003) has suggested calling a halt to defining the term and just getting on with the practice and teaching of information literacy itself. The most frequently cited definition of information literacy that one finds in the literature is the one put forward in 1989 by the American Library Association (ALA) (1989): To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate and use effectively the needed information. This is a broad and inclusive definition. While it emanates from North America, it is not substantially different from those being applied in other countries, such as the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and the Nordic countries. ∗

A version of this paper was presented at the World Library and Information Congress, 70th IFLA General Conference and Council, Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2004 and was previously published as a Chinese translation: Campbell, Sandy. (2005). “Defining Information Literacy in the 21st Century.” Translated by Xiao Yongying and Yuan Yuying. Journal of Academic Libraries 6: 82-86.

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Sandy Campbell

Does this Definition Apply to Everyone? Historically the practice of teaching information literacy skills has been largely restricted to the context of higher education. As Hannelore Rader (1999) has noted in her extensive review of the subject, the practice of information literacy instruction is largely restricted to academic libraries, with some recent activity in public libraries around computer literacy and minimal activity in special libraries. Within academic libraries, information literacy continues to be the subject of vibrant discussion with consistent efforts toward refinement and improvement. In 2000 academic librarians further specified what this definition means in practical terms in the publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education” (ACRL, 2002). Currently, ALA’s Task Force on Information Literacy in Science and Technology is working to adapt these competencies to the scientific and technical sector of higher education (ALA, 2004). The practice of librarians undertaking the teaching of information skills has two sources, one philosophical and one practical. At the philosophical level, most librarians believe that information literacy is a part of a student’s wellrounded skill set that will help him or her be more efficient and effective in the future. At the practical level, information literacy instruction is a self-defense mechanism for public service librarians. Librarian-to-student ratios are so low in most post-secondary institutions that librarians must teach students to be information self-sufficient and do so mostly in classroom settings. Over time, as the environments of academic libraries have changed, the terminology and definition have changed and broadened. What started as library orientation grew to be library and bibliographic instruction, and finally became information literacy. So, the practice of information literacy instruction has been largely restricted to academic libraries, but does the definition itself apply to everyone? While the ALA definition is inclusive, when we in academic libraries think of the information-literate user, we have a particular picture in mind. We think of a person who has all the skills required to access the vast quantities of information that we have carefully collected and arranged for them. We think of people who can use a computer, connect to the Internet, access varied kinds of information, distinguish between levels of quality and validity of information, and comprehend the content of the information, so that they can apply it and are aware of the rules around the use of information. However, I submit that academic librarians have appropriated the concept of information literacy from the population at large and focused it on our small corner of the information world.

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Defining Information Literacy in the 21st Century

What of the billions of people who are not part of the higher education process? What of the people who never set foot in a library in search of information? I am not speaking here, necessarily, of the stereotype of children in lessdeveloped nations whose classroom is a spot in the dust under a tree. I am speaking of the average Canadian, and their counterparts in other countries, who last used a library when they were in school and now retrieve all of their information from friends and family, experts whom they contact, the media and increasingly, GoogleTM. We view the information skills of these people through the lens of what we expect to find in the average student and consider their skills, by comparison, to be poor. Even our term “information literacy” excludes large portions of the world’s population and the world’s information because it implies reading and a written format. However, if we test the general population’s information literacy skills against the ALA definition, we find that they meet the definition quite well. Further, if we were to put ourselves in their environment, we might find our own information skills woefully inadequate. For example, recent research by Argentinean anthropologist Claudio Aporta reveals some fascinating information competencies among Inuit in Canada’s High Arctic. The Inuit of Igloolik (69o 22’ 59” North, 81o 47’ 59” West) have, for generations, routinely navigated across the treacherous and seemingly chaotic sea ice between Melville Island and Baffin Island. Aporta’s research revealed that the Inuit are guided by traditional knowledge about ice structures which re-form in the same place each year as a result of ocean currents and underwater landforms: “Through detailed knowledge of ice topography, sea ice becomes a familiar territory for the Inuit of Igloolik, and, through the deep understanding of the ‘codes’ of the moving ice, its changing nature becomes predictable” (Aporta, 2002). Inuit people planning to make a sea ice journey seek out someone who has information about the “ice marks” and follow their instructions to make the journey safely. The process does not require either party to be able to read and write. Does the ALA definition of information literacy apply in this situation? Absolutely! The Inuit have a clear need for information. They know whom to approach to get the information. They can evaluate who has the most experience or is the best navigator. They can also use the information appropriately and execute the task of safely crossing the ice to a desired place. By the ALA definition, the Inuit are information literate. It is worth noting that the Inuit are not a society restricted to traditional knowledge. Neil Christensen’s (2003) recent work, Inuit in Cyberspace, delineates the extent to which the Inuit in Canada, Alaska and Denmark have adopted and make use of the World Wide Web. However, in the case of the sea ice topography, the information they need is not available on the web, or in fact, any19

Sandy Campbell

where except directly from their human sources. Further, unlike their laptops, information learned orally and memorized will not run out of battery power and strand them, potentially fatally, in the middle of the ice. If placed on the margin of the frozen Arctic Ocean and faced with a trek across it, by the ALA definition, most of us who think of ourselves as sophisticated information users would not be information literate. It is unlikely that any of us would even imagine that the ice would re-form each year in a predictable pattern and therefore we would not know that the information existed. We would not know whom to ask, or how to appropriately ask for the information. Even if someone did supply us with the information, we would not be competent to apply it successfully. So we need to interpret the definition of information literacy very broadly, and, in fact, there has been some discussion in this direction. In his summary of various academic attempts to define information literacy, Edward Owusu-Ansah (2003) concludes, “What all these proponents seek is a phenomenon that defines and advocates conversance with the universe of information within which information age participants operate in their everyday lives, in school, in their work environments, and within their social associations and interactions” (p. 222). Perhaps what we really need to do is not study the definition of information literacy, but rather change the term to encompass this idea. Hannelore Rader (2002) has suggested the term “information fluency” as an alternative. “Information competency” might be another way of encompassing our users’ complete set of information skills. Whatever we call it, the ALA definition itself is broad enough to encompass the entire spectrum of information skills, from Inuit traditional knowledge to high-tech search engines, and will probably still be applicable for many decades. What Forces Will Shape How We Apply the Definition of Information Literacy in the 21st Century? Knowing that we have a good definition of information literacy that will carry us well into the 21st Century, we need to consider how it will be applied at the practical level and what changes, if any, we can anticipate. In the short term, the practical definition of information literacy will change little for much of the world’s population. It will take a long time to realize the sweeping goals of the recent World Summit on the Information Society (2004): “…to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples 20

Defining Information Literacy in the 21st Century

to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life…” One of the primary steps toward the creation of the Information Society is the deployment of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to “people in all corners of the world.” As more ICTs are dispersed, appropriate levels of information literacy instruction must accompany the delivery of technology to ensure that people will be able to use it. As we work toward the goals of the Summit, we still need to find ways to meet the information literacy needs of those people who are not part of the Information Society. As Gary E. Gorman (2003) says in his recent work on issues around sustainable development and information literacy, “it is better to focus on teaching people how to utilize the information they can readily and regularly access, whether it is in a printed pamphlet from a government department, a radio programme, a newspaper – whatever is locally available.” In libraries where we already have access to ICTs, there are a number of forces at work that will cause us to redefine how we apply the definition and deliver information literacy programs in the future.

1. Libraries Are No Longer the Primary Sources of Information Our users have a wide variety of sources from which they can acquire information. In the past, we knew what information sources our users would be accessing because we supplied them. We defined for our users what their information literacy needs would be and how we would satisfy them. We were able to maintain that stance because libraries were the gatekeepers of information and if people wanted to use the information, they had to be trained to our set of rules. All of that has changed. The verb, “to google,” now exists in English with a new meaning. When a student says, “I’ll google it,” it means that he or she is going to perform a search of the Internet through the GoogleTM search engine. Through the Internet many people, including our post-secondary students, are satisfying a broad spectrum of their information needs. A recent announcement from CrossRefTM (2004) tells us that some of the largest scholarly research data sources, such as Institute of Physics Publishing, Oxford University Press and Blackwell Publishing will be searchable through GoogleTM. From the students’ perspective, “what I need to know for my research” and “what I need to know in the rest of my life” can now be answered by a search in a single box. The library has become just one of a variety of information sources for our users and the us21

Sandy Campbell

ers have developed their own skill sets to deal with each. The only motivation forcing the user to come to us to learn our systems will be that libraries will have the money to buy information products and license them for users. 2. We Will Not be Dealing Face-to-Face With Our Users The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) (2003) LibQUAL+TM Spring 2003 Survey tell us that across ARL libraries, twice as many users access library resources through a web page on a daily basis as use the resources on the library premises. More than four times as many of the same users access YahooTM, GoogleTM or some other non-library gateway on a daily basis. Libraries have been responding to that reality with instruction in the electronic environment. At the University of Alberta, our experience with virtual reference tells us that our users ask the same range of questions electronically that they asked in person at the reference desk. One-on-one instruction has always been a large part of the reference process and we are conducting similar instructional sessions through chat and co-browsing technologies. The literature contains many examples of information literacy being delivered electronically from around the world. Information literacy courses are being delivered on-line, librarians are collaborating with faculty to include information components in on-line courses, librarians are creating point-of-use electronic guides and web sites for information literacy purposes, and instruction is being delivered through e-mail and virtual reference services. 3. Users Will Define for themselves the Information Literacy Skills they Require Because the users will come to us with a variety of skills acquired in a variety of environments, they, not librarians, will define the information literacy instruction they need. Librarians in higher education will still have the opportunity to supply instruction that will take users to a general level of competence, but much more of the instruction will become point-of-use or just-in-time, as the users identify gaps in their knowledge and seek help, either from context-sensitive help pages or from a librarian.

4. Rigorous Assessment of Information Literacy Programs Will be Required Because of substantial changes occurring in the availability and delivery of information and the variety of environments in which users require information, 22

Defining Information Literacy in the 21st Century

everyone delivering information literacy instruction must evaluate their programs rigorously. Not only must we meet the users’ changing needs, we must also be able to demonstrate in a concrete way that information literacy programs are good value for the resources invested. The definition of any information literacy program must now include some evaluative component that will indicate the extent to which the program was successful. Project SAILS (Project for the Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills)∗ is an attempt to develop a standardized tool which will allow librarians in advanced educational institutions to assess their programs. How Will We Apply the ALA Definition in Our Instruction in the Future? As we adapt to the changing environment, we will see changes in how we apply the ALA definition of information literacy in our instructional activities. Because search engines are integrating searches of library catalogues, journal indexes, e-texts and web sites, there is less need to teach the peculiarities of diverse secondary and tertiary sources. Our focus will move away from teaching people what tool to use to locate information to other aspects of the information literacy definition, specifically in the areas of critical thinking and awareness of information, decoding the packaging of information delivery, and the appropriate use of information. 1. Critical Thinking and Awareness of Information Because fewer of our users are presenting themselves to us in the traditional library environment, librarians will have less opportunity to work with them over the course of a research project. Therefore we must work to make them more self-reliant at the very beginning of their search for information. We will need to focus more of our information literacy efforts on developing students’ ability to identify that information is needed, their awareness of what kinds of information are needed, and whether or not that information is likely to exist. In some jurisdictions the “critical thinking” part of the information literacy definition is already being embedded in the elementary school curriculum. 2. Decoding the Packaging Even in the print environment, the packaging of information in formats other than text requires that users possess extra information skills to use the informa∗

Project SAILS (http://www.projectsails.org/projdescription.html) April 10, 2003

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tion. Interpretation of statistical data, cartographic and spatial data, and visual information require additional information literacy instruction. It will become much more important to teach people how to decode the electronic packaging of information so that they can evaluate the authenticity and authority of the information they find. Identifying the credentials of the creator of the information will be more of a challenge. Also, more information is being delivered visually. Even text accessed through the Internet is now delivered as an image on a screen. Because of this, the ability to understand why an image is presented in a particular way, as well as the impact of the visual presentation on the viewer, will become a critical piece of information literacy. 3. Appropriate Use of Information The ease with which users can move and alter information in the electronic environment has amplified a whole range of social, ethical, legal and economic issues around the appropriate use of information. Within the academic sphere, we are already seeing considerable efforts in the development of instruction around cyber plagiarism. As more people from around the globe make their information available through the web, information literacy instruction will need to develop sensitivity to cultural variations in what is considered to be appropriate use of information. In several jurisdictions we have already seen the introduction of information privacy legislation, adding a whole new set of skills to the definition of information literacy took kit. What is IFLA’s Role in Defining Information Literacy in the 21st Century? There is little point in continuing the discussion around the definition of information literacy unless we also discuss ways in which we can realize the goals described in the definition. The role of the IFLA in defining information literacy in the future is one of balance and inclusiveness. I have demonstrated that the discussion around information literacy is heavily weighted toward practices in the academic arena, in part because this is where it is most often practiced and researched. IFLA has a role in broadening the practical definition to include all forms of information literacy for all people. The IFLA has included information literacy statements in many of its policy documents, including The “IFLA Internet Manifesto” (IFLA, 2002), The “IFLA/UNESCO School Library Manifesto” (IFLA, 2000), and The “UNESCO Public Library Manifesto” (IFLA, 1998). More recently, we can see the impact of the IFLA’s activities in section C4 of the World Summit of the Information Society. “Plan of Action,” which reads, “Everyone should have the necessary 24

Defining Information Literacy in the 21st Century

skills to benefit from the Information Society” and goes on to refer to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) literacy and later e-literacy (IFLA, 2004). However, there is much more work to be done in specifying how ICT literacy and e-literacy will be developed and implemented in tandem with the delivery of these Information and Communication Technologies. In addition to continuing its information literacy-related lobbying efforts and partnerships with other organizations, the IFLA has a role in supporting the creation of standards against which librarians and libraries can evaluate all forms of information literacy, in supporting and valuing all forms of information literacy, and in continuing to provide various forums in which all interested parties can share their successes in defining information literacy in their own environments. REFERENCES 1. ALA (1989). Presidential Committee on Information Literacy. Final Report. Chicago: American Library Association. 2. ALA (2004). Task Force on Information Literacy for Science and Technology. “Proposed Standards.” Retrieved 10 May 2004 from: http://sciencelibrarian. tripod.com/ILTaskForce/ILIndex.htm#PROPOSED%20STANDARDS. 3. ACRL (2002). “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.” Retrieved July, 2007 from: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/ acrlstandards/standardsguidelines.htm. 4. ARL (2003). LibQual+TM Spring 2003 Survey: Group Results. 99. 5. Aporta, C. (2002). “Life on the Ice: Understanding the Codes of a Changing Environment.” Polar Record 38 (207): 341-354. 6. Christensen, N.B. (2003). Inuit in Cyberspace: Embedding Offline Identities Online. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. 7. CrossRef.org (2004). “Press Release: CrossRef™ Launches Pilot Program of CrossRef Search, Powered By Google, April 28, 2004.” Retrieved from: http:// www.crossref.org/01company/pr/press20040428.html. 8. Gorman, G.E. (2003). “Sustainable Development and Information Literacy: IFLA Priorities in Asia and Oceania.” IFLA Journal 29 (4): 288–294. 25

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9. IFLA (1998). “UNESCO Public Library Manifesto,” rev. July 16, 1998. Retrieved from: http://www.ifla.org/VII/s8/unesco/eng.htm. 10. IFLA (2000). “IFLA/UNESCO School Library Manifesto,” rev. Feb.16, 2000. Retrieved from: http://www.ifla.org/VII/s11/pubs/manifest.htm. 11. IFLA (2002). “IFLA Internet Manifesto.” Retrieved from: http://www.ifla. org/III/ misc/ iternationalmanif.htm. 12. Owusu-Ansah, E.K. (2003). “Information Literacy and the Academic Library: a Critical Look at a Concept and the Controversies Surrounding It.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 29 (4): 219-230. 13. Rader, H.B. (1999). “The Learning Environment – Then, Now and Later: 30 Years of Teaching Information Skills.” Reference Services Review 27 (3): 219–224. 14. Rader, H.B. (2002). “Teaching and Assessing Information Skills in the Twenty-first Century: A Global Perspective.” Library Trends 51 (2): 141259. 15. World Summit on the Information Society (2004). “Declaration of Principles.” IFLA Journal 30 (1): 72. Retrieved from: http://www.state. gov/documents/organization/27778.doc. 16. World Summit on the Information Society (2004). “Plan of Action.” IFLA Journal 30 (1): 80-81. Retrieved from: http://www.state.gov/documents/ organization/ 27778.doc.

26

CHAPTER II 25 YEARS OF A CONTINUOUS NATIONAL POLICY: INFORMATION LITERACY NETWORKING IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN FRANCE Frédéric Blin Abstract For more than 25 years, the development of information literacy in France has been encouraged and supported by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, whose policy has been to promote and reinforce networking cooperation on a national scale among the different stakeholders. As France is a centralised country, this continuous dedicated governmental policy on information literacy has been essential for the successful implementation of information literacy actions and programs in higher education. The policy has also established a collaborative network that includes the following organizations: university libraries, the seven URFIST centres (Unités régionales de formation à l’information scientifique et technique – Regional Centres for Information Literacy Education), FORMIST (a structure dedicated to the promotion of information literacy, based at ENSSIB, the French national school for LIS), and the Department for Academic Libraries of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. This paper presents the network’s history, describes the role and attributes of the different stakeholders, evaluates their activities, and explains the current and future developments of the French national policy on information literacy. Introduction At the beginning of the 1980’s, the emergence of new technologies and the increasing importance of technical and scientific information were considered essential for the development of French society, in a political context where the centralised system, which had been characteristic of France for centuries, was being brought into question. As a consequence of the first of these two realities, the concept of information literacy emerged, under various names in the French language. The need was felt more and more for the citizens, and first of all the students, to be educated in the use of information. However, this need for information literacy had to take into account the political willingness to give more autonomy to local administrations and institutions, as the Constitution of the European Community reinforced the need for more local competitiveness and independence. 27

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These evolutions have had an impact on information literacy initiatives in higher education in France during the past 25 years. The new structures that were created in the beginning of the 1980’s to answer the need for better comprehension of the new information technologies had to adapt to the new problems and questions raised by databases, electronic resources, the Internet, digitalization, open archives, and other emerging realities. They also had to adapt to the evolution of universities and academic libraries, which have experienced a real revolution through changes in French and European policies for higher education. Fortunately the development of information literacy in France since the beginning of the 1980s has been encouraged and supported by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, whose continuous policy has been to promote and reinforce cooperation on a national scale between the different stakeholders. 1982–1985: a turning point 1982: The creation of the DBMIST and the URFIST centres At the end of the 1970s, France, like other countries, was confronted with the emergence of new information technologies, especially informatics, and with the question of access to scientific information. Movements toward national independence and information democracy had, in previous years, led to the definition of a national information policy, as well as the creation of national offices for scientific and technical information, and the development of national bibliographical databases. In parallel with this, the government financed the construction of a technical infrastructure that could support the transfer of scientific data between the academic and research institutions. In 1982 a special department within the Ministry of Education was established, which had the mission to anchor scientific and technical information (STI) within academic libraries. This DBMIST (Direction des bibliothèques, des musées et de l’information scientifique et technique – Department for Libraries, Museums, and Scientific and Technical Information) was given the responsibility of financing and coordinating the development of university libraries. Soon after its birth, the DBMIST imagined a new organization that would foster the use of new tools for information and research, first of all the bibliographic databases. This organization was in fact divided into seven local structures, which were called URFIST (Unités régionales de formation à l’information scientifique et technique – Regional Centres for Education in Scientific and Technical Information). The URFIST centres were created in late 1982 and early 1983 through conventions between the DBMIST and university libraries. They were 28

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placed in important universities in Lille, Lyon, Nice, Rennes, Strasbourg and Toulouse and a research school, the Ecole nationale des chartes, in Paris, but each was made responsible for a much larger geographical area covering many regions and universities, so that the entire country would be covered by the URFIST network. This regional system responded to the overall policy on decentralisation that was initiated by the government in the same year. The URFIST centres were staffed with two persons: a professional librarian and a teacher/ researcher in information sciences who also has a disciplinary speciality. It was seen as the best solution to reach the different categories of users. The mission of the URFIST centres was: • To train librarians, researchers, and students in the use of databases and other resources • To promote the importance of STI for all potential users, not just universities and research laboratories but also secondary schools and the private sector • To initiate a better collaboration between the library and the university by encouraging the use of new technologies to improve information gathering and research 1984-1985: The law on higher education and the decree on academic libraries The law that was passed on January 26, 1984 was aimed at changing the French higher education system. Prior to this law, the system could not respond to many of the realities that had appeared during the previous years: the increasing number of students born during the “baby boom” after the Second World War, increasing international competition, the governmental “decentralization” policy that brought more autonomy and responsibility in the public organizations, and the fundamental importance of scientific and technical information. The law dealt with the following problems: the legal status of the universities – their inner structure, which would now be divided into teaching departments, research centres, and services shared between the two – the designation and roles of the dean and councils and their collaboration with other public and private organizations. The law also mentioned the mission of universities, insisting on their role not only in promoting the economic development of the country but also in spreading the culture of science and information. The concept of information literacy began to emerge. A particular emphasis was also put on the first-years because new students, who were becoming very numerous, faced a very high failure rate. It was felt that new students had to be trained in general methodology and in language 29

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skills in order to develop the “university work culture” they would need to successfully complete their studies. Multidisciplinary training sessions on methodology and scientific information were organized, and a first general study (1984) led by the DBMIST of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research showed the first results of the law on STI training. At that time, 22 universities had already organized training on STI in the first two years of the curriculum∗. Two-thirds of these courses were made for students in natural sciences and mathematics, and a third for students in human and social sciences. There were three types of courses: the first consisted simply in raising the students’ awareness of the importance of STI; the second type consisted in optional courses, a bit more developed than the first type; the third was the most ambitious. It consisted in compulsory sessions that were part of the general curriculum. It generated an evaluation of learning outcomes. It is noteworthy that 12 of these 22 universities had opted for the third type of training. The majority of these training sessions for the students in the first two years were led by information professionals (librarians, teachers in information science) for large groups of students, as many as 600: the objective was to get the entire first-year cohort to follow at least one training session on information literacy. By contrast, the training sessions that were organized for more advanced students in the second and the third cycles were generally for small groups of students and were led by the teachers in their discipline with the aid of information professional. The URFIST centres could be asked, for instance, to help the teachers in training sessions for PhD students. There were four types of content that were dealt with during these training sessions. The first type concerned methods and tools of information searching: thesaurus, bibliography, catalogues, and ways of accessing documents. It was also the most frequent because those methods and tools were seen as the most essential skills that the students had to master before acquiring more advanced competencies. The second type of content was also very common, namely information technologies, electronic resources and advanced search tools: informatics, information systems, CD-ROMs, databases, etc. The third was communication techniques, both in writing (scientific writing, note-taking) and in audiovisual or electronic form (audio conferences, video, electronic messaging). Only half the training sessions addressed these subjects. The last type of content was the uses of information: the cost of information and information rights (authors’ rights, protection of information, patents). It represented only about 15%

∗

30

The higher education curriculum in France was divided into 3 “cycles.” The first cycle consisted in the first two years after high school, the second cycle consisted in the third and fourth year at university, and the third cycle was the postgraduate studies than lead to a PhD.

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of the training sessions organized, and generally was aimed at the most advanced students, those in PhD courses (Tosello-Bancal, 1990). These courses were in fact very limited. The overall situation of French universities, and especially their libraries, was at that time very poor. Budgets were very limited, as was the number of professional library staff. Library buildings were too small and collections were small as well. Opening hours could not answer the needs expressed by the increasing number of students. The situation of university libraries was even worse than it was in the beginning of the 1970s, because there had been no real policy on academic libraries during that decade. In order to enhance the services provided by the libraries, the 1984 law on higher education was complemented in July 1985 by a decree that reorganized the academic libraries into “Common Documentation Services” (Services communs de la documentation – SCD). The mission of the libraries was redefined according to a new structure. The library’s goals were now: establishment of a common documentary policy and acquisition of documentation for the whole university, participation in the production and diffusion of scientific information through research and cultural activities, improvement of services to the academic community, and training the users in information methodology and tools. The 1985 decree legitimated the mission of libraries in the field of information literacy and was the first step toward a great modernization of French academic libraries. 1988–1997: The decade of great changes 1988–1992: The “Miquel Report” and the new financing model The decree on academic libraries did not transform them overnight. In fact, it was not until 1988 that a real modernisation policy for academic libraries was launched. An official report requested by the Ministry and written by André Miquel, the previous administrator of the Bibliothèque Nationale, underlined the scandalous state of academic libraries in France and served as a guideline for their modernisation. In fact, it initiated a real revolution in the public policies for libraries: in six years, from 1987 to 1992, the national budget allotted to academic libraries increased by 125% and the number of professional staff employed as state civil servants in academic libraries also increased by 10%. Those two elements had immediate consequences on opening hours and on the number of books and periodicals available in libraries. The “Miquel Report” also launched a long-term policy of library building, in order to accommodate the new masses of students arriving at universities (+50% between 1977 and 1992). Some of the problems cited in this report still exist today, but there is no comparison between academic libraries in France before and after the report. 31

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At the same time, relations between the Ministry and the universities began to be defined by four-year contracts: the universities had to present their objectives and projects for the next four years, and the Ministry would examine these objectives and projects and decide if it would finance them or not. This procedure still rules the relations between the Ministry and the universities today. For the purpose of assessing the projects of the libraries, the DBMIST created in 1982 was transformed in 1990 into the Sous-direction des bibliothèques (Office of Academic Libraries), which had, among other things, a responsibility to provide expert advice on library projects∗. In 1992, 30% of the overall budget of the libraries was covered by the contract with the Ministry, while the rest was provided by the normal yearly funding. The “Miquel Report” insisted on improving the services for students as well, especially information literacy courses. However, in the first years of their implementation, the contracts did not spark local information literacy projects. In fact, libraries had so many other problems that information literacy simply was not one of their priorities. Moreover, the seven URFIST centres∗∗ had by that time proven their importance, and many universities relied on them to train not only their staff (information professionals, teachers and researchers) but also their students. The URFIST training programs were defined in conjunction with the libraries, so that the training sessions proposed by the URFIST complemented those of the universities (most often through their library or Common Documentation Service). Between their creation in 1982/1983 and the end of their first decade of existence, the URFIST centres had progressively developed and adapted their activities, as shown in the following table: 1984 Approx. 3000

1986

1992

3102

8416

% of those trained who were: Information professionals

67

44

15

Students

0

Teachers and researchers

33

Total of people trained by the URFIST centres

(no data) 32

60 6

In 1984, the majority of the sessions concerned the use of documentary databases and the new electronic and informatics tools for documentation: and in fact 67% of the people trained were information professionals and only 33% ∗ Nearly all of the people working for the Sous-direction des bibliothèques are professional librarians. ∗∗ An URFIST in Bordeaux replaced the one in Lille in 1989.

32

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were students or researchers. Two years later, only 44% of the people trained were information professionals. This decrease was a sign that the library staff was now better trained and did not need as much training as before. The students began to be more diverse, because the themes of the training attracted the administrative staff of the university as well as people outside the university, including high school teachers and local librarians. The students soon represented a majority of the people trained. This was in accord with the reform of the universities passed in 1984 but not with the initial mission of the URFIST centres. These in part did the universities’ job of training students, and they focused on advanced students. In 1993, more than 55% of the students trained were in the third cycle, 20% in the second, 14% in the first, and the last 10% were PhD and post-PhD students. At the same time, the total number of librarians and information professionals trained increased as well, doubling between 1991 and 1993 (from 1090 to 2330 people). 1990–1997: Training the masses Despite the evolution of the URFIST centres, the higher education reform and the new funding procedure based on contracts, there still was a challenge that could not be met by the universities and their libraries. As mentioned above, the number of first- and second-year students had increased very significantly during the previous decade. But more than that, the failure rate during the first two years at university also increased dramatically despite the training sessions organised following the 1984 law. This brought into question the adequacy of the reforms. Something had to be done to change this situation, and most importantly to understand the reasons why so many students did not succeed in their first year at university. Some researchers analysed the new students from a socio-psychological point of view, trying to explain how they faced the new environment. Other researchers had a different approach: they tried to determine whether attending an information literacy course had an influence on the success of the new students, helping them pass from high school and adolescence to university and adulthood. There was enough experience with information literacy courses in some universities in the previous years that such research could be carried out as early as 1988. The most ambitious research showed a real link between information literacy training and success, confirming once more that universities should continue to develop information literacy courses (Coulon, 1999). At the same time, many seminars, workshops, and working groups were held that emphasized the need for greater information literacy. In 1991 a working group on information literacy composed of representatives of several ministries 33

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(Education, Technology, Industry) and private companies, gave a report in which the following recommendations, among others, were made: • Train teachers at every level (primary and secondary school, high school, and university) in information sciences • Integrate compulsory information literacy courses into the general disciplinary curriculum • Give value to the role of information professionals in the field of Information literacy • Promote collaboration among the various stakeholders (ministries, universities and schools, private companies, local administrations, media) In 1992 the status of the “conservateurs de bibliothèque” (“library curators”), the highest level of the library profession in France, was modified so that training library users in information literacy skills was officially added to their fundamental mission. Many librarians were not concerned with the information skills of their patrons, and this official decision was taken to encourage librarians to organise and participate in the training sessions at their university. The reluctance of many librarians to train students, especially first- and second-year students, did not, of course, disappear with this law. Two years later a one-day workshop organised by the Ministry of Higher Education served as a concrete sign that information literacy had become a priority for the French government. This workshop was intended to analyse the state of information literacy training in French universities, beginning with the results of the call for projects that was launched in 1992. We already mentioned that the contracts that had been passed with the universities during the previous two years had not raised sufficient answers from academic libraries in the field of information literacy courses. This is why a specific call for projects was launched: to initiate a national movement for the diffusion of information literacy courses throughout French universities. This call for projects received 155 responses, and 74 projects were presented. Of these, 31 projects – 12 from universities and 19 from higher education schools (the French “Grandes Ecoles”) – were chosen to receive funding. This funding by the Ministry was intended to help the beneficiaries organise and initiate their training programs in information literacy. The recipients committed themselves to pursue these programs for at least three years. The projects were mainly aimed at second cycle students, and devoted to the presentation of new information and communication technologies, methods and tools for information seeking, and the efficient use of information. Only half of the projects planned to integrate the courses into the normal disciplinary curriculum. The other half 34

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planned independent and cross-disciplinary training sessions. Some of the projects also included collaboration with the URFIST centres in order to benefit from their experience. The call for projects brought some interesting results, but it was felt that a continuous effort had to be sustained. Thus another similar call for papers was launched in 1995, resulting in some new projects and the rejuvenation of some training programs that had been organised before. 1995: New missions for the URFIST centres At the same time, the URFIST centres were slightly reorganised, and their mission was reviewed. The logic of the reform was threefold: reaffirming and reinforcing the existence of the URFIST centres; encouraging the emergence of a national network for information literacy; and focusing on training the trainers. Concerning this last point, there were too few URFIST centres and they were too small to assume all the training sessions for all the universities in their regional competency area. Therefore, it became their first and essential mission to train the people who would then train the users in the universities. The target audience of the URFIST centres consequently became information professionals in academic libraries, as well as the teachers and the most advanced students, many of whom would after a few more years become teachers themselves. It was recommended that the URFIST centres should not train the new students (in the first 2 cycles) because this population should be trained through regular academic courses led either by librarians or by teachers who have themselves been trained by the URFIST centres. This decision was intended to engender a real cooperative network between the URFIST centres and the universities, the libraries being at the forefront. The URFIST centres were also given the mission to help universities build their information literacy training courses and programs, acting as experts in this particular field. The reform concerned pedagogy as well. A disciplinary approach, a methodological approach, and a technical approach had to be combined to best express the links between information searching and scientific activities, and to effectively prepare users for constantly changing technical and disciplinary sources and tools. The creation and maintenance of pedagogical resources, not only for their own needs but also for the needs of all the participants of the then emerging network, became one of the most essential new missions for the URFIST. The ENSSIB, the French national school for librarians∗, was encouraged to participate in the network by creating pedagogical resources, contributing technical advice on information literacy subjects, and, of course, training its ∗

ENSSIB: Ecole nationale supérieure des sciences de l’information et des bibliothèques, www. enssib.fr.

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students in information literacy tools, techniques, and pedagogical skills. In 1995, the URFIST centres led 592 training sessions, representing 4119 hours, and trained 10,326 people (23% information professionals, 10% teachers and researchers, 50% students– mainly postgraduate), while academic libraries trained nearly 87,000 students, 77% of which were first- and second-year students. The URFIST centres adapted themselves rapidly to their new missions. But the main evolution in the information literacy network in France would take place in the following decade. 1997–2006: New policies, new stakeholders 1997–2002: New national solutions for information literacy In 1997 a new law was passed that reorganized university curricula. Observing that the failure rate of first-cycle students was still very high, the Ministry included a compulsory course on “Methodology for University Studies” (Méthodologie du travail universitaire – MTU), which would take place during the first semester of the first year. This course was to give students “autonomy and the methods and techniques they will need during their studies: preparing a bibliography, using the library and the new sources of information, taking notes, summarizing a book or an article, working in a group […]”. For the first time, a law concerning pedagogy in higher education insisted on training students in the use of information. This “Bayrou Law,” named for the then Minister of Higher Education, marks an important step in the history of information literacy education in France. However, because the universities had progressively gained more autonomy from the Ministry, they were left with the responsibility for organizing and implementing programs for MTU education. As a result some libraries were left out of this movement. The faculties were able to build the MTU course without any mention of information literacy, focusing it only on their own disciplines. An important study was conducted in 1997-1998 by a librarian who was also a teacher at ENSSIB. The aim of the study was to identify, on a national scale, the role of libraries and Common Documentation Services in the courses on information literacy organised by universities (Noël, 1999). Because libraries and SCDs were divided into disciplinary sections, and it was the sections that most often organized the training sessions, the questionnaire was sent to the library sections: the results therefore represented the activities of the library sections, not of the libraries themselves. The following questions were asked: What types of courses are organized? What percentage of them is initiated by the library? How many students are being trained? What percentage of the information liter36

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acy courses is taught by library staff? What contents are being taught? How long are the sessions? The overall results were as follows: Number of Number of Sections with sections responses information literacy training courses 300 219 131

Sections with no information literacy training courses 88

Total number of training courses 338

Of the sections that responded to the questionnaire, 60% had implemented information literacy courses, and some sections had even implemented more than one course. The average number of students trained was 356, and the total number of students trained across all sections was 47,848. The differences were sometimes very important though: 35% of the training courses included 30 people or less, while 5 sections trained more than 2000 first-year students each. Training sessions for first-year students represented 20% of the total, while sessions for fourth- and fifth-year students represented 21% and 25% respectively. The sessions were also generally short: 69% of them lasted less than 5 hours. 73% of the courses were part of the official curriculum, 64% were compulsory for students, but only 26% ended with an assessment of what the students had learnt. Librarians were leading 55% of the training sessions, but only 12% had been trained to teach this type of course. These results showed the difficulty libraries faced in implementing the “Bayrou Law,” which recommended MTU courses mainly for first-year students. They also showed that information literacy was at that time not always accepted by librarians as being part of their official role, and that the universities, faculty, and researchers did not always recognize this kind of training as part of the mission of libraries. Information literacy was still a fragile concept and the place of libraries in this domain was fragile as well. However, this study highlighted that many experiments had been undertaken in various universities around the country, and that things were headed in the right direction. In fact, this national study took place in a specific context. A research group on information literacy had been established by the Ministry between November 1997 and May 1998, which was composed of representatives of many national services and associations: the Ministry, the Universities and Grandes Ecoles, the URFIST centres, the ENSSIB, the other LIS schools, the academic libraries, the national Association of Directors of Academic Libraries (ADBU), associations of students, and associations of teachers and researchers. This group was asked to consider three main questions: what type of training is appropriate for what type 37

Frédéric Blin

of audience? How well are current structures responding to information literacy needs? What role should academic libraries play in the training of students? The discussions ended with a definition of principles, a set of recommendations, and two concrete actions. The principles were set out in the “3 rules for information literacy courses.” Information literacy courses should: 1) be an official part of the curriculum; 2) be led by librarians in collaboration with teachers in the various disciplines; and 3) assess the skills learned by the students. These rules were complemented by a recommendation that the information concepts taught be more closely linked to students’ discipline and level. The following concrete actions were taken: a national workshop dedicated to “Information Literacy Training in Higher Education,” chaired by the Director for Higher Education in the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, was organised in February 1999. A new service was also created to serve as a national resource centre for pedagogical material on information literacy. This service was called FORMIST (for “Formation à l’Information scientifique et technique” – Training in the Use of Scientific and Technical Information) and was based at the ENSSIB. A FORMIST web site was launched in 1999 where pedagogical and scientific resources on information literacy were not only freely available for everyone – and therefore very useful for the trainers locally – but also assessed by a special committee composed of specialists and trainers in the field of information literacy∗. FORMIST also had the mission of offering guidance to information literacy projects in other countries. In addition, FORMIST trains future professional librarians during their initial course at ENSSIB. Since 2000, FORMIST has organized annual workshops, called “Rencontres Formist” (“FORMIST Meetings”), where the community of information literacy trainers meet and exchange ideas. These “Rencontres” include approximately 150 people, from France and other countries, especially Switzerland and Belgium. Foreign speakers are regularly invited (from Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, etc.) to present particular projects or to discuss the situation of information literacy in their country. Together with the seven URFIST centres and the academic libraries, since 1999 FORMIST has been the third major actor in the French landscape for information literacy. Of course, the objectives of FORMIST could not be achieved without pedagogical material to assess and catalogue. The Ministry therefore offered financing to help libraries and URFIST centres develop pedagogical materials, create new tools, and take part in professional groups dealing with information literacy. Between 1998 and 2003, 150,000 to 450,000 francs (25,000 to 75,000 euros) were allocated each year for the development of these documents and tools. As a result, 25 multimedia pedagogical documents and tools – online tutorials, guides ∗

38

http://formist.enssib.fr/

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to specialised disciplinary resources, teaching materials, and criteria for information competency – were developed, all freely available on the Internet and at the disposition of trainers in higher education institutions. Some of these institutions also participated in this creative movement by using their own funds or requesting grants from the Ministry to develop these pedagogical documents and tools, all of which were analysed and catalogued by FORMIST. In the years between 1997 and 2002, librarians’ appreciation of information literacy grew significantly. This was the result of continuous support by the Ministry (Sous-direction des bibliothèques) and by some experts and individuals particularly interested in the field of information literacy. This raising of consciousness was translated into a special issue (1999) of the most important professional journal for librarians in France, the Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France. This development was also reflected in the annual statistics directory established by the Sous-direction des bibliothèques. For the first time, in 2000 the national statistics concerning the training sessions organised by the French academic libraries were published alongside the other “more traditional” statistics. From 1995 to 2003, the number of students being trained annually had increased by 65%. In 2003, 64% of the courses were officially part of the regular curriculum, compared with less than 30% in 1995. Libraries had also been offering three times as many training hours in 2003 than they did in 1996, while 73% of the training sessions in 2003 were given to first-year students, in accordance with the 1997 law. 2002–2005: The Information literacy network and the European legislation In June, 1999, 29 Ministers of Higher Education from European countries signed the Bologna Declaration, which marked the first step toward the harmonisation of higher education systems in Europe. The new system promoted by the Bologna Process rests on three cycles: Bachelor (3 years), Master (2 years) and PhD (3 years). This new system (in French called LMD for “Licence, Maîtrise, Doctorat” – Bachelor, Master, PhD) began to be implemented in France in some universities as early as 2002. The complete transfer from the old to the new system was achieved in all universities in 2006. Since many training courses had been successfully implemented before the beginning of the Bologna Process, what effect would the application of the LMD reform have on information literacy education in universities? Would it be a good opportunity to develop such courses in places where they did not exist before? Would the information literacy courses be forgotten when universities reorganize their curricula to adapt to the LMD system? In fact, the implementation of the Bologna Process in French universities proved to be an opportunity 39

Frédéric Blin

for the development of information literacy courses. A survey led by a student librarian at ENSSIB as early as autumn 2003 showed that, because of the LMD reform, more academic libraries than ever before intended to organise information literacy training sessions. 88% were planning such courses for first cycle students, by comparison with 77% in the old system. For the second cycle, 86% were planning courses, by comparison with 60% before, and for the third cycle, 81%, by comparison with 60% before. The LMD also induced a better recognition of these training sessions in the official curricula. It also encouraged assessment of what the students learn. Inclusion of information literacy training sessions in official curricula: Previous system LMD 1st cycle / Bachelor 19% 36.8% 2nd cycle / Master 18.8% 26.7% 33.3% 58.3% 3rd cycle / PhD This inclusion in the curricula was complemented by the fact that most of these courses would now be compulsory (95% of the courses at the bachelor level, and 71% of the courses at the master level). Both developments reflect the greater attention given by university faculties and administrators to information literacy and to the work of libraries. It also gives libraries and faculties the opportunity to increase the length of the courses, even for first-year students, who can follow 12 to 20 hour courses on information literacy. The students can follow a progressive program of two or three semesters and to develop contacts and collaboration with each other (Dubois, 2004). We now have enough distance to evaluate the concrete results of the LMD reform on the information literacy courses organized by libraries. A national survey conducted in 2005 by the ADBU (the national Association of Directors of Academic Libraries) concerning the information literacy training programs implemented in French universities confirmed the first results obtained in the ENSSIB students’ 2003 survey. It showed that 35% of the training courses had been created in 2004, and 45.5% in the previous 3 years. Only a few highly specialized libraries had no information literacy program. 92% of university libraries offered information literacy courses to their students. Many universities used the LMD reform to include information literacy courses, some for the first time, in the general curriculum they presented to the Ministry for their four-year contract. One problem that arose after 1997 was that the libraries, with their limited staff, could not offer all the training sessions that the students required, especially in the first years. Two solutions could be adopted to solve this problem. The first was to train advanced students to be40

25 Years of a Continuous National Policy

come trainers themselves and offer the courses for undergraduate students. This mission of training the trainers could be assumed by the URFIST centres or by the library staff. But this solution is very expensive, because the student trainers are paid to teach the additional courses. The other solution was to implement online courses, which would require only limited staff and could accommodate a large audience. This solution was first initiated by the University of Paris-Nanterre in 2001, using the tool Reseaux.doc∗. More recently, it was also the strategic choice of the University of Antilles-Guyana, which has local settings in several islands in the Caribbean and in French Guyana. In some cases, these online courses on information literacy were integrated into general distance courses. In other cases, the library built its own online course with software specifically developed for that purpose. Significantly, the fourth Rencontres Formist (2004) was dedicated to experiments in distance learning for information literacy courses**. During 2002-2005 the Bologna Process gave birth to numerous local initiatives in universities, and also to new reflections and debates about pedagogy. The information literacy community became aware of the need for description of pedagogical documents, distance learning, and continuity of information literacy courses from high school to university to postgraduate education. New realities such as open access and open archives, electronic resources and evaluation, changes in scholarly communication, and new communication tools on the Internet also emerged and led the trainers to consider including them in their programs. The theme chosen for the sixth Rencontres Formist in 2006 was the new needs and habits of postgraduate and PhD students, in light of the changes in scholarly communication brought about by the development of blogs, wikis, tags, and other reference management software. The same questions and developments can be found internationally, and more attention is being paid to information literacy experiments abroad, through professional associations like IFLA or LIBER, as well as through professional exchanges, literature and workshops***. 2006: The network today Much has been achieved in information literacy education in France during the past 25 years. Academic libraries and the library community in general have now taken notice of the importance of training their students, and indeed the whole academic community, in information literacy skills, methods, and current ∗

http://reseauxdoc.u-paris10.fr/index.php. http://formist.enssib.fr/rubrique.php3?id_rebrique=II *** The Recontres Formist in 2003 was dedicated to international experiences in information literacy.

**

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topics. We can now assert that a true network exists between the following stakeholders: • the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, through the Office of Libraries and Scientific Information of the Department of Higher Education, which has the mission of evaluating the projects presented by the universities and funding (a major part of) the local initiatives in information literacy; • the academic libraries, which launch and implement the projects, collaborating with faculties and academic administrations; • the national Association of Directors of Academic Libraries (ADBU), which promotes the role of libraries in information literacy. The ADBU conducted a national survey on information literacy programs in 2005 and consequently launched a database in which academic libraries – and more generally universities – can describe the programs they have implemented*; • the URFIST centres, which have the mission of organizing specific training sessions for trainers (librarians and faculty teachers), elaborating pedagogical materials, and serving as a support for academic libraries in the field of information literacy; • and the ENSSIB, which, through FORMIST, evaluates pedagogical documents that are nationally produced, manages a central access point to those documents, offers expert advice on information literacy questions on an international scale, and trains future professional librarians in information literacy. Research on libraries in general and on information literacy in particular is still limited in France. There are several reasons for this. The discipline of “Library Science” does not exist in France as it does in other countries. The nearest equivalent in France is “information and communication science,” but in France librarians typically are not trained in this discipline. Instead they receive only a more practical and professional training given in specialised schools. In France, conducting research is not a mission given to professional librarians. Research activities are not considered a major component of their career. The active dedication of these five stakeholders is therefore all the more important in initiating debates and discussions, and in serving as places where professionals can exchange ideas on these issues. And in fact, each one of these “partners” expressed its voice in another special issue of the Bulletin des bibliothèques de France (2005) dedicated to information literacy, six years after the previous special issue on this topic. The results of this dedication of all these stakeholders can easily be seen in the annual statistics published by the Ministry. *

42

This database is called SInFoDoc: htt://dbu.fr/sinfodoc/presentation/index.php.

25 Years of a Continuous National Policy

Number of students trained by French academic libraries (1995–2005) 200 000 180 000 160 000 140 000 120 000 100 000 80 000 60 000 40 000 20 000

0 1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

Source: Ministry for National Education, Higher Education and Research, Enquête statistique générale des bibliothèques de l’enseignement supérieur, 1995–2005.

This chart shows a real increase in the number of students trained in information literacy by academic libraries in the last ten years, and especially since the 2003 implementation of the LMD system. Nonetheless, this number is still relatively small compared to the total number of students in French higher education institutions (a little more than 10% in 2005). More and more libraries now dedicate one member of their staff to the specific mission of organizing information literacy courses for students and coordinating the collaboration with faculty members and their local URFIST centre. The activities of the URFIST centres have also faced a significative evolution in the past five to six years, although they encountered some difficulties over the same period. While the overall numbers of training sessions and hours have remained relatively stable, an evolution can be seen concerning the audience. The percentage of faculty members has remained stable, but the percentage of students has diminished in favour of information professionals. This evolution reflects on the one hand the missions given to the URFIST centres in 1995, and on the other hand the greater role played by the universities and their libraries in training their own students in information literacy, as a result of the 1997 law and the Bologna Process.

Statistics of the URFIST network (1999–2006) 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Overall number of training sessions

418

427

420

346

327

340

383

424

Overall number of training hours

3185 3242 3112 2460 2848 2186 3111 2908

Overall number of people trained

7076 7301 6381 4986 4760 4786 6060 6452

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Statistics of the URFIST network (1999–2006) Percentage of information professionals

27% 25% 26% 22% 25% 29% 43% 36%

Percentage of students

53% 59% 58% 60% 56% 49% 33% 38%

Percentage of faculty members

7%

5%

7%

8%

9%

7%

8%

7%

During that time, the URFIST centres’ other activities – realisation of pedagogical documents and tools (such as assessments or online tutorials), research and communication activities, aid and support to the academic libraries in their geographic area, building and maintaining their web sites – grew as well and were more time consuming than before. The URFIST centres also reinforced their own network. They launched a common blog in 2005*, organized national workshops, and developed a unique software application for their administration. One of the major evolutions of the last two years, however, does not concern any of the “traditional” partners belonging to the library professional sphere. Researchers and teachers in the faculties have become more conscious of the need for better training in new forms of scientific communication as a result of the following developments: Open Access, institutional repositories, electronic resources, theses and journals, digitisation, Google Scholar and other Google book search, blogs, wikis and tags, as well as lifelong learning. In this regard, there is a risk that the role of libraries in training students in the use of these new resources might be questioned and contested by other potential stakeholders. The place of libraries in “TRAINING IN INFORMATION LITERACY”/ “TRAINING IN SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION” / “RESEARCH EDUCATION” might be one of the essential questions that will come to light when French universities initiate the process of pooling some of their resources in order to be more competitive on an international scale. This process, encouraged by the Ministry, has already begun in some regions. Perspectives for the future Perspectives for the future of information literacy in French universities, and in their libraries in particular, are therefore numerous. Many questions that were essential 25 years ago still need better answers: the collaboration between the librarian and the teacher / researcher; the inclusion of information literacy courses in the official curricula for all levels and all disciplines; the assessment and validation of the skills acquired during these courses; etc. The role of libraries in this regard still deserves better recognition, not only for their historical achievements, but more importantly for everything libraries can now offer in light of the new scientific information and communication realities. 44

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Unlike other countries, there are no official standards (such as the ACRL Standards) for information literacy competency in France. Instead, some local initiatives have tried to elaborate standards for their own needs, especially in universities that implemented a comprehensive program covering all levels and all disciplines, with a progression in the learning outcomes throughout the levels. Another national set of standards exists, however, concerning the skills needed to use the new technologies, especially computers and the Internet. It is intended for everybody: the pupils of primary and secondary schools, pre- and post-graduate students, and also future teachers during their initial training. It is therefore divided into several levels∗. One approach could be to adopt an official national set of standards for information literacy competency in all French universities, as has been done in other countries. This possibility does not receive the approval of everyone working in the field of information literacy. In fact, many doubt that effective and complete implementation of such a national standard is even possible, for several reasons: the complexity and diversity of local situations, the specificities of each discipline, constant changes in the world of information and communication. However, a national set of standards would perhaps initiate a more sustained reflection on the possible collaboration between school libraries and academic libraries, for instance on the difficult topic of transition from high school to university. Collaboration between school librarians and academic librarians is still very limited, both having their own professional circles and groups of interest. The crossovers that exist at present have to be further developed, and shared structures such as FORMIST and the URFIST centres can be places for the exchange of experiences. Another rapprochement that could be encouraged is that between librarians and archivists. Archives and libraries are becoming more and more concerned with the same questions, mainly because changes in information technology have changed the nature of documents. Knowledge management, data retrieval and archiving, digitisation, preservation – all these concepts are common to the two communities. They also share the challenge of giving their patrons the tools to efficiently find and use resources. This question has still not been widely discussed in France although there have been some debates recently on the similarities and differences between the different professions dealing with information management. We shall see if the coming years provoke further discussion between these groups. I will close these thoughts on another perspective, which of course is not the last one that could be mentioned. The elaboration of pedagogical documents and tools, like tutorials or thematic web sites, has contributed to a remarkable im∗

http://urfistinfo.blogs.com/.

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provement of the expertise on information literacy, not only on the part of the public they were intended for (mainly students), but also on the part of the overall professional community. Through this creative process, librarians were given the opportunity to rethink their profession, to analyse their missions in light of changes in their communities and to imagine new ways to respond to these evolutions. It is the duty of these librarians to create new pedagogical resources and imagine new ways of teaching information literacy. It is also their duty to share not only their expertise, but also their interest and enthusiasm with their colleagues – new or not so new – who still may not be convinced of the importance of teaching information literacy. The concept of the “teaching library” must be further developed, because it is becoming one of the most essential concepts that define a modern academic library. Conclusion The history of information literacy education in the last 25 years in France has been deeply influenced by the overall administrative and legislative evolution of the country. It was in fact torn between two contradictory elements: the need for a national policy on information literacy education, and the “decentralisation” movement intending to give universities more autonomy. The solution that was found and progressively adapted was that of an informal collaborative network involving partners with complementary missions. The Ministry of Higher Education and Research, as the principal funding body and policy-maker, supported and encouraged the development of this informal network. The fact that professional librarians were, and still are, working for the ministerial department in charge of academic libraries contributed to that continuous support as well. It has also ensured that libraries were, and still are, at the forefront of information literacy education. Important results have been achieved. Even if it is difficult to evaluate, students’ and faculty members’ level of information literacy, as well as the professional competency and awareness of librarians, has improved through the actions of the partners. Information literacy has now become well established in the library profession, public libraries becoming more and more active in this field as well. Other partners outside the library world, teachers and researchers first of all, are also progressively becoming more convinced of the necessity of educating their students in information and research, and of the necessity of learning how to use the new resources themselves. The French experience may seem very particular, mainly because of the cultural and administrative traditions of the country. However, the difficulties faced by French universities and libraries during the past 25 years in the field of in46

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formation literacy have not been much different from those in other countries. Today’s challenges are the same everywhere: mastering the transition from high school to higher education; learning to use and evaluate the new tools and resources; learning to perform efficient research; and learning to become an “enlightened” citizen. The exchange of experiences and thoughts that IFLA permits is therefore very valuable for everyone. We hope this short article will raise the interest of some readers. REFERENCES 1. Blin, F. and M. Stoll (2005). “La formation des usagers dans l’enseignement supérieur. État des lieux et perspectivas.” Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France 50 (6). 2. Bretelle-Desmazières, D., Coulon, A. and C. Poitevin (1999). Apprendre à s’informer: une nécessité. Évaluation des formations à l’usage de l’information dans les universités et les grandes écoles françaises. Paris. 3. Bulletin des bibliothèques de France (1999). 44 (1). 4. Bulletin des bibliothèques de France (2005). 50 (6). 5. Colas, A. (1999). “La formation à l’usage de l’information dans l’enseignement supérieur.” Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France 44 (1). 6. Coulon, A. (1999). “Un instrument d’affiliation intellectuelle. L’enseignement de la méthodologie documentaire dans les premiers cycles universitaires.” Bulletin des bibliothèques de France 44 (1). 7. Coulon, A. (1997). Le métier d’étudiant. L’entrée dans la vie universitaire. Paris: PUF. 8. Denecker, C. (1999). Les compétences documentaires: le traitement de l’information chez l’étudiant. Mémoire d’étude pour l’obtention du diplôme de conservateur des bibliothèques. Villeurbanne: ENSSIB. 9. Dubois, A.-C. (2004). LMD et formation à la recherche documentaire en bibliothèque universitaire: ruptures et continuités. Mémoire d’étude pour l’obtention du diplôme de conservateur des bibliothèques. Villeurbanne: ENSSIB. 47

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10. ENSSIB (2004). Retrieved documents/dcb/dubois.pdf.

from:

http://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque/

11. Duplessis, P. (2005). “L’enjeu des référentiels de compétences info-documentaires dans l’Éducation nationale.” Documentaliste 42 (3). 12. Noel, E. (1999). “Les formations à l’information en bibliothèques universitaires. Enquête nationale 1997-1998.” Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France 44 (1): 30-34. 13. Riondet, O. (2000). Former les utilisateurs de la bibliothèque. Villeurbanne: Presses de l’ENSSIB. 14. Tosello-Bancal, J.-E. (1990). “L’IST dans l’enseignement supérieur. 1984– 1989, tendances et perspectives dans les universités.” Bulletin des bibliothèques de France 35 (3). 15. “Les URFIST” (1983). Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France 28 (3): 285-287. Retrieved from: http://bbf.enssib.fr/sdx/BBF/frontoffice/1983/03/sommaire. xsp.

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CHAPTER III EMPOWERING PATIENTS THROUGH HEALTH INFORMATION LITERACY TRAINING∗ Rowena Cullen Abstract The purpose of this chapter is to outline some new approaches to information literacy instruction for health librarians and other information professionals. In the context of the increasing amount of health information on the Internet, the paper outlines a changing attitude to healthcare that is based on shared decision-making and informed consent. Health and other information professionals have a responsibility to promote health information literacy among health consumers. This includes mastering the basic principles of teaching and learning, and the evaluation of health information, including the techniques of critical thinking. The paper summarises some criteria for evaluating health information sources and applies these to four well-known health web sites, and concludes that all provide valuable and reliable consumer health information, but that none meet all the criteria advocated. There is an ongoing need for education of information professionals and health consumers to ensure that the potential benefits of health information on the World Wide Web are maximised. Introduction Health information professionals are faced with some new tasks in the emerging environment of the 21st century. The revolution in information and communication technologies (ICTs), and their impact on the dissemination of information, has resulted in a vast amount of professional and consumer health information becoming available on the World Wide Web. At the same time, there has been a change in the relationship between healthcare providers, and patients, or health consumers, that is driven by a number of factors. These include: • an increasing awareness of citizen, patient and consumer rights; • the demystification of the medical sciences; • the development of the principles of evidence-based healthcare; ∗

This paper was originally presented at the Health and Biosciences Section’s Open Session at the IFLA Congress for 2004, and was subsequently published in Library Review, Vol.54 (4), 2005, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

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• an increasing requirement for accountability throughout public and private services; • a new democratised and informed public. These influences are affecting healthcare service provision around the world, whether in developed or developing countries, and leading to an emphasis on informed consent in medical decision-making. They are also placing demands on health information professionals, who are responding by developing consumer health information services, either face to face, or on the web, and who are taking on board their role as intermediaries and educators, assisting health consumers to find the information they need, and teaching them to become ‘selfactivated, self-responsible’ health consumers. (Ferguson, 1991) In this new role, health information professionals must develop an understanding of several key elements of effective health information literacy education: the need for consumer health information, the principle of informed consent, information literacy and critical thinking, the principles of effective teaching, and the criteria for evaluating consumer health information resources. This chapter discusses each of these in turn, and evaluates briefly in conclusion some key resources in terms of the proposed evaluative criteria. The need for consumer health information There is an extensive literature about consumer health information, patients’ needs for health and wellness information, and the adequacy or inadequacy of much of the information that has been available to them over the years. This literature is based on two principles – the first is that because of their concern over health issues, for themselves, or their families or loved ones, people need to know how to maintain their health, how to treat minor illnesses and ailments, and to understand the nature of an ongoing or life-threatening condition, the treatment options available to them, and how to live with the condition. The second principle is that of informed consent. To participate in decisions concerning their own or their family’s health care, and take personal responsibility for their own health, people need information about the issues relevant to this, and to understand the risks and relative benefits of any treatment offered. Such information has not always been available, and health professionals have not always been willing to share it. This attitude was already changing. However, the Internet, with its vast resources of information available to health consumers, whether they are accurate and up-to-date or not, and whether they are intended for health consumers or professionals, has seen a revolutionary change 50

Empowering Patients through Health Information Literacy Training

in the amount and the quality of information available to health consumers to support their participation in decision-making. As Bob Gann, a longstanding advocate of consumer health, or patient information, comments in his 1986 Health Information Handbook, “information to enable participation in our health is important at all stages of our lives, but never more so than when we are faced with illness and become patients. . . before we are able to cope with ill health, and communicate with professional carers, we need a basic understanding of our bodies, how they work, and the terminology used to describe them. Many people lack this knowledge.” (Gann, 1986) Gann summarises, and cites research from the 1950s through to the 1980s that shows that patients, and their care-givers, lack information about the identification, placement and function of various organs, do not understand medical terminology for common conditions and diseases, do not feel that they have had a disease and its prognosis explained to them, and in a hospital or clinic setting do not know who provided treatment. He cites a now famous article by Clair Rayner, an ‘agony aunt’ for a popular British women’s magazine in the seventies, who lists the most common queries she deals with, (everything from anxiety over body changes at puberty, to reproductive health and childbirth, sexual and mental health problems), which she suggests highlight the failures of the National Health Service to respond to the concerns of patients, and the demand for health and wellness information. (Rayner, 1979) In addition to their general lack of knowledge about how their bodies work, most people, when confronted with the diagnosis of a major illness have difficulty retaining the information that may be given to them by their physician. Added to the problem of recalling new and unfamiliar verbal information about a newly diagnosed medical condition are added the factors of pain, stress, anxiety and sometimes fear, and what Faulder describes as a ‘class distinction’, factors now more commonly identified as socio-economic, ethnic and cultural barriers. Patients are put “at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to voicing their preferences or doubts to someone who speaks with a different accent, almost in a different language, and who is surrounded by the trappings of authority.” (Faulder, 1985) There is ongoing evidence reported in journals such as BMJ and JAMA, as well as the medical librarians’ literature, of health consumers seeking information on the web and elsewhere, on routine health issues, medical terminology, and treatment options, indicating that the situation has not significantly changed in the further two decades since the extensive research outlined by Gann. (Gann, 1986) Recent research into Internet use by the Pew Internet & American Life project shows at least 80% of all adult Internet users in the US seek health information on the Internet, covering a very similar range of con-

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cerns, and often because they have not obtained this information from their own physician. (Fox and Fellows, 2004) However, in providing services and training for health consumers, to help them better meet these needs, it is also important to recognize that not all health consumers and patients respond to health and disability issues in the same way. Research shows that while some people respond to a serious health concern by avoiding new and threatening information, and prefer to trust the physician, and accept any decision s/he makes on their behalf, others deal with the situation by finding out as much as they can about their condition, including the best and worst prognosis, and treatment options, as a coping mechanism. (Wilson and Walsh, 1996) These two groups are often referred to as ‘monitors’ and ‘blunters’, ‘monitors’ seeking to find as much information as possible about their disease, and take responsibility for it, and ‘blunters’ avoiding such knowledge in order to block out new and threatening knowledge. ‘Monitors’ and ‘blunters’ may be found amongst patients, and also among their nearest support, partner, or care-giver. In addition, Ferguson divides patients into ‘passive patients, concerned consumers, and health-active responsible consumers’. The latter he suggests, may seem aggressive in seeking out information about disease, alternative treatments, challenging their physicians and anyone else concerned with their care, and asserting control of the management of their illness. (Ferguson, 1991) We must recognize, however, that it may be the partner or care-giver who is the information seeker, and the ‘health-active consumer’ on the part of their ‘patient’. Health information professionals need to explore this knowledge of patients’ and carers’ information needs, and integrate it into their health information literacy programmes, whether these are for patients, or for clinicians, to support effective health care. The principle of informed consent Apart from emergency situations, where it may not be possible to obtain consent before urgent life-saving procedures are carried out, in most developed countries, the patient has some choice in whether or not to accept treatment, and what treatment to accept. If the prospective patient, or health consumer can access, authoritative information and evidence about the efficacy of different treatments and surgical interventions, they are in a much better position to discuss with their healthcare professional the various options, and in the end to make up their own mind and exert patient choice. This right is clearly articulated by the United Nations and the WHO (most recently in relation to genetic research), which acknowledges that:

52

Empowering Patients through Health Information Literacy Training

Patients’ rights vary in different countries and in different jurisdictions, often depending on prevailing cultural and social norms. Different models of the patient-physician relationship – which can also represent the citizen-state relationship – have been developed, and these have informed the particular rights to which patients are entitled. In North America and Europe, for instance, there are at least four models which depict this relationship: the paternalistic model, the informative model, the interpretive model, and the deliberative model. Each of these suggests different professional obligations of the physician toward the patient. For instance, in the paternalistic model, the best interests of the patient as judged by the clinical expert are valued above the provision of comprehensive medical information and decision-making power to the patient. The informative model, by contrast, sees the patient as a consumer who is in the best position to judge what is in her own interest, and thus views the doctor as chiefly a provider of information. There continues to be an enormous debate about how best to conceive this relationship, but there is also a growing international consensus that all patients have a fundamental right to privacy, to the confidentiality of their medical information, to consent or to refuse treatment, and to be informed about the relative risk of medical procedures. (WHO, 2004) These rights are variously dealt with in various countries. The original United Kingdom Patients’ Charter clearly articulated the patient’s right to “have any proposed treatment, including any risks involved in that treatment and any alternatives, clearly explained to you before you decide to agree to it.” (Press for Change, 1996) This charter now only applies to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England, patients’ rights are less well protected. The current NHS statement of patient’s rights explains only in general terms about the principle of Informed Consent, listing those from whom consent is not needed, and ending with the statement “the doctor must inform you of the nature, consequences, and any substantial risks involved in the treatment or operation, before you give your consent. It is for the doctor to decide exactly how much to tell you the patient.” (National Health Service, 2002) In Australia, patients’ rights are dealt with at state level – the primary level for delivery of care. The Victorian Government’s Health Information Service, therefore, promotes the Public Hospital Patient Charter, including, the right to participate in making decisions about treatment and care. “You should be fully involved in decisions about your care and be given the opportunity to ask questions and discuss treatments so you understand what is happening.” (State Government of Victoria, 2006) In the United States, such rights are voluntarily cov53

Rowena Cullen

ered by the American Hospital Association’s Patient’s Bill of Rights, which includes the statement that “the patient has the right and is encouraged to obtain from physicians and other direct caregivers relevant, current, and understandable information concerning diagnosis, treatment and prognosis . . . to discuss and request information related to specific procedures and/or treatments, the risks involved, the possible length of recuperation, and the medically reasonable alternatives and their accompanying risks and benefits, . . . [and] to make decisions about the plan of care prior to and during the course of treatment.” (American Hospital Association, 1992) However, none of these statements provide guidelines as to how much information patients need in order to participate in decisions concerning their care – decisions which often present considerable dilemmas and difficult choices for clinicians themselves – nor how and when it should be presented. And although, in the past, in theory, it has always been possible for a patient to exercise choice, in practice, patients had little alternative but to accept a doctor’s recommendation, and even the practice of ‘getting a second opinion’ was not always supported by all medical practitioners. Until recent times, the medical profession set the standard for the information which should be given at the time consent is obtained. With the advent of the Internet, and the extensive files of both consumer and professional health information on the World Wide Web readily accessible to patients, that control of both the amount and content of information available to patients has shifted to the patient rather than the physician. Helping them access it is a legitimate role for health information professionals. Information literacy Increasingly, information professionals are expected not just to help people find information, but to help them master the complexities of the information age and acquire life-long information problem-solving skills, the set of skills which are now usually referred to as ‘information literacy’. As we have seen, given the need for health consumers to be able to find, retrieve, evaluate and apply the information they need to care for themselves and their families, and to give informed consent to medical procedures, this mission to give people life-long information literacy skills, especially in the health area, becomes critically important. Information literacy is generally defined as something much broader than just library/information retrieval skills. Information literacy training should start, as literacy does, with the earliest stages of education, and the encouragement of critical thinking in the very young. Ideally information literacy should be a key part of all educational processes, from primary school through to graduate study 54

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at the tertiary level. It is a key skill which is essential for every citizen’s participation in democracy and the knowledge economy, as well as participation in decisions about each citizen’s health care. Information literacy is therefore not just a library issue, but a broadly based education and learning issue, and a health issue. However, the information professions can play a critical role in promoting it, and in teaching their users the skills that make an information literate person. Critical thinking One of the major components of life-long learning and information problemsolving that is generally discussed in conjunction with information literacy is critical thinking. This is a harder concept to define and to teach. Critical thinking involves curiosity, scepticism, reflection, and rationality. It has been defined as the formulation and use of criteria to make warranted judgements about knowledge claims. At a simple level it may be enough to teach children to ask a range of “Who, What, Where, Why, When and How” questions about a problem, and to evaluate the resources they find by a simple set of criteria such as those used by reference librarians, trained to assess the authority, accuracy, currency, scope and purpose of the sources they use. At a more complex level it involves challenging assumptions, and looking for the underlying characteristics of the reasoning involved in a statement, using the principles of informal logic to detect incorrect, false or misleading reasoning in statements, or propositions. Librarians rarely find themselves teaching critical thinking at this level unless they have some experience of the formal study of philosophy, but we can all try and develop in our own thinking, and when teaching information literacy skills to others, some simple techniques that focus on analytical questions, as well evaluative questions, in order to detect incorrect reasoning. Evaluative questions ask . . . Is this information relevant? Is this information likely to be accurate? How can I tell if this is current? What is the source of this information? Is it reliable? For each of these questions, criteria can be developed that will help people answer them with confidence. Analytical questions ask . . . What are the assumptions being made here? What evidence is offered here for this statement? How well does this evidence stand up to scrutiny. Are all sides of the question fully covered or is there an element of bias here? Tools such a critical appraisal can be used to help develop criteria here, or users can be pointed at resources which have been evaluated by others with appropriate skills to do so, such as the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews∗. ∗

The Cochrane library of databases includes systematic reviews of treatments according to established protocols and rigorous peer review. See the Cochrane Collaboration web site at: http:// www.cochrane. org for more information.

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Techniques of effective teaching, and learning Good teaching is based on good planning, and on determining the purpose of the instruction beforehand. Although every encounter between a librarian and a user, or health information professional and a health consumer may provide a ‘teachable moment’, thinking about good teaching means that we should approach even such informal encounters with well-honed teaching techniques, and within a well-developed teaching framework. There are a number of key steps which must be addressed. 1. Determine the purpose of the instruction, your goals, which must then be translated into simple, active, learning objectives for your clients (or readers, or the health consumer). 2. Identify what your audience already knows – start at their level, not above or below it, (avoiding assumptions about what terms they know, or don’t know, and making sure all complex terminology, whether it is library, web or medical terminology, is clearly and simply defined). 3. Incorporate critical thinking into your instruction. Teach people to scrutinize and challenge any information or source they come across, with simple techniques such as using ‘who, why, what, where, and how’, but also by providing them with criteria that they can take away and apply to information sources. 4. Decide how you will present the material (oral only, oral and written, electronic display etc., and if you need it in a range of languages) in a way that suits the needs of the audience – not your needs – and prepare well in advance, so that there is time for checking, and testing the material. This can apply to that magical one-to-one teachable moment as much as a formal class, if you have anticipated the moment, and have well-prepared material to hand. 5. Feedback and follow-up. It is critical that any instruction you give is evaluated by the people for whom it is intended to help. Focus on the learning objectives that you set and whether they are fulfilled – not whether people enjoyed the instruction, or the experience, or feel more confident, but whether they can now perform a task that they couldn’t before. Finding and evaluating consumer health information, and how to teach this While many of the principles outlined below focus on resources on the World Wide Web, it is important not to neglect print resources, and even audio-visual 56

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resources which are an important resource in the provision of consumer health information. The main criteria here are the same as for any information source offered to patrons by information professionals – that they should be accurate and up-to-date, from a trusted authoritative source, unbiased, clear in defining their purpose, scope, and audience, and at a suitable level for the intended use. These criteria become critically important in the field of consumer health information. The level of language used, and the need for clear definitions of any medical or technical terms are especially important, and it is quite common to see health information resources evaluated using ‘readability’ indexes such as the Fog Index (Miles, 1990) or the Flesch Index. (Flesch-Kincaid, 2006) But equally important is the trusted authority of the source, and the accuracy and currency of the content. There is a great deal of evidence that the majority of consumer health information sources on the Web do not meet these basic criteria, (Huang, 2003) including a recent URAC report which investigated both the quality of resources, and the ability of health consumers to identify quality information. (Greenburg et al. 2004) (There is also a great deal of printed information available that does not meet them either – but librarians have been dealing with that issue for a long time, and have hopefully relied on their own professionalism to carefully select on this basis the resources that they supply to health consumers.) Standards for web-based Consumer Health Information In the context of the World Wide Web, because health consumers are searching for information for themselves, and making their own choices about information sources, rather than relying on quality-filtered information supplied by a health practitioner or information professional, our professional responsibility is to teach and promote the principles of retrieving and evaluating consumer health information on the Internet. There are some excellent guidelines available for this purpose – the well-known Health on the Net Foundation (HON) Hon Code ‘badge’ assures users that certain principles have been followed. (Health on the Net Foundation, 2006) These include: authority (especially that any medical advice provide will only be given by a medically trained professional unless otherwise stated); complementarity (a clear statement that any information provided does not replace the relationship between a patient and their doctor); confidentiality (confidentiality of data relating to individual patients and visitors to a medical/health Web site, including their identity, is respected by the web site); attribution (date and source of information, and if possible a direct link to source data); justifiability (documentary evidence of any claims made); transparency of authorship (and contact details); transparency of sponsorship; honesty in adver57

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tising and editorial policy. Detailed guidelines in support of each of these are linked to each principle. The URAC Health Web Site Standards (URAC 2001) cover a slightly different set of principles, and suggest that overt statements should cover two aspects. Firstly “Disclosure:” what services are provided, and the terms and conditions of these; response times for email and other communications; what information is collected about users, and how any personally indentifiable information is handled; ownership of the site, significant investors, editorial and advertising policy etc. Secondly, under “Health Content and Service Delivery” accredited web sites are required to have: an editorial policy with clear statements about minimum qualifications of authors of health content, and policies for review of health content; claims of any therapeutic benefit must have ‘reasonable’ support, and false or misleading claims are not knowingly promoted; the name of the author and date of material is supplied; any conflict of interest disclosed. A third model, the Discern instrument, was developed by health information professionals to provide criteria for evaluating print materials, but has been found very useful for evaluating consumer health web sites as well. (Discern, n.d.) It is therefore recognisably closer to the ‘reference librarian’s’ mindset. Discern’s criteria ask: Are the aims of the site clear? Does it achieve its aims? Is it relevant? Is it clear what sources of information were used to compile the publication (other than the author or producer)? Is it clear when the information used or reported in the publication was produced? Is it balanced and unbiased? Does it provide details of additional support and information? Does it refer to areas of uncertainty? How good is the quality of information on treatment choices? Does it describe how each treatment works? Does it describe the benefits of each treatment? Does it describe the risks of each treatment? Does it describe what would happen if no treatment is used? Does it describe how the treatment choices affect quality of life? Is it clear that there may be more than one possible treatment choice? Does it provide support for shared decisionmaking? Each of these has a slightly different approach to the problem, and a different view of what will ‘empower’ health consumers to give informed consent, and participate in a shared decision about treatment. It is a difficult task to pick out from each some key principles to communicate to health consumers seeking information. The HON badge is likely to be on any consumer health site of value, unless there is a valid reasons for it not to be sought (see the reference to this in relation to the NOAH site below). If the HON badge is present we can assume that the HON criteria have been tested already, and only need to integrate the URAC criteria concerning commercial integrity and independence of editorial policy with those of Discern. We emerge with a set of new criteria which fall 58

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under two distinct headings: “commercial integrity,” and “complete health information.” A Suggested set of skills for effective health information literacy Thus, by pulling together the principles of teaching and critical thinking, we can focus on some key principles which will be able to be conveyed to consumers or library users in a classroom situation, a face to face interchange, or on a web site, where health consumers are given advice, and some instruction in searching and evaluating information. A range of learning objectives, that is, a set of tasks that the participant can demonstrably complete at the end of the instruction, that could be set for this purpose would include: • search the World Wide Web for health information using appropriate keywords to retrieve health information; • apply a set of quality criteria to resources identified, based on known quality instruments; • identify portals and specific web sites providing high quality health information from trusted sources; • find whether sufficient information is provided in a resource about authorship, and evaluate the clinical or professional credentials of author, and that these are appropriate for the level of advice being given; • confirm that all material is sourced, and if possible linked to source ( e.g. in PubMed Central); • check date of material, and that dates on source material are recent, or if not recent, there is an acceptable reason for using older material; • show that the information provided contains appropriate explanations and language levels for non-medical readers; • demonstrate that risks as well as benefits of any treatment are discussed; • demonstrate that more than one alternative treatment is discussed, including the potential risk of no treatment; • identify if there is a potential for conflict of interest between commercial concerns and the health information content; • ensure that all appropriate steps are taken to secure the privacy and confidentiality of the user. 59

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While it would not be possible to cover all of these in a short session, and some depend on prior understanding of key concepts that might also have to be taught, they are indicative of the kinds of learning objectives that are appropriate to consumer health information education. However, in a simpler context, maybe you can fall back on the truest friends any information professional ever had, the six honest serving men, ‘Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How’: Who wrote this, why did they write it, and why do they want me to read it? What are they trying to do in this web site? Where did they get their information from? When was it written, when was the research carried out? How can I tell if this is unbiased and honest information? Evaluating some of the best consumer health web sites Finally, we can now look at some of the best and most well-regarded consumer health information web sites and see how they rate on our criteria (which include the standard reference ones of authority, purpose, scope, accuracy, currency and level) and our new health information criteria of commercial integrity, and complete health information. Below we take a quick look at NOAH, Medline Plus, InteliHealth, and the site of the National Cancer Institute NOAH (New York Online Access to Health)∗ NOAH is a consumer health information portal which was originally developed by New York Public library, the New York Academy of Medicine, and other New York city libraries. It contains carefully filtered links to other web sites on a vast range of topics, and tries to find information in Spanish, and other European languages. On the basic criteria of authority, purpose and scope, NOAH rates very highly, being very open about its mission and policies. It covers a very extensive range of subjects in English and Spanish where possible. Team members are named, and most information is dated. However, most of the information provided comes from external sources, already evaluated for quality, according to NOAH’s stated principles. It is to these links we must turn to evaluate the resource further. Links to relevant information are organised under broad headings (typically Basic facts, Medications and treatments, Issues and concerns, and Clinical trials). For example, a query on Lupus links to several major institutes carrying out research and promoting information about the disease including the Lupus Foundation – all information provided here is clear, the authors and their creden∗

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tials well identified, treatment options are discussed in some detail. A weakness is that material is not properly sourced, and some of the articles on the Foundation’s web site, written by staff, and approved by their Patient Education Committee are not very recent. But in other respects the information meets the criteria well. Noah has received a number of awards for excellence, e.g. from the MLA, and CAPHIS, but does not carry the HON badge (possibly because it is primarily a portal). MedlinePlus∗∗ MedlinePlus is the health consumer part of the National Library of Medicine’s public access Medline database, PubMed. It carries the authority of the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. Its purpose, and editorial policies are clearly stated on the ‘About MedlinePlus pages;” it maintains a high level of accuracy and is updated daily. The level and language of the information provided are clearly indicated in headings used. MedlinePlus is a mixture of original information sources and links to other information. Using the same search, on Lupus, an initial simple explanation is given and a list of subdivisions of the topic, which are similar to NOAH’s (covering basic information, clinical trials, coping, diagnosis, symptoms and diagnosis and disease management). Initial links are only to other parts of the National Institutes of Health, of which National Library of Medicine is a part, in particular the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, but other links are to many of the same institution that the NOAH site links to (e.g. Mayo Clinic), and many link back to the National Lupus Foundation. As is the case with information provided on the Web by many of the NIH Institutes, although staff leading the research cited are named, and there are frequent links to other information sources, and clinical trials, the information does not fully meet all the requirements for a named author, date of information, and source references. Under treatment there are also a number of links (including one to the Lupus Foundation) but no clear-cut path through these to ascertain treatment options and the risks and benefits of each. Intelihealth∗ The Intelihealth site is sponsored by Aetna, and uses the Harvard Medical School’s Consumer Health Information service. It relies on the authority of the ∗∗ http://www.medlineplus.gov/. ∗ http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/408/408.html.

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Harvard Medical School staff contributing and overseeing its content, but its purpose is less clear. Its ownership by Aetna, and the presence of advertisements and news items suggests a more commercial orientation, and its content is simpler and less informative than Noah and MedlinePlus. Because of its commercial focus it carries statements about its commercial integrity and editorial distance from commercial interests – more so than the other ‘public good’ or research foundation sites looked at above where this is perceived to be less of an issue. Its information on a topic such as Lupus is more basic, although there is helpful information about Lupus and pregnancy, and there are links to research institutes such as the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, and the Lupus Foundation. The information is given a ‘last updated’ date, and ‘content is reviewed by faculty of the Harvard Medical School,’ but carries no named author. Searching on drugs listed as effective for this disease takes you to the American Pharmaceutical Society’s Safemedication.com web site which provides information on side effects, and risks. It is hard to garner from this process, and other links, the information that the informed consumer is entitled to. Other news articles available on the site covering hot topics, and recent research carried out at Harvard are signed and dated. The site carries the HON code badge, and lists many awards it has won, but still links to the now defunct Hi-Ethics organisation. National Cancer Institute* The site carries the full authority of the Institute, and its purpose is part of the Institute’s mission of disseminating information about cancer and research on cancer, one of many statements about the work of the Institute that is easily accessible on the web site. The scope is enormous, and covers all types of cancer, and all known treatments. It is current – to the extent of discussing new and unproven treatment, and at the cutting edge of knowledge. Accuracy is exemplary for a field where there is still much controversy. There is more original material on this site (not unexpectedly since it is the wealthiest cancer research institute in the world), but that information is admirably presented to respond to consumer concerns. Headings on the initial page cover clinical trials, research and basic information, and lead quickly to information by type of cancer. A substantial amount of information is in Spanish, and there is a great deal of information about the institute, its activities and its funding sources. A lot of the original material presented is presented as both patient information and clinician information. A range of treatment options for all cancers is listed, and discussed in some *

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depth, covering risks and benefits, payments, and availability, of treatments. Clinical trials are discussed in depth. Although none of this information is dated and sourced, and no authors are listed, the freely accessible PDQ (Physician Data Query) database contains peer-reviewed evidence-based summaries (preferably based on the accepted medical gold standard for clinical research, the randomised controlled trial) of prognostic and treatment information, supported by references to the source information. Easy-to-read summaries for patients provide the most up-to-date research information available. The difficulty with this site, as with any comprehensive consumer health web site of any depth, is that the site is overwhelmingly large, and only the most pro-active and persistent consumer would explore the riches it contains. The site does not display any quality badges. Our mission, should we accept it . . . In summary, none of these sites fully meets all the criteria that we are advocating, to fully cover the principles outlined by the Health on the Net Foundation (HON), the URAC accreditation standards, and DISCERN. It is a ‘big ask’, and sites can become cluttered in striving to present all the information that consumers may want. However, by any criteria, using sources such as NOAH, MedlinePlus, and the National Cancer Institute‘s web site empowers health consumers in a way inconceivable in the past. This is a new and exciting role for health information professionals – to ensure that health consumers know their rights, and are able to find and evaluate high quality health information in order to meet their needs for whatever level of information they seek, and are able, if they choose, to participate in decisions concerning their health and treatment, as ‘health-active, health responsible’ consumers. It is a challenge taken up by many health information associations, including the Medical Library Association of America, which carries on its web site assistance to consumers in identifying and evaluating web sites. The information it carries would meet some of the learning objectives discussed earlier, and cover criteria listed in some of the ‘quality instruments’ we have been discussing, though not as thoroughly as this paper suggests is the ideal. The challenge for those involved in information literacy instruction, and in the provision of consumer health information, is to further explore and develop the standards we as information professionals should be setting in place to enable us to play a constructive part in the revolution in health information taking place around us.

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REFERENCES 1. American Hospital Association. AHA Management Advisory (1992). “A Patient’s Bill of Rights.” Retrieved 11 September 2006 from: http://www. patienttalk.info/AHA-Patient_ Bill_of_Rights.htm. 2. Citizens Advice Bureau (n.d.). “Advice Guide.” Retrieved 25 September 2006 from: http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/em/index/family_parent/health/nhs _patients_ rights.htm. 3. Discern (n.d.). Retrieved 19 September 2006 from: http://www.discern.org. uk. 4. Faulder, C. (1985). Whose Body is it? The Troubled Issue of Informed Consent. London: Virago. 5. Ferguson, T. (1991). “The Health-activated, Health-responsible Consumer.” In: A. Rees, ed. Managing Consumer Health Information Services. Phoenix, Az: Oryx. 6. Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test (2006). Retrieved 19 September 2006 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_Readability_Test. 7. Fox, S. and D. Fellows (2004). “Internet Health Resources.” Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved 12 September 2006 from: http: //www. pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=95. 8. Gann, R. (1986). “The Informed Patient.” In: The Health Information Handbook (pp18-47). Aldershott: Gower. 9. Greenburg, L., D’Andrea, G., and D. Lorence (2004). “Setting the Public Agenda for Online Health Search. A White Paper and Action Agenda.” Washington: URAC. Retrieved 12 September 2006 from: http://www.urac. org/documents/URAC_CWW_Health_%20Search_White_Paper1203.pdf. 10. Health on the Net Foundation (2006). Retrieved 12 September 2006 from: http://www.hon.ch/. 11. Huang, Q. (2003). “Creating Informed Consumers and Achieving Shared Decision Making.” Australian Family Physician 32 (5): 335-341. 64

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12. Miles, T. H. (1990). “The Fog Index: A Practical Readability Scale.” In: Critical Thinking and Writing for Science and Technology. [New York]: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Retrieved 19 September 2006 from: http://www. as.wvu.edu/~tmiles/ fog.html. 13. Press for Change (1996). “The Patient’s Charter for England.” Retrieved 11 September 2006 from: http://www.pfc.org.uk/node/633. 14. Rayner, C. (1979). “Reality and Expectation of the British National Health Service Consumer.” Journal of Advanced Nursing 4: 69-77. 15. State Government of Victoria. Department of Human Services (2006). Victorian Government Health Information. “Public Hospital Patient Charter.” Retrieved 25 September 2006 from: http://www.health.vic.gov.au/patientcharter. 16. URAC. Health web site Standards. Version 1.0 (2001). Washington D. C.: URAC. Retrieved 12 September 2006 from: http://www.urac.org/prog_ accred_ process.asp?navid=accreditation&pagename=prog_accred_HWS. 17. Wilson, T. and C. Walsh (1996). “Information Seeking Behaviour”. In: Information Behaviour: An Inter-disciplinary Perspective. Ch. 2. British Library Research and Innovation Report 10. Retrieved 15 September 2006 from: http://informationr.net/tdw/publ/infbehav/index.html 18. World Health Organisation. Genomic Resource Centre (2004). “Patients’ Rights.” Retrieved 15 September 2006 from: http://www.who.int/genomics/ public/patientrights/en.

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CHAPTER IV BREAKING INTO UNEXPLORED TERRITORY: A CASE STUDY OF THE INFORMATION LITERACY INITIATIVE AT THE CAVE HILL CAMPUS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES Ingrid Iton Abstract It is now universally accepted that today’s professionals need to possess skills which will allow them to access, evaluate and use information if they are going to function effectively and efficiently in the workplace. The Caribbean experience differs significantly from countries in the developed world. At the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) an Information Literacy Initiative was launched in the Fall Semester of 2003. The Initiative was launched without any addition to library resources and the majority of the library professionals had no experience working with new students. The following case study details the process followed and highlights some of the lessons learned in developing this Initiative. Introduction The global information-intensive economy has brought many changes and challenges to all nations. In this new economy, the availability of information is growing at an exponential rate and the technologies which are used to store and access this information continue to change rapidly. In small developing nation states such as those in the Caribbean, the combination of these two factors constitutes a serious threat to the region’s ability to compete effectively in the global marketplace simply because the region does not have a workforce which is skilled in the efficient use of information. These global developments have placed significant demands on educational institutions, especially universities, one of the major changes being that education is now seen as “an on-going activity rather than a once-off preparation for a career” (George and Luke, 1995). Developing lifelong learners is now viewed as central to the mission of higher education. The UWI recognizes this, having identified and articulated its commitment to facilitating lifelong learning as part of its strategic vision over the next five years. In recognition of the need to move beyond bibliographic instruction and aid in the facilitation of lifelong learning, the Main Library of the 67

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Cave Hill Campus of the UWI restructured its orientation programme for firstyear students to include information literacy (IL) component at the beginning of the academic year 2002/2003. This decision and the experience gained during the first two years of the programme provided valuable lessons which helped to inform the character of the IL Initiative that was eventually implemented. The Institution The UWI is a regional university which offers both undergraduate and graduate programmes. Three campuses located in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados serve the University and the student population that primarily includes nationals from Belize on the Central American mainland, and nationals from fifteen Anglophone West Indian islands, all of which had or have colonial relationships with Britain. Nationals from the non-campus countries attend one of the three campuses or are served through distance education. The Cave Hill campus is the main campus for students from the non-campus countries. Each campus offers programmes in the Arts and Humanities, and Natural and Social Sciences, while on each campus there is at least one specialty faculty member. At Mona, in Jamaica, and St. Augustine, in Trinidad and Tobago, full medical degrees are offered. Law is offered at Cave Hill in Barbados, and Veterinary Medicine, Dentistry, Agriculture and Engineering are offered at St. Augustine. Information Literacy Preparedness in the Caribbean In the Caribbean, the degree of knowledge about libraries and information research skills students possess when they enter our University in many ways influences their attitudes toward learning about the library and how to use its resources effectively. The absence of libraries in most high schools across the Caribbean, the absence of qualified professionals in those which do exist, and the disparities in the level of development among the public libraries – the only other library to which most of them have access – highlight two critical factors: most of our students have had limited exposure to libraries and many have had no prior instruction in basic library skills. Most UWI students represent a generation of individuals born in an era of rapid technological change. In the absence of a learning culture at the pre-tertiary level of education that teaches basic library skills, the use of the Internet has influenced their attitudes toward the perception and use of libraries, the role of the librarian and the research process. This post-modern student population is juxtaposed with their older, more mature counterparts of the modern era. The latter are already active participants in the work force (some with many years of work experience and others with only 68

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a few years), and many of them are now re-entering a formal classroom for the first time since graduating from secondary school. Like their younger counterparts, many of them have had little experience with using libraries and library resources; most of them are not technologically savvy and many tend to be intimidated by technology. In the absence of national and/or regional policies to address information literacy, the onus is on the institution, and very often the academic librarian(s) within the institution, to pioneer change to bring the library into the mainstream of academic teaching within the university. It is against this background that the Information Literacy Initiative at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies began its evolution. The Preliminary Years Library orientation was a prerequisite for library membership for all first-year students when the IL component was added to the programme. The programme included a one-hour walk-through of the Library and a one-hour lab session focused on IL. Students were expected to sign up for scheduled sessions, the majority of which took place during the first two weeks of the semester. By the end of the first year a number of conclusions emerged: 1. Despite requiring attendance as a pre-requisite for library membership, the number of students attending the sessions was fewer than expected; 2. Teaching the IL module outside of a formal class and before students attended any discipline-specific classes did not appear to be the most effective delivery method; and 3. Not all first-year students were exposed to the same content. There was a need to conduct abridged sessions throughout the semester for students who never attended the sessions offered at the beginning of the semester. The Pilot Project While the programme continued to be offered in the same format for a second year, the IL Coordinator worked with the Faculty of Humanities to pilot the IL module in one of the faculty’s foundation courses at the beginning of the academic year 2004/2005. The UWI requires all students to successfully complete a number of these foundation courses (which are not offered for credit) in order to graduate. The course chosen for the pilot was English for Academic Purposes (FOUN 1001). This course was a compulsory course for all Humanities students, but an elective for Science and Social Science students. A full-time fac69

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ulty member delivered the course lectures, but tutorials were led by a number of part-time adjunct faculty who changed from year to year and sometimes semester to semester. During semester one, two one-hour sessions were taught with sessions scheduled to begin the week students were given their first research assignment in the course. However, in semester two, tutors requested that the library sessions not be scheduled during regular class times. As a result, students were required to sign up for their library sessions outside of these regularlyscheduled class times. Piloting the module in one of the foundation courses was viewed by the Library as a solution to the problem of poor student attendance. However, making the module a part of the foundation course did not alleviate this problem. Of the 775 students registered for the course over both semesters only 210 attended the sessions. Further, the IL Coordinator never had the opportunity to meet with and discuss the purpose and content of the module with tutors prior to teaching. Consequently, the tutors instructed their students to report to the Library at the appointed time for their session but did not themselves attend any of the sessions. Course Integration The poor level of student attendance was the biggest challenge facing the IL Coordinator. Efforts were necessary to secure greater ‘buy in’ by the faculty so that the module could have more of an impact on the students. At the end of the second semester the IL Coordinator met with the Dean of the Faculty and presented a report on the pilot project. The report addressed issues such as, student and faculty attendance, the importance of working together, embedding IL assignments into the course, and provided some insight into the type of feedback received from students who had completed the assessment of the module. The timing of this meeting proved to be a turning point in the evolution of the IL Initiative. The IL Coordinator learned that a number of changes were to be made to the way the foundation courses would be structured. These changes were to take effect at the beginning of the academic year 2005/2006. The University had decided to offer the courses for credit and that full-time instructors would be recruited to teach the courses and course work would be the method of assessment. The Instructional Development Unit planned to convene a workshop in August on “Planning Instruction and Assessment” for all newly-recruited instructors. The IL Coordinator approached the Instructional Development Specialist and initiated discussions on making a presentation at that workshop. This resulted in the IL Coordinator delivering a presentation entitled “Integrating In70

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formation Literacy Competencies into an Instructional Module.” The presentation introduced the concept of IL, provided some brief anecdotal evidence of the previous year’s experience, and illustrated how the competencies could be included as learning outcomes in an instruction module. During the workshop the instructors worked on revising the syllabi for their various foundation courses, providing a unique opportunity for the IL Coordinator to become involved in the process of revision. The result of this collaboration was better integration of the IL module into the course content and greater recognition by the instructors of the importance of teaching these skills to students to enable them to conduct better research. Of significance in these interactions was the decision to have an annotated bibliography as one of the outputs for the two courses chosen. Course Content and Delivery From the outset, the volume of information content included in the IL module was influenced by the perceived need to be as exhaustive as possible, given the characteristics of our student population. In the initial design, ideas for the curriculum were influenced by examples drawn from the literature (MacDonald, Rathemacher and Burkhardt, 2000; Paglia and Donohue, 2003) and an assessment of a number of web tutorials. However, over time, and as a result of feedback from assessments completed by students and practical experience, much of this content was either revised or excluded altogether. In particular, students commented negatively on their inability to test the skills to which they were being exposed. They felt that the information presented was overwhelming. Some also remarked that the sessions were too long, while for others they were too short. These comments underscored the need to scale down the number of areas covered in the session and to devote more time to the basics. The experience gained from these early years proved to be beneficial in the design of the content for the integrated module. The revised IL module which would be taught in the two foundation courses, English for Academic Purposes (FOUN1001), and Rhetoric II: Writing for Special Purposes (FOUN1008), focused on topic definition, identification of key concepts, synonyms and related terms, the construction of search statements, criteria for evaluating sources, citation styles, and annotated bibliographies. EBSCO Host’s Academic Search Premier was the database used for demonstration and practice. Students worked individually on their course assignment in FOUN1001, and in groups on a topic assigned by the IL Coordinator in FOUN1008. The experience in semester one demonstrated that students needed to have more time for practice and for assistance from their instructor and the IL Coordinator during the sessions. This resulted in some changes to content and delivery in semester two. The section on 71

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citation styles and annotated bibliographies was expanded and placed on the WebCT course sites for each course. This change allowed students to have more time to research information on their topics and receive feedback and assistance from both their instructor and the IL Coordinator. Lessons Learned Programme Development While the Library had previously conducted some bibliographic instruction sessions, bibliographic instruction was not a formal institutionalized programme on the campus. As such, there was no infrastructural base on which to build IL capacity, and at the time the Initiative was launched none of the librarians had any experience or training in IL instruction or programme development. These were just some of the challenges which had to be faced when the Library made the commitment to transition from bibliographic instruction to IL instruction. Even though there are many models of best practices documented in the literature (Walter, 2000) that could have been adopted, each educational context is different. The educational landscape in the Caribbean is not only impacted by the absence of national and/or regional policies addressing IL, but also by the unavailability of financial and human resources to ‘fast track’ IL development, age and gender factors of the student and general population, and the nonacceptance of librarians as teachers within the academic community. In the final analysis, the Cave Hill experience demonstrated that experimentation and trial and error were the best approach to developing a system suited to the local context. In a situation where both librarians and faculty are at the beginning of a learning period, the experience reinforced that the best approach to creating a viable programme was to make incremental changes over time. At every stage in the evolution of the programme, the incremental changes made resulted in a better product than previously existed, and at each stage both librarians and faculty members were gradually building relationships based on collaborative partnerships. In the absence of a culture of collaboration at Cave Hill, the top down approach of working through advisory boards to first craft a campus-wide programme to guide IL instruction would never have achieved the same level of success. Rather, success was more attainable in the Cave Hill context because, as Thompson (1993) suggests, “… a process of seduction with the first steps taken by the librarian …” was used. This approach is one way to create a critical mass of IL advocates who can then be mobilized to help in the development of a campus-wide programme. And, within the Cave Hill context it was necessary to begin by building support through education and exposure from the ‘bottom up.’ 72

Breaking into Unexplored Territory

Course Content and Delivery Donovan and Zald (2004) believe that because IL and information are closely connected with technology, understanding technology is “a foundational skill for citizens of the information age.” As can be seen from the number of available web-based tutorials, many universities have embraced the technology as the tool for the delivery of IL instruction. However, this was never considered to be a viable option for Cave Hill. Our task was not only to build skills, but also to change attitudes to be able to successfully build those skills. Given the level of student expertise the early modules were too information-intensive and ultimately the teaching of some skills had to be eliminated in preference for basicand lower-order skills, critical in laying a foundation for the subsequent development of higher-order skills. However, the need to concentrate on basic- and lower-order skills has implications for the continued development of our programme. First-year students receive only two hours of IL instruction within the foundation courses. Our challenge beyond the first year is how to create a sustainable product which reaches all intended students and covers all the content critical to producing graduates who possess the skills to be lifelong learners within the time frame of a threeyear degree programme. Our experiences over the past two years have reinforced our belief that face-to-face instruction is the optimum approach for the Cave Hill situation. These other considerations do highlight the fact that in order to effectively respond to these challenges, utilizing technology will be necessary. However, before introducing the technology, many students will need remedial training in the use of the technology. And, with the increasing number of part-time mature students entering the university, issues of available time, workload and family commitments cannot be ignored, especially when the financial costs of the technological solutions are taken into consideration. Conclusion Significant strides have been made since the inception of the Initiative and the experiences and lessons learned have been invaluable in helping to lay a solid foundation for continued development at the campus level. However, over the next year, more emphasis will have to be placed on identifying potential collaborative librarian/faculty relationships to further assist in demonstrating by example the benefits of teaching IL skills in academic teaching and student research. Financial and human resource constraints will be the major challenges we face as we strive to take the programme to the next level. However, while a reality for developing countries, this challenge is also an opportunity to unlock 73

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our creative potential in the design and development of best practices in the developing world.

REFERENCES 1. Donovan, M., and A. Zald (2004). “Defining Moments: The Role of Information Literacy in the 21st Century Construct of Education.” In: K. Gresham, ed. Information Literacy and the Technological Transformation of Higher Education. Ann Arbor, Mich: Pierian Press. 2. George, R., and R. Luke (1995). “The Critical Place of Information Literacy in the Trend Towards Flexible Delivery in Higher Education Contexts.” Paper presented at Learning for Life Conference, Adelaide, Australia. Retrieved 20 January 2004 from: http://www.city.londonmet.ac.uk/deliberations/flex. learning/ rigmor-fr. html. 3. MacDonald, M.C., Rathemacher, A.J., and J.M. Burkhardt, (2000). “Challenges in Building an Incremental, Multi-year Information Literacy Plan.” Reference Services Review 28 (3): 240-247. 4. Paglia, A., and A. Donohue (2003). “Collaboration Works: Integrating Information Competence into the Psychology Curricula.” Reference Services Review 31 (4): 320-328. 5. Raspa, D., and D. Ward (2000). The Collaborative Imperative: Librarians and Faculty Working Together in the Information Universe. Chicago, Illinois: ALA. 6. Thompson, G. (1993). “Faculty Recalcitrance about Bibliographic Instruction.” In: L. Hardesty, J. Hastreiter, and D. Henderson, eds. Bibliographic Instruction in Practice: A Tribute to the Legacy of Evan Ina Farber. Based on the fifth Earlam College-Eckerd College Bibliographic Instruction Conference, February 5-7, 1992. Ann Arbor, Mich: Pierian Press. 7. Walter, S. (2000). “Case Studies in Collaboration Lessons from Five Exemplary Programs.” In: D. Raspa and D. Ward, eds. The Collaborative Imperative: Librarians and Faculty Working Together in the Information Universe. Chicago, Illinois: ALA.

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CHAPTER V IMPLEMENTING INFORMATION LITERACY EDUCATION FOR UNDERGRADUATE NURSING STUDENTS Bill Koch, Susan Porter and Beverley Forsyth Introduction This chapter describes the development and delivery across five Australian university campuses of the unit “Information Literacy for Nurses,” a program for first-year nursing students that contributes to new students’ understanding and appreciation of researching information sources, academic literature and scholarly writing. The program supports students in the transition to university study and addresses many of the issues new students struggle with, particularly in referencing, acknowledging the work of others, and plagiarism. It helps students develop the skills of critical thinking, analyzing, writing, and scholarly values. The development of this unit was driven by academic staff concerns about students’ standards of information literacy. Examples of concerns included third-year undergraduate students being unaware of the existence of indexing tools such as CINAHL or Medline, the American Psychological Association (APA) referencing system, or what constituted plagiarism. In an attempt to resolve this clearly unsatisfactory situation nursing librarians at all five of the university’s campuses were also consulted and a unit called “Information Literacy for Nurses” emerged from these discussions, based on the standards recommended by the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) (2001). The unit was introduced into the Nursing and Midwifery curriculum in 2003. It was the first unit offered by La Trobe University to provide a framework for students in information literacy and information management. Its success in preparing students for the modern technological health workplace and fostering graduate attributes appropriate for nursing in the 21st Century has led to the development of other units now offered in Health Sciences. The unit modules are framed by the information principles, standards and practice developed by the CAUL and adopted by Australian university libraries (Bundy, 2004). With respect to information literacy, this unit differs from others offered in other Australian university libraries precisely because the CAUL standards were used as the starting point and the course content was built around the standards and projected outcomes.

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Unit structure For ease of discussion the strategies and materials used in implementing this new subject are described in the context of individual CAUL standards. Librarians developed the materials and taught Standards Two and Three. Standard One: Recognition of the need for information and extent of the information needed Lecture material focused on types of information nursing students at a tertiary institution might need to access in their studies and clinical practicum and how these may be accessed via the library catalogue, CIHAHL or MEDLINE. By using the assignment topics as the basis for their searches, the students could see the extent of available literature in these areas. At the course level, the unit introduces nursing students to the skills that they will develop throughout their student and professional lives. It aims to produce skilled nurses who understand why they need to participate in evidence-based practice to improve patient outcomes and the status of the profession. Standard Two: Access of needed information effectively and efficiently The focus of lecture material was on developing effective search strategies from simple text string searches to more advanced searching techniques, such as the use of wild card characters and truncation, Boolean searches, or the use of MESH sub-headings. In addition, techniques for limiting searches, such as specifying full text only, English language only, or a range of years, were demonstrated in class. This followed the building block strategy suggested by Weaver (1993) whereby students are introduced to new skills incrementally while refining skills taught in previous sessions. However, it should be stressed that, in recent years, class sizes have ranged from 170 to 260 at one campus alone. Thus, it was simply impractical with available human and physical resources to run small group classes on multiple occasions within the faculty or library computer facilities. This reality necessitated demonstrating relevant skills to the entire class in one lecture theatre supported by online exercises student could access to practice the relevant search strategies. The realities of tailoring individual information literacy subjects to local issues, such as target audience, purpose, budget, staffing, facilities, and time, are discussed more fully by Grassian and Kaplowitz (2001). Students could sign up for subsequent non-compulsory computer tutorial sessions if they felt they still needed additional assistance with these skills. All stu76

Implementing Information Literacy Education for Undergraduate Nursing Students

dents requesting these extra sessions were accommodated and in many cases it was evident that they had already learned the necessary skills and attendance at the sessions merely served to reaffirm that they had achieved the relevant learning objectives. A range of multiple choice questions facilitated self-testing and feedback for those students who elected to use these materials. In the early years of the unit co-coordinators at each campus sometimes had different ideas about what was important. Thus, some parts of the curriculum were not exactly the same across campuses. For example, one campus would view computer literacy as a component of information literacy, while others would not. In turn, assessment tasks were often different among campuses, which led to concerns about the equity of grading. These issues were resolved in 2006 with the removal of computer literacy from the curriculum. Standard Three: Critical evaluation of information and its sources and incorporation of selected information into existing knowledge base and value system The principal focus in relation to this standard was the differentiation of refereed and cited articles from both refereed and non-refereed sources, using Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory, CINAHL, and accessing journal web sites. In addition, the evaluation of web-based materials was discussed to help students differentiate between authentic, validated, trustworthy sources and possibly invalidated, untrustworthy information. Several tools for this purpose are provided by Cornell University Library (2006). The ability to discriminate and to critically evaluate the reliability and authority of the morass of information available, particularly in the online environment, and to identify information that is significant and valid is recognized as an important graduate attribute for lifelong learning. This unit provides first-year nursing students with a unique opportunity to acquire these transferable skills early in their university studies, allowing them the time to further refine, practice and develop them prior to graduation. Standard Four: Classification, storage, manipulation and redrafting of information which has been collected or generated Two hours of lectures were allocated to expected structure and presentational standards. This covered issues such as headings, substantiation of claims, referencing, and general presentational standards detailed in the APA Publication Manual, (2001). The fact that many students may not have practiced writing recently or were apprehensive about exactly what was expected was also recog77

Bill Koch, Susan Porter and Beverley Forsyth

nized. To allay such anxieties, examples of assignments which had received either A and B grades were provided online along with an overview of all the mistakes that had been made in the previous years’ submissions. During specified time slots an open door policy was in effect, allowing students to come to discuss drafts or other issues related to their work with academic staff members. To maximise the students’ likelihood of success in this and other subjects, the following logistical decisions were also made. After consultation with the academic staff teaching other first-year subjects, the due date for the first assignment in the information literacy subject was set several weeks ahead of assignments for other subjects to allow students to reflect on feedback provided and incorporate this into subsequent assignments. Additionally, the information literacy subject overall grade was derived from two assignments, with the first potentially contributing up to a maximum of 40% of the total grade, and the second contributing 60%. The logic of this arrangement was that students who performed poorly on the first assignments could act on the feedback provided and improve their performance in the second assignment, and, as a result, manage to pass the subject. Standard Five: Expansion, reframing or creation of new knowledge by integrating prior knowledge and new understandings individually or as a member of a group The second subject assignment required students to work in groups of four and submit one assignment. Individual students could bring the feedback they had received on their writing skills, plus their own individual knowledge and prior understanding of the task to the group. This was also a preparation for the teamwork to be encountered within clinical practice. Standard Six: Understanding of the cultural, economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and how to access and use information ethically, legally and respectfully Nurses are frequently entrusted with private information concerning patients and they also need to access databases that contain personal, private and confidential information. There are both ethical and legal issues that relate to obtaining and using that information. Lecture material explored both the legal and ethical expectations that govern nursing practice. The two codes which govern professional nursing practice in Australia are as follows:

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Implementing Information Literacy Education for Undergraduate Nursing Students

The Code of Professional Conduct for Nurses in Australia (2003) requires nurses to comply with the law, to respect the wishes of the client, assist in making an informed decision by providing information, and that a nurse must treat personal information obtained in a professional capacity as confidential. The Code of Ethics for Nurses in Australia (2002) states that nurses hold in confidence any information obtained in a professional capacity, use professional judgement where there is a need to share information for the therapeutic benefit and safety of a person, and ensure that privacy is safeguarded. In a further attempt to raise students’ awareness of Standard Six, the first assignment required students to discuss “Plagiarists Should Be Pitied Not Punished.” Standard Seven: Recognition that lifelong learning and participative citizenship requires information literacy Lifelong learning was stressed in many sessions, especially those dealing with information literacy as it impacts clinical practice. The quote of Alfred Lord Whitehead the English philosopher and mathematician who stressed that “knowledge does not keep any better than fish” reported by Scarfe (2005) was used as the basis for this discussion. Supplementary resources A variety of online resources were available to students via WebCT™. Figure 5.1 shows the subject home page and the variety of resources students could access. Figure 5.1: Home page of Information Literacy WebCT

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Mail tools and discussion boards were provided for students to implement or respond to discussion on subject-related matters. Furthermore, prior to submission of their assignments, they could submit them to Turnitin™, providing each student with an original report of their work. As can be seen in Figure 5.2, all lecture presentations for the entire subject plus adjunct activities for each lecture, were available beginning with week one. Figure 5.2: Subject content resources provided for Information Literacy

As shown in Figure 5.3 (see p. 81), the additional resources section contained examples of previous assignments graded as high distinction or distinction, plus an overview of all mistakes noted in 2005 assignments detailing how points were lost. Benefits of providing a school-level multi-campus unit about information literacy There have been considerable advantages in embedding an information literacy unit at the school level. These advantages can be grouped into supporting the achievement of mission-critical objectives, benefiting teaching and learning of the subject, and the establishment of collaborative relationships.

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Mission-critical objectives Graduates of La Trobe University are expected to be information literate (Academic Development Unit, 2004). Having a dedicated unit ensures information literacy is Figure 5.3: Additional resources provided for Information Literacy

embedded in the curriculum. The unit is also used by the School of Nursing and Midwifery to introduce the subjects of plagiarism and academic misconduct, as educating new students about this is a University priority (La Trobe University, 2006). The unit also has the potential to be used as a model for other schools at the University, or by librarians in other subject areas within the Library’s information literacy program, with substitution of subject-specific resources. The WebCT syllabus and the Library modules in particular, is a comprehensive, modular treatment of the subject, easily customised to the local campus situation. New activities can be introduced easily into the online menu because the WebCT template is not limited in its ability to incorporate new types of resources and activities. Learning and teaching Staff on the Library’s information desks report that queries from first-year nurses are fewer than for other groups of students, and of a higher level. One reason for this is that queries which would normally be directed to the Library 81

Bill Koch, Susan Porter and Beverley Forsyth

information desk are frequently answered on the subject web site where fellow students or lecturers will answer questions posted to the discussion list. Also, when they do contact the information desk, the students have usually already attempted searching and locating articles, and are seeking assistance to improve the results they already have found. In contrast, other new students who have had no introduction to the Library or its research tools are noticeably different when they present themselves at the desk, as they often have not attempted a search on their own, or it is common for them not to know why, when, or how to use or even locate the databases. The unit accommodates different learning styles and computer abilities, by teaching in different modes. The online modules cover the theoretical basis of the skills, supported with practice opportunities in the form of online and interactive tutorials. These modules allow students who are confident they have acquired relevant core skills to bypass them. Some students may prefer the lecture style presentations or the smaller tutorials where they are provided with a computer and individual assistance from the lecturers. The librarians also provide personal consultations, particularly for students whose first language is not English, and for mature adult returning students. Collaboration The teaching of information literacy skills and the collaborative approach between academic staff and librarians has been well documented. Several authors such as Fox, Richter and White (1989), Hodson-Carlton and Dorner (1999), and more recently, Schloman (2001), have discussed the integration of information literacy into the curriculum through such collaborations. Schloman in particular recommends this approach, asserting that it offers an opportunity to maximise resources and expertise while achieving the greatest impact. Specific positive outcomes within the University reported thus far include heightening the prominence of the Library and its services within the University, and, through their involvement in this unit, enhancing the reputation of the librarians as academics. Evaluation of subject In an attempt to monitor the impact of iterative changes to the unit an online survey was undertaken at the mid-point of the semester at the largest campus. This formative evaluation sought comment on 18 issues grouped around three core themes: student skills prior to undertaking the subject, skills learned as a result of undertaking the subject, and student perceptions of the resources provided. Formative evaluation is particularly useful as it also allows any problem82

Implementing Information Literacy Education for Undergraduate Nursing Students

atic areas to be addressed while program delivery is still underway (Nan, 2003). A total of 87 students out of a class of 243 students responded, representing a 35% response rate. As can be seen in Table 5.1 (see p. 83) only 23 students (26%) indicated that they previously understood the purpose of indexing tools. This was expected as the class contained entering graduate students and others who had previously undertaken prior tertiary studies before enrolling in the Bachelor of Nursing program. Interestingly, only 7 students (8%) indicated that they previously knew why CINAHL and MEDLINE were important tools for professional nurses and only 11 Table 5.1: Skills prior to undertaking the subject

Item Before I studied NSG11LIL I already understood the purpose of indexing tools Before I studied NSG11LIL I knew why CINAHL and MEDLINE were important Before I studied NSG11LIL I already knew how to use CINAHL and MEDLINE

Strongly Agree

Agree Neutral

Disagree

Strongly Disagree

4

19

22

33

9

4

3

10

31

39

2

9

2

16

58

students (13%) stated they already knew how to use CINAHL and MEDLINE. These questions were included because, at the end of academic year quality assurance appraisal, many of the previous student cohorts had indicated they already knew how to use these tools. By way of contrast 74 students (85%) in this survey indicated that they learned these skills in the information literacy subject, emphasizing both the need for such a subject within the curriculum, and the positioning of it early in the curriculum. The next set of questions focused on students’ perception of how well the subject had assisted them in acquiring a range of information literacy skills. These data, presented in Table 5.2, indicate that students were generally positive in their responses, suggesting the subject had assisted students in acquiring a variety of key skills. 83

Bill Koch, Susan Porter and Beverley Forsyth Table 5.2: Skills acquired as a result of undertaking NSG11LIL

Item

Strongly Agree

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

Strongly Disagree

19

50

9

8

1

23

46

12

4

2

5

36

23

18

5

I can find the location of journals held in the university library serial collection by using the shelf location information which is provided in following format

12

28

19

18

10

I can identify which articles are available in full text

29

41

8

8

1

I know the difference between refereed and non-refereed materials

25

39

16

7

0

I can find the articles I am looking for in the journal databases by using keywords I am able to limit searches to more accurately focus on the subject matter required I can construct a search strategy using Boolean operators such as AND, OR, & NOT

Survey results show two areas need more attention in the next iteration and delivery of the subject, as 23 students (26%) indicated the subject had not taught them how to use Boolean operators, a necessary skill when undertaking literature searches. Additionally, and of greater concern, 28 students (32%) indicated that the subject had not taught them how to locate journals within the library’s serial collection. This feedback also emphasises the importance within any subject of undertaking formative evaluation (Nan, 2003), as this concern came to light at the mid-point of the subject, and therefore left ample time to address it by revising the subject matter. Lastly, the evaluation addressed student perceptions of subject resources and presentation. The responses to these issues are presented in Table 5.3. As discussed in the context of subject content, a variety of additional online resources were provided to assist students in skills acquisition and in preparing assignments. However, as can be seen in Table 5.3, 13 students (15%) indicated the re84

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sources were inadequate. Specific examples of additional resources requested are discussed in the context of subsequent open-ended questions. It was heartening to note that 70 students (80%) felt that teaching sessions were well presented, although in the open-ended questions calling for any other comment about the subject, a few students indicated that they felt that there was unnecessary overlap. This was mainly in the area of study skills advice and overview of available resources, covered during orientation week. One issue previous cohorts of students raised was compulsory attendance at tutorials, as they felt that they had already mastered the material covered in tutorials in Table 5.3: Perceptions of the subject resources and quality

Item

Strongly Agree

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

Strongly Disagree

1

32

41

12

1

33

37

8

8

1

10

45

24

5

3

Overall I am satisfied with the subject

3

37

34

12

1

The subject was well organised

7

48

21

10

1

The teaching sessions were well presented The decision to allow students to decide whether or not to attend tutorials was correct

many instances and, as a result, did not gain anything by attending. Tutorials had been non-compulsory in response to this earlier feedback. Students could undertake a variety of self-assessment activities available on the subject web site and then make an informed decision whether to attend the tutorial which addressed that topic. Despite this built-in flexibility, eight students (8%) indicated that tutorials should remain compulsory. It should be stressed that students could sign up for as many tutorials as they felt they needed and no student who wished to attend was ever excluded. As can also be seen in Table 5.3, the majority of students were satisfied with the subject and felt that it was well organised. Also included were three openended questions, asking students to identify the most and least useful online resources provided. A final question afforded students the opportunity to make any other comment they wished about the subject. 85

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Two features of the WebCT site stood out as most useful. The discussion forum was most popular, with 30 students (34%) citing the benefits of this for sharing resources or resolving problem issues related to the subject. The second most popular feature was the inclusion of the PowerPoint™ slides to be used in all subject lectures. The inclusion of complete transcripts of what will be discussed in lectures, not just the PowerPoint™ slides presented in class, were additional suggestions. Providing examples of assignments and examples of where previous students lost points was thought to be useful by 19 students (22%). A range of other feedback provided little consensus. Interestingly in response to identifying the least useful feature of the WebCT site, 26 students (30%) indicated they found all features to be useful, with one or two individual identifying features such as student help, calendar, e-mail and discussion sections as being of limited use. In response to the final survey question allowing students the opportunity to make any other comment about the unit a range of positive, negative, and often contradictory views were expressed including the request for more emphasis on keying the subject matter to nursing. Nevertheless, some of the feedback was useful and may lead to the integration of the subject matter. The future In 2006, the University recognized the sustained work that has gone into the planning and delivery of the unit since its inception in 2003 by awarding it one of the La Trobe Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. The University has nominated the library component of the unit for a national award through the Carrick Awards for Australian University Teaching. This endorsement was something of a welcome surprise for the teaching team as it indicates to us the work that is going into the information literacy program is viewed as beneficial to the students. Receiving this Citation has reenergized the team, who will continue to develop and adapt the curriculum to meet the everchanging information needs of nurses in the 21st century.

REFERENCES 1. American Psychological Association (2001). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Washington, D. C.: APA. 2. Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council (2002). Code of Ethics for Nurses in Australia. Canberra, Australian Capital Territory: ANMC. 86

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3. Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council (2003). Code of Professional Conduct for Nurses in Australia. Canberra, Australian Capital Territory: ANMC. 4. Bundy, A., ed. (2004). Australian and New Zealand Information Literacy Framework: Principles, Standards and Practice. 2nd ed. Adelaide, South Australia: Australian and New Zealand Institute for Information Literacy. Retrieved 17 May 2006 from: http://www.caul.edu.au/info-literacy/ InfoLiteracyFramework.pdf. 5. CAUL (2001). Information Literacy Standards. Retrieved 18 May 2006 from: http://www.caul.edu.au/caul-doc/InfoLitStandards2001.doc. 6. Cornell University. Olin and Uris Libraries (2006). Evaluating Web

Sites: Criteria and Tools. Retrieved 9 December 2006 from: http://www.library.cornell. edu/olinuris/ref/research/webeval.html. 7. Fox, L.M., Richter, J.M., and N. White (1989) “Pathways to Information Literacy.” Journal of Nursing Education 28: 422-425. 8. Grassian, E.S., and J.R. Kaplowitz (2001). Information Literacy Instruction: Theory and Practice. New York: Neal-Schuman. 9. Hodson-Carlton, K., and J.L. Dorner (1999). “An Electronic Approach to Evaluating Healthcare Web Resources.” Nurse Educator 24 (5): 21-26. 10. La Trobe University. Academic Development Unit (2004). Assessment. Retrieved 17 May 2006 from: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/adu/assessment.htm#4. 11. La Trobe University (2006). Academic Policies: Academic Misconduct. Retrieved 27 May 2006 from: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/policies/ academicmisconduct.pdf. 12. Nan, S.A. (2003). “Formative Evaluation.” In: G. Burgess and H. Burgess, eds. Beyond Intractability. Retrieved 18 May 2006 from: http://www. beyondintractability.org/essay/formative_evaluation/. 13. Scarfe, A. (2005). “How Does Teaching Inform Research? Whitehead and the Teacher-Scholar Model.” Presented at the Making Noise About Teaching and Learning Symposium, University of Saskatchewan Process Philosophy Research Unit, Gwenna Moss Centre, Friday, February 4, 2005. 87

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14. Schloman, B. (March, 2001). “Information Literacy: the Benefits of Partnership.” Online Journal of Issues in Nursing. Retrieved 18 May 2006 from: http://www.nursingworld.org/ojin/infocol/info_5.htm. 15. Weaver, S.M. (1993). “Information Literacy: Educating for Life-long Learning.” Nurse Educator 18 (4): 30-32.

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CHAPTER VI INFORMATION LITERACY, UNIVERSITIES, AND THE ACCESS TO INFORMATION Estela Morales Campos Abstract Latin America faces significant disadvantages with regard to the information demands of a knowledge society. Currently, great emphasis is placed upon knowledge as an asset, as well as on its application and development. The region has dual scenarios, for our cultural and educational development is asymmetric – our countries have, at the same time, illiterate groups and university communities with access to different information resources. Latin American universities have undertaken programs to teach information literacy that include the use of technologies, the benefits and uses of digital societies, and full access to knowledge. In Latin America, information literacy programs are offered mainly in universities. However, only 3% of the total population is enrolled in universities. Our universities’ great challenge is not to acquire technology, but to train their students and faculty to learn “how to acquire the knowledge and what to do with that knowledge.” To this end, Mexican and Latin American universities have structured different programs to support information literacy and encourage access to information. Access to information and information literacy Information and knowledge societies acknowledge two moments in an intellectual and social process, one as consequence of the other – having access to information is not enough if we do not read such information, think about its content and apply its message. Education today, therefore, favors the possession and use of knowledge, fosters reflection, and, above all, develops attitudes and capabilities that allow its application and innovation. Moreover, the use of adequate and updated knowledge is sought according to the project or issue to solve within the family, institutional, national or local environment, as demanded by a social and economic development program. More than ever, an information society must encourage and promote access to information, and following that, develop knowledge and foster communication, discussion, acceptance or disagreement in a democratic, free and equal environment where differences, diversity and plurality are acknowledged and ac89

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cepted. Access to information must be established using multiple approaches and methods, from the current environment of a technologically over-exposed society to more primary contexts that range from printed paper to oral and audiovisual information modes. Dual scenarios are common in Latin American countries where there are different demographic cores with unequal development levels and access to information and communication technologies are not widespread. Therefore, only a few may have access to knowledge by oral transmission, others to the printed text, and even fewer to the full use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Certainly the starting point is facilitating the access to information, but it is also essential that such information exists, is known, available and easy to reach, read and use (Morales Campos, 2006). Such actions must be guaranteed by public policies promoted and authorized by the State and the society. If people do not know what to do with the accessed and recovered information, we do not move forward on the knowledge path; therefore, it is necessary that both child and adult know that information is necessary to solve life issues, large or small, personal or national. Likewise, it is essential that they know how to locate answers to a myriad of vital questions, and to assess, select, and apply proper and relevant information. Such scenarios lead us to two basic actions in the literacy and cultural world: read and write, two actions that come from a continuous cycle that may include: read and examine, analyze what we read, and write about it (Rama, 1984). This reflection on reading and writing is accompanied by the identification of the educational needs a knowledge society demands – a society with changed values that produces rich knowledge-generation, based on competition among individuals and markets, on production and the consumer economy, and on the supply and demand of products and services in the same way that cultural, educational, and research products are created. Globalization and knowledge society demands compel the modernization of teaching-learning processes, and offer educational models for learning to learn and lifelong learning, crucial in the development of a critical and reflective thought process for creating, recreating and applying knowledge. Today, the knowledge society is a reality and a globalization need; the key to deal with it is education that is privileged by knowledge. The urgent and necessary response of the world library community to such demands has been the creation of a permanent program for information literacy, compelling the librarian to cooperate at the same level as the faculty to develop the skills and knowledge in the use of information that the information and knowledge age requires. In her article in La instrucción de usuarios ante los nuevos modelos educativos (Lau and Cortés, 2000), Lizabeth Wilson states that when an individual is information literate, it is because he or she has developed skills to: a) notice 90

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when information is needed, b) locate, assess and effectively use information, and c) meet his/her needs--questions, tasks and decision making. This individual, therefore, knows how to: a) learn to learn, b) organize information, and c) find and use information. Response from professional associations and international bodies As early as 1990, Michael Eisenberg and Robert Berkowitz (1990) summarized the set of information literacy problems, outlining logical stages to be performed in solving an information problem; such stages were known as the Big Six Skills: 1) task definition, 2) information seeking strategies, 3) location and access, 4) use of information, 5) synthesis, and 6) assessment. On this discursive basis, several professional associations delivered a response in the form of rules, standards or guidelines to collaborate in the teaching-learning process of the knowledge school/university: 1. In the United Kingdom, the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) proposed “Information Skills in Higher Education” (1999). 2. In the United States, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) proposed “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education” (2000). 3. In Australia, the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) submitted “Information Literacy Standards” (2001). 4. In México, a group from the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez (UACJ) published Standards on information literacy in higher education=Normas sobre alfabetización informativa en educación superior (Cortés, González, Lau, et al., 2004). This document has influenced some other countries in Latin America. In the early twenty-first century, multiple international bodies, concerned about the development of countries, issued strong and open statements on education quality, acknowledged as the only way to reach development, improve life conditions, reduce differences and provide welfare. Bodies such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) or the World Bank (WB), in its educational arrangement, highlighted the value of information as crucial to the construction of the type of knowledge that the information and knowledge society stage requires.

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At the Millennium Meeting 2000, an international seminar, “Latin America and the Caribbean: Challenges facing the Millennium Development Goals,” organized by the International Development Bank (IDB), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL, in Spanish), was held on June 10th and 11th , 2002, in Washington, D.C. The seminar hoped to establish an international common minimum (recognizing differences in national and regional scope) and achieve globalization as a positive strength for all the world’s inhabitants, based on unequal benefits distribution. Four areas were highlighted: poverty, education, gender equity and child death rate. In that respect, CEPAL adopted the objectives and goals of Latin America and the Caribbean reality, taking into account any requirements on information matters, “to improve regional capacity to produce relevant information timely,” considering information as an input for education and social and economic growth, and so promote democracy based on human rights respect, where we emphasize the right to information and knowledge (“Construcción de sociedades del conocimiento: nuevos retos para la educación superior=Constructing Knowledge Societies: New Challenges for Tertiary Education,” and, “La CEPAL ante los objetivos del desarrollo del milenio,” 2001). At the 15th Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State, organized by the Ibero-American States Organization for Education, Science and Culture (OEI in Spanish), in Salamanca (“XV Cumbre Iberoamericana de Jefes de Estado y de Gobierno,” 2005), the focus was on the region’s educational weaknesses and its relation to social and economic differences in our countries. The aspects below are essential: 1. Literacy, unfortunately not information but basic literacy; learning the alphabet and other cultural codes to allow access to fundamental knowledge; 2. Access to knowledge society; 3. Ibero-American Agreement for Education (“Pacto Iberoamericano por la Educación”), promoting a sustainable investment in this field and an exchange of foreign debt for investment in education, and 4. Information and education for the integration of Ibero-America, acknowledging cultural diversity and inequality. In 2005, at the High-Level Colloquium on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning, held in the Alexandria Library, November 6th to 9th, participants stated that, “Information Literacy and lifelong learning are the beacons of the Information Society, illuminating the courses to development, prosperity and freedom” (UNESCO, 2006). 92

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Illiteracy in Latin America Illiterate population is defined by the UNESCO as the population that is not able to read and write a simple and brief text related to their daily life. Unfortunately, we have countries in this region with high illiteracy rates, such as Haiti, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and Bolivia, and other ones, like the Dominican Republic, Peru and Brazil, with some illiteracy problems. Latin America is a region of contrasts, both within each country and among countries. Thus, we also have examples of countries with a low illiteracy rate, reflected in better development opportunities, such as Barbados, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, and Colombia. In the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI, 2000) census of population México reported alarming figures. From a total of 105,699,000 inhabitants, there is an illiterate population of 10,569,000, of which 62% are women and 38% are men (see Table 6.1). Table 6.1: Illiteracy in México (2004)

Total Population 105 699 000

Women 6 553 338

Men 4 016 562

Total 10 569 900

Percentage 10%

Table 6.2: Illiteracy in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNICEF, 2004)

Country Argentina Barbados Belize Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Ecuador El Salvador Guatemala Haiti Honduras Jamaica

Total population 38 372 000 269 000 264 000 9 009 000 183 913 000 16 124 000 44 915 000 4 253 000 11 245 000 13 040 000 6 762 000 12 295 000 8 407 000 7 048 000 2 639 000

Literate 37 220 840 269 000 203 280 7 837 830 161 843 440 15 479 040 42 220 100 4 082 880 11 245 000 11 866 400 5 409 600 8 483 550 4 371 640 5 638 400 2 322 320

Illiterate

Percentage

1 151 160 0 60 720 1 171 170 22 069 560 644 960 2 694 900 170 120 0 1 173 600 1 352 400 3 811 450 4 035 360 1 409 600 316 680

3% 0% 23% 13% 12% 4% 6% 4% 0% 9% 20% 31% 48% 20% 12% 93

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Country México Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Dominican Republic Santa Lucia Surinam Trinidad y Tobago Uruguay Venezuela

Total population

Literate

Illiterate

Percentage

105 699 000 5 376 000 3 175 000 6 017 000 27 562 000 8 768 000

95 129 100 4 139 520 2 921 000 5 535 640 24 254 560 7 715 840

10 569 900 1 236 480 254 000 481 360 3 307 440 1 052 160

10% 23% 8% 8% 12% 12%

159 000 446 000 1 301 000

143 100 392 480 1 274 980

15 900 53 520 26020

10% 12% 2%

3 439 000 26 282 000

3 370220 24 442 260

68 780 1 839 740

2% 7%

Such figures are representative of the Latin American region’s contrasts. These, in turn, have an impact on library and information services, because, in many cases, before information literacy programs can be developed, there is a need to start and support basic literacy programs for children and adult populations. People not only have to decipher the alphabet, but also practice and perform reading as an avenue to knowledge and know-how’s useful for life, together with an arithmetical language and the acquisition of cultural codes for integration into community life, jobs and even welfare. Due to such deficiencies and inequalities of different social groups in a country, library services have to face their responsibilities, depending on the socioeconomic characteristics of the environment and on sound continuous information literacy programs in other universities, rather than those programs in basic education and in school and public libraries. To accept such a reality also means that we are addressing only a small percentage of the population. For example, in Mexico, with a total population of 105,699,000, there are 223,680,000 individuals registered in higher education, for a total of 2.11% (see Tables 6.3 and 6.4) (La educación superior en el mundo 2006. La financiación de las universidades, 2006). Table 6.3: University registers in Mexico 2000–2002

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Total Population

Higher Education Register

Percentage

105 699 000

2 236 800

2.11

Information Literacy, Universities, and the Access to Information Table 6.4: University registers in Latin America 2000–2002

Country Total Population Registered students Argentina 38 372 000 1 724 397 Bolivia 9 009 000 289 723 Brazil 183 913 000 3 479 913 Chile 16 124 000 584 657 Colombia 44 915 000 878 174 Costa Rica 4 253 000 144 899 Cuba 11 245 000 144 972 El Salvador 6 762 000 109 946 Guatemala 12 295 000 152 798 Honduras 7 048 000 114 606 México 105 699 000 2 236 800 Nicaragua 5 376 000 93 401 Panama 3 175 000 126 551 Paraguay 6 017 000 82 265 Peru 27 562 000 837 635 Dominican Republic 8 768 000 286 134 Uruguay 3 439 000 95 634 Venezuela 26 282 000 803 755

Percentage 4.49% 3.21% 1.89% 3.62% 1.95% 3.40% 1.28% 1.62% 1.24% 1.62% 2.11% 1.73% 3.98% 1.36% 3.03% 3.2% 2.78% 3.05%

University and information literacy programs If there is currently a special emphasis on the value of knowledge and in the possession of such knowledge by students, as well as in its application and enrichment, we also have to accept that, recently, the conceptual poverty of contents of many university programs has been exaggerated, as well as the negligence of human inherent activities and attitudes as a fundamental aspect of social groups: reflective thought, reading and abstraction. Development-leading countries have already passed, in a natural way, from the trinomial school + books + information to the necessary and unavoidable trinomial: reading + reflection-abstraction + knowledge. Notwithstanding, many countries seeking such development, such as Latin American countries, have lived and are still living cultural and educational cycles and processes in a simultaneous way, not sequential. The passing from one trinomial to the other is not as easy as it seems, because while some groups are still illiterate, others have already begun to discover reading, and others, already immersed in reading, move naturally in the daily use of information, and dedicate time to reflect and fully value the possession of knowledge. 95

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In 2000, the World Bank, in its document “Knowledge Societies Construction: New Challenges for Higher Education,” favored accumulation and application of knowledge as key factors within economic development, as well as the role played by the technological revolution of information and communication as an impetus for growth, as a way to access information and data interchange (“Construcción de sociedades del conocimiento: nuevos retos para la educación superior=Constructing Knowledge Societies: New Challenges for Tertiary Education,” 2001). Therefore, the current economy is based on the creation and use of knowledge and know-how. Within the strategic framework for future bank support, the close relationship between investigation and instruction, with the improvement and extension of ICT infrastructure, is highlighted to reduce the digital gap between industrialized nations and developing countries, as well as to promote the use of information and knowledge through national or multinational agreements. Within the context of the world economy’s, universities’ and the knowledge society’s demands, Latin American universities have started information literacy programs with different names such as user education, information skills development, information for learning to learn, etc. The names may vary, but all of them join in supporting education for youth that will teach them to learn how to learn during their whole lives and possess the necessary skills to understand the advantages of applying the acquired knowledge, and to know how to seek and use information to reach a solution, start an action or a take a decision. That is, the librarian, in a clear way, is part of a multidisciplinary team that, in educational programs, encourages the students to get involved in the knowledge process and participate in the construction of a local and global life and society where the benefits of development may reach everyone. Such programs include the use of technologies, the benefits and uses of a digital society and a full access to knowledge. They also include access to all methods to register knowledge, not only technology registers (ICTs), but to information that may be obtained from them. Universities in Mexico and in other Latin American countries have been concerned about the development of information users for years. With education modernization programs filling the knowledge society’s needs, the design of information literacy programs and co-participation with the academy to facilitate the development of youths to become future professionals became imperative. In Mexico, public university libraries work in a collegiate way, organized in networks and councils. In 1997, summoned by the UACJ, they formed a work group that periodically organizes the Information Skills Development (DHI, in Spanish) University Programs National Meeting. The participation has been enthusiastic and productive; each time there are more Mexican universities in96

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volved, sharing experiences with other Latin American and American institutions. They have published and adopted several statements submitted to those academic authorities that have given them the reference framework needed to work with the faculty – information literacy programs which, step by step, have been influencing the development of teachers and students: a) “Statement. Information Skills Development in Higher Education Institutions in Mexico.” Oct. 10, 1997 (Lau and Cortés, eds. Desarrollo de Habilidades Informativas en Instituciones de Educación Superior en México, 2000). b) “Statement. Library Function in Educational Models Oriented to Learning.” Oct. 8, 1999 (Lau and Cortés, eds. La instrucción de usuarios ante los nuevos modelos educativos, 2000). c) “Statement. Standards on Information Literacy in Higher Education.” Oct. 11, 2002 (Cortés, et al., Normas sobre alfabetización informativa en educación superior, 2002). Such standards have been instrumental in implementing, improving and guiding information literacy programs. Their purpose is to develop eight competencies and forty-five specific skills arising from them (Cortés, et al., Normas sobre alfabetización informativa en educación superior, 2002). The competencies are related to the Big Six Skills detected in 1990. They are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Understanding of the knowledge and information “structure.” Skill to determine the nature of an information “need.” Skill to outline effective strategies to “seek and find” information. Skill to “recover” information. Skill to “analyze” and “assess” information. Skill to “integrate, synthesize” and “use” information. Skill to “submit” results of the information obtained. Related to intellectual property.

With such products and these realities, Mexican and Latin American universities and their librarians are in the fast lane mapped out by leading countries, professional associations, international bodies and the information and knowledge society. In the information age, the university is crossed by and connected to multiple paths of information, because without them, the university cannot and will not survive. Its great challenge is not just to budget for and acquire equipment, but to prepare its students, through such technology, for “learning to acquire” 97

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knowledge and “learning to make the proper thing with such knowledge” and thereafter, actually doing it. Universities have to design alternate ways for their academic communities, students and professors, to navigate the information superhighways in so-called cyberspace, and participate in the wide range of tele-learning services that may make knowledge available, either in a virtual or real way.

REFERENCES 1. ACRL (2000). “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.” Retrieved 19 April 2006 from: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/ acrlstandards/ informationliteracycompetency.htm. 2. Belluzzo, R.C.B. (2004). “Formação contínua de professores do ensino fundamental sob a ótica do desenvolvimento da information literacy, competência indispensável ao acesso à informação e geração do conhecimento.” Transinformaçao 16 (1): 17-32. 3. CAUL (2001). “Information Literacy Standards.” Retrieved 19 April 2006 from: http://www.caul.edu.au/caul-doc/InfoLitStandards2001.doc. 4. “La CEPAL ante los objetivos del desarrollo del milenio.” (2001). Perfiles Educativos 23 (94): 91-100. 5. “Construcción de sociedades del conocimiento: nuevos retos para la educación superior / Constructing Knowledge Societies: New Challenges for Tertiary Education.” (2001). Executive Summary. Perfiles Educativos 23 (92): 99-113. 6. Cortés, J., González, D., Lau, J., et al. (2001, 2002, 2004). Normas sobre alfabetización informativa en educación superior. Brochure. Ciudad Juárez: UACJ. Dirección General de Información y Acreditación. 7. Cortés, J. (2004). Las competencias informativas y el aprendizaje del futuro. Ciudad Juárez: UACJ. 8. Cortés Gómez, C.F. (2005). Formación de usuarios y modelo educativo: propuesta metodológica para su integración vinculación en instituciones de educación superior. México, UNAM / Facultad de Filosofía y Letras / División de Estudios de Posgrado, Tesis de Maestría en Bibliotecología y Estudios de la Información. 98

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9. La educación superior en el mundo 2006. La financiación de las universidades (2006). Serie Guni sobre el compromiso social de las universidades. Global University Network for Innovation. 10. Eisenberg, M., and R.E. Berkowitz (1990). Information Problem-Solving: The Big Six Skills Approach to Library and Information Skills Instruction. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex. 11. INEGI (2000). Retrieved 20 April 2006 from: http://dgcnesyp.inegi.gob. mx/cgi-win/bdieintsi.exe. 12. Lau, J. and J. Cortés, eds. (2000). “Declaratoria. Desarrollo de Habilidades Informativas en Instituciones de Educación Superior en México.” In: J. Lau and J. Cortés, eds. Desarrollo de habilidades informativas en instituciones de educación superior en México. Ciudad Juárez: UACJ. 13. Lau, J. and J. Cortés, eds. (2000). “Declaratoria. Función de la biblioteca en modelos educativos orientados al aprendizaje.” In: J. Lau and J. Cortés, eds. La instrucción de usuarios ante los nuevos modelos educativos. Ciudad Juárez: UACJ. 14. Morales Campos, E. (2004). “El uso de la información y la reflexión, condiciones para llegar a la universidad del conocimiento.” Infodiversidad 7: 64-75. 15. Morales Campos, E. (2006). “Los derechos del usuario de información, entre la creación y el consumo.” In: M. Arellano, F. Felipe and J.J. Calva González, comps. Memoria del 3er Seminario Hispano-Mexicano de Investigación en Bibliotecología y Documentación. México: UNAM/CUIB. 16. OEI (2005). “XV Cumbre Iberoamericana de Jefes de Estado y de Gobierno.” Retrieved 19 April 2006 from: http://www.oei.es/xvcumbredec.htm. 17. Rama, Á. (1984). La ciudad letrada. Hanover: Ediciones del Norte. 18. SCONUL (1999). “Information Skills in Higher Education: A SCONUL Position Paper.” Retrieved 19 April 2006 from: http://www.sconul.ac.uk/ groups/information_literacy/papers/Seven_pillars2.pdf. 19. Silva, H., Jambeiro, O., et al. (2005). “Inclusão digital e educação para a competência informacional: uma questão de ética cidadania.” Ciência da Informação 34 (1): 28-35. 99

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20. UNESCO (2006). “Beacons of the Information Society: The Alexandria Proclamation of Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning.” IFLA Journal 32 (1): 66-67. 21. UNICEF (2004). Retrieved 20 April 2006 from: http://www.unicef.org/ spanish/ infobycountry/latinamerica.html.

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CHAPTER VII ENABLING LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SKILLS: FOUNDATIONS FOR ENTERING STUDENTS∗ Roman Tantiongco and Lorraine Evison Abstract In late 2004, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Academic Board mandated the completion of an online information literacy tutorial as part of an enabling skills strategy. A basic online tutorial, Enabling Library and Information Skills for Everyone, called ELISE, was launched by the UNSW Library and piloted in 2005. The aim of ELISE, as successfully completed by all entering students, is to provide a common starting point that, when combined with later programs, will assist students working toward the UNSW graduate attribute of information literacy. ELISE is one of many educative tools in the context of UNSW strategies to promote the ethical use of information in tertiary studies. This paper aims to document the collaborative development of ELISE as a preinformation literacy tutorial, discuss the tutorial and pedagogical dimensions of its delivery to some 10,000 entering students and examine student assessment outcomes. It will also present an analysis of qualitative data from student feedback, which inform improvements to the program, and summarises impacts on the overall information literacy program at the UNSW. Introduction University life is complex and demanding. This increased complexity highlights the challenge for the academic community to understand, support and enhance the first-year student experience (Krause, 2003). New students need to quickly adapt to the changes, i.e., dealing with new schedules, new friends, new environments, and specifically new ways of seeking and using information. A UNSW Academic Board discussion paper indicated that, regardless of entry-level academic qualifications, many new UNSW students, among other things: experience difficulties critically evaluating information from diverse sources, engage in a high incidence of plagiarism and lack an understanding of ethical issues, and have a poor knowledge of referencing (Starfield, Trahn, and Scoufis, 2003). ∗

A full version of this paper, including tables and its discussion, is available through the IFLA website.

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Information literacy in the Australian context is defined as an understanding and set of competencies enabling learners to recognize an information need, locate and evaluate the information, and use the needed information effectively (Bundy, 2004) In 2000, the Australian and New Zealand Institute for Information Literacy (ANZIIL) established “Information Literacy Standards” which are widely recognized and practiced within the Australian higher education sector (Bundy, 2004). These standards are referred to again later in this paper. Background/History In August 2004, the UNSW Academic Board recommended that all entering students complete a basic information literacy program broadly contextualized by discipline during their early weeks of enrollment. The tutorial would be a tool to support the broader academic skills development agenda and would also reinforce educative strategies to promote an understanding of plagiarism and correct attribution of ideas. ELISE was designed to provide a mandatory online tutorial to encourage a common baseline of information literacy for entering students. The definition of entering students encompasses both undergraduate and postgraduate coursework students. The UNSW Library information literacy programs support the development of all relevant UNSW graduate attributes, particularly information literacy – the skills to locate, evaluate and use relevant information. Figure 7.1: Enabling Skills Tutorial Role in Information Literacy Development at UNSW

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ELISE originated following vigorous debate by the UNSW Academic Board Undergraduate Studies Committee in early 2003. The debate centered on academic concerns about the insufficient knowledge of many new undergraduates about the contemporary world of scholarly information, and how information is used in the tertiary context. Behind these specific academic concerns was a view that this knowledge and the related skills are so fundamental to broader academic skills that the University should go beyond the optional and introduce a mandatory strategy to particularly assist those lacking this background. The UNSW Library information literacy responsibilities are currently distributed across a structure of separate special (subject) libraries. A working group with membership across those special libraries was formed and is known as the Enabling Skills Group. The group spent some time debating and finalizing the six core learning outcomes required by the enabling skills tutorial. Most of the discussion centered on adoption of the Australian and New Zealand Information Literacy Standards (Bundy, 2004) as part of the outcomes. Finally, it was decided that the new tutorial was primarily an “enabling” tutorial intended to segue into later, more discipline specific information literacy programs mapped to the ANZIIL standards. There was also considerable discussion on adapting existing online information literacy tutorials but the group eventually decided to develop a new tutorial based on the scope laid out by the new set of learning outcomes. The decision to build an entirely new product was a risky one, given the restricted time frame. It soon became clear that a “doer” or doers would be needed to take responsibility for product development. The Enabling Skills Group then became the reference group for the paper’s authors, who undertook the development work. Collaborative Development Collaboration theory in information literacy work is a growing field, given the increasing number of stakeholders/players that now tend to influence, if not drive, the changes in information literacy programs in universities. The Scales, Mathews and Johnson (2005) study emphasizes that librarian-academic staff partnerships are commonplace and heavily documented. Further the “pressure to share the concept of ‘information literacy’ is a relatively new one for librarians and because collaborative efforts are more formal and structured, a more formal and structured look at the topic of collaboration is necessary” (2005). Along with pedagogy, collaboration has been identified as one of several characteristics that illustrate best practices in information literacy programs (Hunt and Birks, 2004). In this work, collaboration can occur among “disciplinary faculty, librarians and other program staff in an information literacy program.” 103

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After examining the learning outcomes, it was decided that a level of collaboration with key UNSW units and stakeholders would be undertaken to help fast track the development of the Enabling Skills tutorial. The three month development time frame precluded a fully-considered implementation of aspects of the project for the first round and some good ideas will have to wait for further iterations to be implemented. The struggle between aligning learning outcomes and content in a wholly satisfactory way and providing an ideal balance between all elements of the content were difficult issues to completely resolve under the deadline constraints. The key collaborators involved in the development of the ELISE tutorial were: 1. 2. 3. 4.

The Enabling Skills Group (ESG) and the Library The Learning Centre (LC) The OMNIUM team at the College of Fine Arts (COFA) The Educational Development and Technology Centre (EDTeC) Figure 7.2: Collaborative Development of ELISE Tutorial Components

Canberra Export Another area of collaborative effort spanned 400 kilometers and embraced a different UNSW culture. One significant faculty of the University is located at the 104

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Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) in Canberra. ADFA took the tutorial product and initial quiz and subsequently adapted these and set up their own delivery systems in accordance with local requirements. ADFA “militarized” the tutorial to suit an institution which educates the leaders of the Australian army, navy and air force. In the process an interesting and unique variant of ELISE was created. Pedagogy and Strategies In developing ELISE, a project timeline was loosely drafted following a five step process similar to an instructional design model. This model consisted of Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation spread over the three-month period. Analysis Amidst analyzing the outcomes and looking for models for presenting the tutorial presentation, the authors were convinced that in spite of the very short time allocated for development, ELISE needed to be something more than a pageturner. The authors felt that the tutorial should be pitched at the level of the student, using Brookfield’s ”four lenses for reflection” (1995) on student learning as a guiding principle for its development. The biggest hurdle the authors had to contend with was the changing nature of entering students (Krause, Hartley, James, and McInnis, 2005; McInnis, James, and Hartley, 2000). The authors conducted a brief environmental scan of what other Australian universities were doing in their online information literacy programs before proposing a model for the online tutorial. One of the more interesting tutorials was that of the University of Melbourne Library’s orientation program which was presented as a pretend blog. Taking a lead from this, the authors decided to adopt the idea to present a first-year student experience on enabling skills. Design and Development After the initial analysis, it was time to start designing and testing a rapid prototype of the blog. While it was clear that the blog was the preferred method of presenting the first-year student scenario, it was also important to understand blogging as a concept to create a blog real enough to be treated as an authentic experience. As it was not a real blog, the original intent was to present the tutorial as the “archive” entries of the previous year’s first-year student named MJ. Reading more on blogging further convinced the authors of its appropriateness for the tutorial. Blood (2002) explains that the ”voice” of a web log or blog 105

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is the “unique” mix of interests, enthusiasms and prejudices of the blogger’s personality that invariably contributes to a successful web log. A blog is useful for information-sharing or a resource about a topic and equally important is to know your audience. Bausch, Haughey and Hourihan (2002) found that the ubiquity of hypertext links to virtual library resources in an online experience will be well-supported in a web log. With the outcomes in mind, to help shape the text of the tutorial the authors conducted observations, interviewed students and library staff and convened focus groups. Several online interactions were created, using StudyMate® and Crossword Compiler, and integrated in key areas of the blog to help reinforce what was covered by the tutorial. When all the blog entries were finally written, and the online interactions were in final form, a test version of ELISE with a range of students was tried, with generally favourable comments. Some academic staff also accessed the trial version to give their comments. Implementation At the outset, the components required for delivery of the program had to be clarified. Given the very large numbers of entering students, it was evident that the UNSW course management program, WebCT, must be used to enroll and track students and to provide and record access to, and use of, the materials. Eight parallel WebCT courses arranged by faculty (e.g., from “ELISE 0001,” “ELISE for Arts and Social Sciences,” to “ELISE 0008,” “ELISE for Science,” etc.) were established. The rationale for this was to attempt to provide: • The basis for broad contextualisation of a discipline, particularly in the future • Some possibility of a sense of ownership and the ability to contemplate student follow-up by librarians within the special libraries • Some basis for cross-disciplinary comparisons of use • Limited risk management in terms of access, web traffic and technical issues Librarians in relevant areas became, in WebCT terms, “chief designers” for the courses. An entry page template was set up for each course to provide access to the tutorial itself and to the quiz. The quiz is the mechanism that retains the required proof of engagement by students and, hopefully, their understanding of the materials.

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Assessment of Learning Outcomes Quiz Design A simple ten-item quiz was set up in each of the faculty versions of the enabling skills tutorial. The ten items were randomly generated from a question database set up in WebCT. The questions were based on the contributions of Library staff and staff at the Learning Centre. A passing grade was 80% or 8 out of 10 correct items, with an unlimited number of attempts permitted. The reason for allowing multiple attempts was to encourage an educative approach that took advantage of the benefits of increasing assessed knowledge through the randomized quiz. To ensure pedagogical alignment with enabling skills learning outcomes, the quiz items were grouped in the WebCT question database so that each outcome is assigned at least one question in any randomized quiz set. Two quiz items were given to more complex concepts such as information resources, databases, referencing and plagiarism (Learning Outcomes 2, 4, 5 and 6). Table 7.1: Enabling Skills Learning Outcomes

Learning Outcome 1 Learning Outcome 2

Learning Outcome 3

Learning Outcome 4

1. List reasons why you might have to look for information at university, including: 1.1 Finding material on course and tutorial reading lists 2. Identify a variety of information sources and how these sources are used in your coursework, including: 2.1 Recognise the different characteristics of books, journals and the Internet 2.2 Define what a database is and explain its purpose 3. State how items are organised in libraries. Your understanding of how items in the library are organised will equip you with the ability to: 3.1 Identify the basic ways of ordering – alphabetically and by subject 3.2 Explain correct arrangement within classification schemes, particularly Dewey Decimal Classification 4. Recognise that library collections are located in buildings and on the Internet. Having an understanding of this, you are expected to be able to: 4.1 List how you find items in the physical library and on the virtual library 107

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4.2 State some differences between “free” Internet sources and “Library funded” Internet sources 4.3 Explain how search engines function (why Googling might not be enough) 4.4 Explain why you need to authenticate to access some online resources Learning Outcome 5

Learning Outcome 6

5. Describe when and how to cite a source and recognise the different parts of a citation. This includes being able to: 5.1 Recognise that there are different styles of citation used by different schools 6. List ways of using information ethically. Knowing how to use information appropriately, you are expected to be able to: 6.1 Define plagiarism 6.2 List ways to avoid plagiarism 6.3 Identify what materials you can copy and how much you can copy

Quiz Results For the academic year 2005, total first-year student enrollment was 9,746, distributed across the eight faculty versions of ELISE. Of these, 5,531 (56.75%) passed the quiz, 408 (4.19%) students did not pass the quiz, and 3,807 (39.06%) did not attempt the quiz. Figure 7.3: ELISE Student Quiz Completion Rates 2005 Fail 4,19%

Pass 56,75%

Not Attempted 39,06%

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The academic year in UNSW has two sessions. The majority of the first-year intake occurs in the first session, commencing each year in March. Taking a closer look at the first session figures will show a higher compliance rate, due to a higher incidence of promotional activities and information skills classes conducted by the Library, particularly early in the session. In the first session, the total first-year student intake registered in all the ELISE tutorials was 7,834. A total of 5,062 (64.62%) passed the quiz, while 329 (4.20%) failed the quiz and 2,443 (31.18%) did not attempt the quiz.

Figure 7.4: ELISE Student Quiz Completion Rates Session 1, 2005

Fail 4,20%

Not Attempted 31,18%

Pass 64,62%

The small session 2 intake is dominated by postgraduate coursework students, with a very limited number of undergraduates entering at this time. As a consequence promotional activities and the number of information literacy classes are small in number for this small intake group. This had compliance implications for the enabling skills tutorial. In the second session, the total entering student intake registered in all the ELISE tutorials was 1,912. Students who passed the quiz totaled 469 (24.53%), while 79 (4.13%) failed the quiz and 1,364 (71.34%) did not attempt the quiz.

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Fail 4,13% Pass 24,53%

Not Attempted 71,34%

Issues Arising from Quiz Implementation In 2005, toward the middle of the first session, students reported an error in the marking of a matching type quiz item. The cause of the error occurred in the transcription of the questions from Respondus, a quiz creation tool for WebCT, to WebCT and was replicated across all eight faculty versions of ELISE. The problem was rectified as soon as it was reported. However, several hundred students had already accessed the quiz. For the first two weeks of this session there was a very slow WebCT server response rate, which made it difficult for some students to complete the quiz, and may have created a significant compliance disincentive for others. Student Feedback From the total ELISE enrollment of 9,746 students, 3,052 online survey returns were compiled. The ten-item online survey was released to students who received 80% in the quiz. In analysing these returns a randomized stratified sample (proportionate) (Vaughan, 2001) of 20% of the returns was drawn from the eight faculty versions of ELISE. The objective of drawing such a sample was to ensure proper student feedback representation from the varying number of returns in the faculties.

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The Survey The online survey covered several broad categories , namely technology access, library use, quiz access, content and design, most significant topic learned, and suggestions and comments. Technology Access The survey gathered students’ technology access profiles, to assist in planning for the use of online technologies in the next iteration of the tutorial. A large number of students accessed ELISE from their home computers (69.3%), while about a third of the respondents indicated use of either the UNSW Library computers, campus facilities or a combination of computers to complete the tutorial. The highest proportion of students accessing from home came from those enrolled in Law, Commerce & Economics, and Medicine. Table 7.2: Partial Tabulation of ELISE Online Survey – Technology Access Faculty Arts Blt Env Fine Arts Comm Eng’g Law Medicine Sci- Total SSce ence Where tutorial was accessed most UNSW Library UNSW campus (not UNSW Library) Computer at home Combination of different computers Connectivity and response rate was satisfactory Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree

20.5%

9.6%

5.0%

11.6% 20.0%

7.7%

19.1%

10.0%

65.8%

63.5%

70.0%

74.2% 60.0% 78.6%

6.0%

7.8%

15.0%

7.7% 12.0% 14.3%

26.5% 41.9% 26.5% 4.3% 0.9%

27.8% 46.1% 20.9% 4.3% 0.9%

40.0% 50.0% 10.0% 0.0% 0.0%

24.7% 24.0% 37.2% 59.7% 60.0% 44.2% 13.6% 16.0% 16.3% 0.6% 0.0% 2.3% 1.3% 0.0% 0.0%

6.5%

8.0%

7.1% 0.0%

10.3% 14.2% 13.2% 7.7%

5.8%

8.5%

74.4% 69.0% 69.3% 7.7% 11.0%

9.0%

38.5% 27.7% 28.3% 51.3% 43.2% 48.7% 7.7% 25.8% 19.8% 2.6% 3.2% 2.7% 0.0% 0.0% 0.6%

In the first two weeks of the session, a technical problem slowed the response rate of the university WebCT CE server. However, it is worth noting that overall satisfaction with connectivity and response rate for the tutorial did not suffer and was generally positive. Dissatisfaction with the response rate was probably kept 111

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to a minimum by the fact that the blog was hosted on a library web server and not on the WebCT server. Timeliness As ELISE is a pre-information literacy tutorial, it was important to note the timing of the tutorial, particularly in relation to introducing the UNSW Library and its services as part of students’ transition experience. Interestingly, in spite of ELISE being vigorously promoted and publicised during orientation week and well into the first six weeks of the session, about half (50.5%) of the sampled student responses indicated use of the Library and its services prior to accessing the ELISE tutorial. Quiz It was also important to determine students’ opinion and experiences with the randomised quiz. Although the sample strongly indicated a small number (9.9%) of students encountered problems in attempting the quiz, the qualitative data in the comments and suggestions showed students clamoured for more engaging quiz items that incorporate actual search activities and use of more “practicebased” questions. Tutorial Design On the design side of the tutorial, sample responses show an overall acceptance of the structure and presentation, with only 2.5% stating a degree of “disagreement” with the tutorial structure and presentation. Related to the presentation and design of the tutorial, some thought the blog was aimed at “younger” undergraduate students and was less suited to postgraduate and mature adult students. Most Significant Topic Learned In analysing the qualitative data in this item, a coding process was undertaken to cluster the key topics into separate categories. Students were asked to identify the most significant topic they learned from the enabling skills tutorial. For this survey item, some 29 main topics were identified from the sample. In identifying the main topics, the original wording of students responses were kept intact to show the language students have started to assimilate from the tutorial. Topics most frequently mentioned were:

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1. Sirius (UNSW Library portal for accessing electronic resources) 2. Referencing 3. Library Resources 4. LRD (Library Resources Database is the UNSW Library online catalog) 5. Library Services 6. Databases 7. How to Use the Library 8. Journals and Journal Articles 9. How to Find Information 10. Call Numbers & Prefixes Comments and Suggestions for Development Students were also given the opportunity to provide their comments and suggestions through an open-ended survey item. Students showed appreciation for the tutorial and gave glowing remarks, expressing praise for the design of the tutorial and words of encouragement. Survey respondents were very open in suggesting improvements to the tutorial, particularly on the use of more interactive web technologies, as well as a focus on the more practical skill of locating items by call number. Most importantly, while realising the value of the tutorial content, postgraduate students requested a postgraduate version of the tutorial. A similar comment was also gathered from some mature adult students who wanted a “more sober” ELISE tutorial. This was one factor in the 2006 development of a postgraduate version of the ELISE tutorial in collaboration with the Faculty of Commerce. The postgraduate version assumes a higher level of knowledge, is presented in a sober manner, and is also structurally and visually more appealing to mature students. There were critical remarks about the tutorial being compulsory. Some students also felt that it was a “waste of time” and others also disliked the “blog approach” because it was “too long winded” and “childish.” Of the technical issues identified by the students in the sample, the most mentioned item was that of “access problems relating to pop-up blockers and SpyWare settings” which were preventing students from accessing parts of the tutorial. There was also mention of multiple enrollments occurring, wherein students had more than one ELISE tutorial in WebCT. This course enrollment issue was identified and marked for elimination in the 2006 WebCT upgrade to VISTA.

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The Present ELISE is now running in its second year. The largest institutional step in 2006 toward enforcing the mandatory requirement was the insertion of an online acknowledgement by students, i.e., that they understand the requirement to complete the tutorial, as part of their online enrollment. Without this acknowledgment enrollments cannot be completed. The difficult issue of penalties has yet to be considered. ELISE has preserved the eight-faculty approach and has migrated to WebCT VISTA. A postgraduate version was developed by two members of the Enabling Skills Group as a collaborative exercise with an academic educational development centre and is housed within each of the ELISE modules to provide an alternative for the more advanced and more serious-minded. The Defence Force version previously mentioned has had one iteration. The quizzes contain more items on plagiarism – a big issue at the UNSW. The Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) has commended ELISE in its UNSW AUQA Audit report for 2005 (2006). Conclusion Ways Forward Along with content development, there is the opportunity to explore new technologies to provide a media-rich online experience. Further, there are key considerations for librarians who want to take on the role of developing mandatory pre-information literacy tutorials. These include: • awareness of educational technologies and their pedagogical impact • the ability to look through the “student’s lenses” • awareness of discipline specific events for first-year students • nurtured rapport with other program units to assist establishment of compliance mechanisms for mandatory implementation Collaboration with various stakeholders has played an integral role in the development of the ELISE pre-information literacy tutorial for students entering UNSW. The institutional endorsement of ELISE as a mandatory tutorial has played a key role in its creation and sustainability. The organisational support to integrate the ELISE tutorial at course level has encouraged some academics to take ownership of information literacy.

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Analysis of qualitative data suggests that the UNSW Library in collaboration with UNSW stakeholders and other units have successfully developed a broadly based program that provides pre-information literacy instruction. REFERENCES 1. AUQA (2006). Australian Universities Quality Agency: Report of an Audit of the University of New South Wales. Audit Report. No. 1 877090 51 4. 2. Bausch, P., Haughey, M., and M. Hourihan (2002). We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblog. Indianapolis, Indiana: Wiley Publishing. 3. Blood, R. (2002). The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining your Blog. Cambridge, USA: Perseus Publishing. 4. Brookfield, S. (1995). “Becoming Critically Reflective: A Process of Learning and Change.” In: Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. 5. Bundy, A. E. (2004). Australian and New Zealand Information Literacy Framework: Principles, Standards and Practice. 2nd ed. Adelaide, Australia: ANZIIL. Retrieved June 2007 from: http://www.anziil.org/resources/ index.htm. 6. Hunt, F., and J. Birks (2004). “Best Practices in Information Literacy.” Portal: Libraries and the Academy 4 (1): 27-39. 7. Krause, K.-L. (2003). “Which Way From Here? Passion, Policy and Practice in First Year Higher Education.” Paper presented at the 7th Pacific Rim, First Year in Higher Education Conference: Enhancing the Transition to Higher Education: Strategies and Policies that Work. Brisbane. July 9-11. 8. Krause, K.-L., Hartley, R., James, R., and C. McInnis (2005). “The First Year Experience in Australian Universities: Findings from a Decade of National Studies.” Retrieved from: http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/higher_ education/ publications_resources/profiles/first_year_experience.htm. 9. McInnis, C., James, R., and R. Hartley (2000). Trends in the First Year Experience in Australian Universities. Centre for the Study of Higher Education. Melbourne, Australia: University of Melbourne. 115

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10. Scales, J., Matthews, G., and C. M. Johnson (2005). “Compliance, Cooperation, Collaboration and Information Literacy.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 31 (3): 229-235. 11. Starfield, S., Trahn, I., and M. Scoufis (2003). “Enabling Skills at UNSW: A Discussion Paper.” 12. Vaughan, L. (2001). Statistical Methods for the Information Professional: A Practical, Painless Approach to Understanding, Using and Interpreting Statistics. New Jersey, USA: Information Today.

The authors wish to particularly acknowledge the work and contribution of: Isabella Trahn, Quality and Planning Librarian, UNSW Library The UNSW Library Enabling Skills Group Jill Denholm, Biomedical Librarian and Biomedical Library Staff UNSW Learning Centre Educational Development and Technology (EDTeC) OMNIUM Team at UNSW College of Fine Arts (COFA)

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CHAPTER VIII SUPPORTING INFORMATION LITERACY LEARNING IN FINNISH UNIVERSITIES – STANDARDS, PROJECTS, AND ONLINE EDUCATION Arja Juntunen, Anne Lehto, Jarmo Saarti and Johanna Tevaniemi Abstract Finnish universities have implemented several projects in order to create standards and teaching aids promoting information literacy education and learning. This paper focuses on the “Curriculum Plan for Information Literacy: a Joint Virtual University Project of the Finnish University Libraries 2004–2006” (2004), the primary aim of which is to enhance integration of information literacy into the academic curriculum. Examples of other efforts to market and to evaluate information literacy in universities are also given. Introduction Information literacy (IL) has been under active discussion within Finnish academic libraries from the beginning of this millennium (see also Sinikara and Järveläinen, 2003). The first major effort in Finland was the University of Helsinki’s Undergraduate Library’s project “Standardizing the Management of the Information Literacy 2001–2003.” Its aim was to translate the Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education” (2000) into Finnish, these being published on the Internet during the year 2001. The project also arranged two working seminars and kept open the possibility of implementing these standards into the Finnish higher education curriculum. The major problem of integrating IL into Finnish higher education units has been, and still is, the heterogeneity of the IL education and implementation within individual universities and other higher education units. There are some examples where the library has an active and major role in teaching IL, especially information retrieval, to both the students and faculty. But there also are examples of libraries that both do not have the resources, or the opportunity to influence the curriculum, and thus have little impact on IL promotion and education. Thus the aim of the Finnish university libraries has been twofold: on one hand to try to make decision-makers at all the levels aware of the importance and significance of IL and related information skills for students and faculty, 117

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and on the other hand, to test the implementation of IL with different kinds of projects (MacDonald and Saarti, 2003, 2005; Halttunen, 2004). Libraries have been successful in both of these aims. In several of its policy papers, the Ministry of Education has announced either directly or indirectly the importance of IL as one of the key qualifications of modern citizenship in today’s information-based society. For example, in their newest information society policy document for education and research, “Information Society Programme for Education, Training and Research 2004–2006” (2004), it is stated that one of the most important aims is to strengthen the skills and knowledge of all citizens in order to improve their abilities to utilize the services available in the information society (i.e., computer network based services) and libraries are mentioned as one of the key actors in this process. But there also is a more realistic (pessimistic) vision of the libraries’ role in the information society. Mirja Ryynänen, a Finnish politician, who has actively promoted libraries both nationally and at the EU level (1998) has stated that not many politicians actually appreciate the importance of the libraries in promoting and implementing IL education (2003). Thus it is important that the libraries take an active role in IL matters and create their own role in promoting IL for their patrons. The following paper provides a description of the projects intended to promote IL in the Finnish universities. The national project acts as a network for the universities and supports the work being done in the university libraries by developing common tools, such as those used in evaluating IL, and by circulating good practices. In keeping with the Bologna Declaration, examples of other aids for marketing and IL in universities are also provided, i.e., recommending universities include IL competency in new degree structures, and administer a test to assess students’ level of IL knowledge. The pedagogic questions of the IL teaching are also discussed. Figure 8.1: Locations in Finland of the libraries involved

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The universities discussed in the following section (see Figure. 8.1) are University of Helsinki, the largest university in Finland, with eleven faculties, the widest range of disciplines, and 38,000 students; University of Tampere, with six faculties and 15,500 students, and the University of Kuopio, with five faculties and 5,500 students. Curriculum Plan for Information Literacy: a Joint Virtual University Project of the Finnish University Libraries 2004–2006 The Finnish university libraries launched a joint project in 2004 to integrate IL within academic studies and to create a network among the universities. Even though IL had frequently been featured in the stated strategies of universities, in practice there was a distinct need to define common standards to promote the integration. The national project received three-year funding from the Ministry of Education and has been coordinated by the University of Helsinki with Director of Library and Information Services Kaisa Sinikara as the main coordinator. In addition, Planning Officer Anne Lehto was appointed in March 2004. The ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards have provided a framework for the development work of the national project. Because the term information literacy is also ambiguous in Finnish, the project has emphasized the content of the concept rather than trying to define a specific form of IL. Integration into the Bologna Process When the project was launched in 2004, it was obvious that, in accordance with the Bologna Process, the impending changes in the university curriculum to be implemented by 2005 would require the university libraries to act together to emphasize the importance of IL skills training. Thus the Bologna Process was viewed as an opportunity to link information literacy more closely and coherently to the disciplines taught in the universities. Therefore, in the first project year, the steering group for the project drew up a national recommendation for universities for the integration of information literacy into academic studies. The recommendation (see Figure 8.2, see p. 120) for the universities was sent to the coordinators of the Bologna Process. When the project was started in 2004 it was also clear that the IL instruction provided by university libraries reached only part of the students and was not sufficiently coordinated. The situation varied among universities and within disciplines. Thus, the main objective of the recommendation was to ensure at least a minimal level of IL training be provided to all students. The universities would decide on the practical implementation of the IL curriculum themselves. 119

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Although the majority of the Finnish university libraries reported in April 2004 that they had not been sufficiently involved in the planning process of new degree Figure 8.2: Recommendation

structures, responses from those university libraries that had representatives on educational planning committees indicated that they had the best opportunities to influence the changes instigated by Bologna. A follow-up survey was conducted in 2005 after the new degree structures had been implemented in universities. In particular, the smaller university libraries reported that the national recommendation had been useful in their local negotiations. However, we are unable to draw direct conclusions regarding the effects of the national recommendation on IL integration into the Bologna Process as there are many other variables to be taken into consideration. In the follow-up survey, libraries were also asked to identify their most important partners in developing IL instruction at the university. Most of the libraries regarded faculty teachers and the units responsible for development of teaching and learning as their main partners. Other library units at the university were also named as important partners. The joint website for IL development in Finland has increased IL visibility at the national level. Although only partially translated into English, the website has attached the interest of our international colleagues.

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Creating a Network of Library Educators When the project began in 2004 all the Finnish university libraries were asked to designate their IL contact persons. Accordingly, a mailing list was created to permit communication among a total of 29 individuals representing 20 different universities. Although the mailing list was suitable for distributing information to the contact persons, it neither encouraged the debate of practical issues nor enhanced other forms of practical networking. The role of the contact persons has been to function as intermediates between the local university level and the national level. A major task has been to provide the national project with detailed information about the local IL situation for the purpose of creating a common knowledge base. In order to strengthen the collaboration in the network, two ad hoc working groups were set up at the beginning of 2005. The themes of the working groups were selected by the participating librarians themselves. One of the groups has concentrated on pedagogical questions and the other has focused on developing a tool for information literacy proficiency assessment. The pedagogical group has arranged seminars and meetings to share best practices. The group has also taken the initiative regarding pedagogical training for librarians. Most of the meetings have been videoconferences to enable geographically-remote universities to fully participate in this work. Collaboration, Seminars and Pedagogical Training The national project has also promoted the importance of pedagogical training for librarians, arranging several information literacy seminars and peer meetings. Although themes in these seminars have mostly concentrated on pedagogy and e-learning, other interesting issues, such as the “branding” of the library courses, have been addressed. Many of the seminars have also been open to other library sectors. A couple lectures have been videotaped and the files have been placed on the website to be accessed by a wider audience. The national IL project has collaborated with several other projects in order to obtain information on other ongoing activities related to information skills. At the local university level, the national project has collaborated with the University of Helsinki in a project called ICT Driving License, an example of fruitful cooperation between faculties and libraries. Päivi Helminen from the University of Helsinki Viikki Science Library will present the ICT Driving License project in detail in a seminar. The national project has also been actively involved in both Nordic and international networks of information literacy. In the summer of 2005 the Finnish 121

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librarians together with NordINFOLIT steering group arranged the 4th Nordic Information Literacy Summer School in the greater Helsinki region. Question Bank: a Joint Tool for Assessing Information Literacy Skills On the initiative of the IL assessment group a project to create a joint question bank for IL proficiency assessment was launched in April 2005. Accordingly, the group participated in creating a large bank of IL assessment multiple-choice questions by commenting and providing feedback to the project planning officer. One of the challenges in the project was how to create common material for all universities and all disciplines. Because the IL demands within separate disciplines and at different stages of studies vary greatly, it was clear that one single proficiency test with the same content was insufficient. The question bank consists of about 300 multiple-choice questions university libraries can modify according to their needs and use for testing the IL proficiency of students at different stages of their studies. The question bank has been distributed by Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 Finland Licence. Questions are divided into four categories in the question bank: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Defining the topic Selecting information topics Information retrieval: planning and executing information searches Evaluating and using information (sources)

In addition to these categories, questions are also divided into three levels of difficulty in accordance with national IL recommendation: 1. New students: Basics in IL 2. Bachelor’s level studies: IL in intermediate level studies 3. Master’s level studies: IL in advanced level studies IL proficiency tests can be used to gather information about the students’ skill levels to develop better IL teaching methods. The tests can also be used to obtain a baseline for measuring a students’ information seeking skills. Students can then be directed to those teaching groups corresponding to their skill levels. It is recommended that when designing the proficiency test, the student’s studies be taken into consideration as a whole so that the test will not be isolated from their main interests.

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It is also important that students get feedback on their test results, e.g., by receiving the right answers, and understanding how well they performed. The feedback can include a recommendation to participate in sessions arranged by the library in areas where support is needed. IL Education at the University of Tampere – Innovations in Teaching Information Literacy The development of teaching IL as a part of higher education has progressed differently at different universities. Tampere University Library represents a good example because it has invested much time and effort in this area. The new degree structure reform came into effect on 1 August 2005. During the Academic year 2004–2005, the University was preparing the new curriculum. Tampere University Library participated into the attempt to integrate the instruction of IL skills into the curriculum. The Library collaborated with the faculty and other personnel of the University planning the content of higher education. This kind of collaboration was motivated by the Library’s up-to-date version of its service principle and an ongoing active effort to build partnerships within the University. The Library has been successful in implementing its new strategy. The Library’s activities have raised its visibility and prominence. Electronic services and electronic collections have been developed and the Library is recognized as the gateway to scientific electronic resources. Developing different IL skills courses and teaching packages has been crucial in the achievement of cooperation. Tampere University Library has actively participated in the national project “Curriculum Plan for Information Literacy: a Joint Virtual University Project of the Finnish University Libraries 2004–2006” (2004) as one of the founding Libraries in the planning stage. The Library has been a member in the project guidance group and participated in project working groups. Tampere University Library has striven to develop cooperation in academic education within the network of Finnish university libraries and been successful in these efforts. The present IL courses in Tampere are consistent with the project group recommendations for the central elements of IL. The recommendation has also ensured that IL is included in the curriculum in the University of Tampere. Prior to the implementation of the national project, Tampere University Library has offered a range of IL skills (formerly called user education) courses for new, advanced and postgraduate students for several years. Unfortunately, these courses have not reached all students because participation in the courses has been voluntary, though highly recommended.

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All students in the Faculty of Medicine, because the faculty emphasizes PBLlearning, and some of the students in the Faculty of Education, have taken compulsory IL courses for several years. These faculties organize the courses in cooperation with the Branch Library of Health Sciences and the Branch Library of the Humanities and Education. Following the degree structure reform of the University in 2005, IL courses have also been obligatory in the curriculum of Information Science, Administration and Social Science. The Main Library offers IL courses to these faculties. The scale of these obligatory courses means that the Main Library staff teaches basic IL skills to about 650 new students each year. The “Basic Course on Information Seeking” is spread over a four-week period per faculty, and it includes 11 hours of contact teaching with exercises, including those completed during free time. Students earn 2 ECTS credits for this course. The Library is in charge of the course. For the first-year students, the course is scheduled during both first and second periods in the autumn semester. In the autumn semester of 2005, the total amount of teaching was 336 hours. The Faculty of Social Sciences has determined that the IL course will be obligatory, not only in bachelor-level studies, but also in advanced-level studies. The idea is to expand on the students’ basic IL skills from the viewpoint of their own topics and to familiarize them with the variety of scientific information sources. The course “Advanced Studies in Information Seeking” represents 1 ECTS credit and is part of the ECTS credits students earn during the entire seminar. In order to arrange the teaching of IL skills as an integral part of the bachelor seminar, the Library information specialists have actively cooperated with University teachers. In general, the IL skills course takes the form of a seminar, and is about 2–4 hours. In addition, many other departments in the University have chosen the “Advanced Studies in Information Seeking” course for their students during the seminar work at the bachelor’s or master’s level. They appreciate that IL is integral to developing research skills and completing one’s studies. However, it is the responsibility of the departments and their teachers to decide if they want to subscribe to this advanced course for their students. Only the faculty of Social Sciences has included it as an obligatory course in their curriculum. In 2005 the Main Library has spent 101 hours on both the obligatory and the voluntary forms of advanced types of IL teaching. The Main Library and the branch libraries also provide different courses for international students, postgraduate students and for university teachers and researchers. The Library also arranges demonstrations and presentations of several electronic information sources and electronic services provided on a regular basis. In the year 2005, Tampere University Library taught IL skills a total of 1,182 hours. 124

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Resource Allocation One of the challenges of IL education conducted in the Tampere University Library has been resource allocation. The above-mentioned teaching volume of IL skills requires time and effort from the librarians and information specialists who plan and teach the course. In addition, the Library needs to investment in learning environments, including computers. The investment must to be directed at a variety of needs. Among the most important are teacher training and teaching materials for librarians, such as teaching packages, video lectures and an electronic examination on the web. This requires a large one-time investment in addition to the subsequent updating of teaching materials at regular intervals. The Library produced an IL video lecture in the academic year 2006–2007, available on the web. As the first part of the IL skills course, the video lecture includes theoretical IL skills and basic information about academic information retrieval. Students can watch it on the web on their own. Although the video has been also designed to support a lecture to be given at the beginning of the course, its main purpose is to support independent e-learning so that distantlearning students can access the information independent of time and place. In the autumn semester of 2006 it will be possible, for the first time, to pass the “Basic Course on Information Seeking” by taking a proficiency test as an alternative way to demonstrate competence in IL skills. The test is meant for those new students who have possibly acquired IL skills during their earlier studies, believe that they have sufficient proficiency in IL skills, or want to study IL skills and information sources on their own and take the test later. Proficiency Test for IL at the University of Tampere The proficiency test is one of the electronic examination pilots which the University of Tampere has developed in the past six months. The test is located on the Moodle platform, and students take the exam in a computer class in the Library. At the beginning of November 2005, Tampere University Library’s OPTIA project was launched with the goal of producing a web-based examination. For 5 months, the Library had a full-time designer working on the proficiency test project in collaboration with the information specialists teaching IL skills. At the same time, there was another cooperation project at the University of Tampere to survey ways to devise electronic examinations for some studies in parallel with the traditional written examination. The process of setting up and managing the OPTIA proficiency test is entirely on-line.

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At the same time, the national project started the process of developing and gathering the electronic-based question bank. The use of the questions from the project’s question bank in the Tampere University Library saved time and resources. From the start, it was obvious that a test in a web environment requires a large pool of different questions, questions that are not too easy to answer, and with many questions from the same category. The proficiency test contains a total of 40 questions; from every category 10 questions appear on one page. Furthermore, the test is programmed to randomly select different questions for each student so that every student will have his/her own questions (see Figure 8.3, see page 127). There are questions for every category and a total of 183 questions on the test. The random selection of questions and the shuffling of answers mean that it is difficult to cheat on the test. During the test, access to e-mail and to other programs has been blocked; the proficiency test is the only working area on the web. The questions have been designed in such a way that if candidates are able to manage the information literacy skills, they do not need access to the actual databases. The questions on the test are all multiple choice, and there is more than one correct answer. To pass the test the student has to answer 70 % of the questions correctly, and the student earns 2 ECTS credits. The student has the right to take the test twice; after that, the only way to pass the obligatory “Basic Course on Information Seeking” is to attend the normal classes with contact learning and exercises. The students have 40 minutes to take the test. From the national project’s point of view, another challenge in creating a joint question bank is the diversity of e-learning systems at the Finnish universities. There are at least nine different systems in use. The Moodle course management system, for example, is offered by eight universities. Therefore the question bank was planned to be independent of any e-learning system. However, the Finnish Virtual University has an ongoing KLAARA Project to create a joint query bank with questions and surveys specifically related to ICT skills used in assessing student proficiency. KLAARA has been created with the Moodle course management system and it is devised in such a way that the questions and queries can also be easily exported to other systems. IL at the University of Kuopio – from Classroom Teaching to Web-based Courses The electronic material has been effectively in use at the University of Kuopio for several years. This is probably due partly to the fact that the disciplines of the University of Kuopio are those with publication that began to digitalize 126

Supporting Information Literacy Learning in Finnish Universities Figure 8.3: Different alternative forms of the same question provided to different students

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rather early, e.g. medicine, pharmacy and natural sciences. Thus patrons have been used to the convenience of electronic material and the Library has actively promoted their use and provided customer education. The elementary course in information retrieval has been a part of the curriculum as a compulsory study module from the inauguration of the University in the 1970’s. The Library is responsible for providing and administering the teaching. The scope of the study module is at the moment 1 ECTS credit and it consists of one lecture on the basics in information retrieval (i.e., the thesaurus, systems of classifications, boolean operators, evaluations of the reliability of the information, and the types of publications), field-specific database exercises, and, as a final test, a personal assignment that is either accepted or rejected. The teaching of information retrieval skills has been under continuous development and, increasingly, the trend is to move to web-based teaching and toward a discipline-specific approach. When the study module is compulsory, its significance in enhancing the students’ own study skills may not be readily apparent. For example, students appear to be simply seeking credits during their early phase of studies rather than trying to learn information retrieval skills. Thus, helping the students to understand the importance of IL skills is a significant factor in the development of the teaching. The transition of scientific publications to the network, the rapid growth of electronic materials, and the use of the Internet as a tool for information retrieval has required that the teaching of the information retrieval be dynamic, both from a content and methodology viewpoint. During their training, the students must master information literacy skills for the full range of publications, i.e., they must be able to independently assess the scientific reliability of all the different types of publications obtained over the network. These skills also will be essential in career development after they graduate. Because the materials are in an electronic format, it has been easy to transfer IL teaching to the web. At the University of Kuopio the teaching of information literacy was first organized as distance education in 1999 with a pilot project to teach nursing science information retrieval. At the university level, it is difficult to provide a general course of information retrieval for all the students. Thus, in distance education, the design of field-specific courses has been a major objective from the outset. With more than 100 databases in use at the University of Kuopio, it is difficult, if not impossible, for students to identify essential information sources within their own fields. Even in field-specific teaching, the student needs to become acquainted with 7–15 databases. By teaching discipline-specific information literacy skills, students have the opportunity to concentrate on their actual

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information needs. There is also a much better likelihood that they will learn about tools to identify the information sources they actually need. When the teaching of information literacy skills is discipline-specific, it is easier to achieve cooperation with University departments. It is possible to discuss the teaching timetable and how it can be integrated into parallel study modules. Information retrieval (IR) course assignments have been designed so that the student will search for information for some practical purpose, e.g., a term paper or thesis work. The student obtains the material and the information specialist’s expert help during the study module when trying to search for relevant material. When the process of the information retrieval is demystified and appreciated through this kind of exercise, the significance of information literacy skills becomes clear to the student. The most important advantage of distance education is its ability to be tailored to fit the individual. Although the teaching is provided entirely over the network, meetings between tutors (information specialist) and students are more personal. In the classroom setting where there can be from 100 (lectures) to 10 (training lesson) students, the teacher very seldom has time to devote to an individual student. However, as can be seen from the feedback of our web-based courses, students almost always evaluate the personal-level of tutoring positively: they do not feel they are left alone. Furthermore, it appears the learning results are improved with web-based teaching. The TieDot Project – Creating Web-based IR Courses for Finnish Universities The TieDot project, started in 2001, was coordinated by the Kuopio University Library. The project was a joint project of seven universities financed by support from the Ministry of Education’s Finnish Virtual University project. In the TieDot project, field-specific distance education courses were created for 15 different disciplines (see Figure 8.4, see page 130). There were three objectives of the project: 1) to create the actual courses, 2) to build networks between libraries involved, and 3) to promote the distribution of the completed work. Thus a course created by one university library can be transferred to or used by another library. An agreement system was established for this process. The agreements stipulated that it would be possible to adapt the course to meet one’s own requirements. This was because all the universities have their own specific fields of studies as well as their own practices in the provision of IL tuition. The TieDot project established an active network with annual conferences. The distance education courses created during the project have also been evaluated from pedagogic and technical points of view. This evaluation was extremely im129

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portant to the creators of these courses. To summarize the pedagogic evaluation, the course content was excellent, but some pedagogical aspects of the course needed improvement, such as recognizing the student’s learning process, and making the objective’s of the teaching and the tutoring process evident to the students (Pirttimäki, Ritvane and Rytkönen-Suontausta, 2005). Discussion and Conclusions The development of IL is a major challenge to university libraries. Libraries will have to allocate more resources to this area. At the same time they have to collaborate with other personnel within the university. The use of new technological options provides a wealth of teaching and learning opportunities and innovations in the area of IL teaching. In this work we need national and international standards and evaluation models. One of the advantages of common IL objectives is that they aid in creating courses, Figure 8.4: IR web-based courses created during the TieDot project

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assessing students, and in comparing different courses. They also aid in the dissemination of the same courses among several universities. Designing the IL proficiency test at Tampere University Library is a good example of a successful collaboration and the innovative use of information technology. Designing the proficiency test required a wide range of plans and solutions. Cooperation with other professionals in the University, especially with information and communication technology developers, laid the foundation for offering the proficiency test as an electronic examination. The fruitful cooperation among project members has motivated the staff of the Library to develop IL content and teaching methods. In addition, because IL skills courses are a compulsory part of the curriculum, IL courses now have a secure a position as a part of the higher education provided at the University of Tampere. In Finland, librarians have striven to promote information literacy, and according to the papers presented at the High-Level Colloquium on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning, the country can be viewed as a model for other countries for having succeeded in making the political decision-makers aware of the importance of IL. However, much work remains to be done in higher education to effectively integrate IL more coherently into all stages of studies. The Finnish university libraries are now convinced that, in addition to promoting IL integration into the academic curricula, providing instruction to university teachers and researchers is of critical importance. In addition to classroom sessions, the instruction can be provided on a one-to-one basis or by using self-learning materials on the web. Having realized the value of collaboration both with the faculties and with other libraries, librarians have become more aware of the significance of good communicating and networking skills in addition to pedagogical and technical skills. One of the major challenges will be how to support the network of library educators in the future without any allocated funding. More studies are also needed to improve the standards, methods, assessment and evaluation of our IL teaching.∗ REFERENCES 1. ACRL (2000). “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.” Retrieved 28 May 2006 from: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/ acrlstandards/standards.pdf. 2. “Curriculum Plan for Information Literacy: a Joint Virtual University Project of the Finnish University Libraries 2004–2006.” (2004). Retrieved 28 May 2006 from: http://www.helsinki.fi/infolukutaito/english/index.htm. ∗

The authors are grateful to Dr Ewen MacDonald for revising the English.

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3. Finland. Ministry of Education (2004). “Information Society Programme for Education, Training and Research 2004–2006.” Retrieved 1May 2006 from: http:// www.minedu.fi/julkaisut/koulutus/2004/opm14/opm14.pdf. 4. Garner, S. D., ed. Report of a Meeting Sponsored by UNESCO, National Forum on Information Literacy (NFIL) and IFLA. (2006). Retrieved 29 May 2006 from: http://www.ifla.org/III/wsis/High-Level-Colloquium.pdf. 5. Halttunen, K. (2004). Two Information Retrieval Learning Environments: Their Design and Evaluation. Tampere: Tampere University Press. Also available at: http://acta.uta.fi/pdf/951-44-6009-X.pdf. 6. High-Level Colloquium on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning (2005). Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Alexandria, Egypt. November 6–9. 7. MacDonald, E. and J. Saarti (2003). “Pharmacology on the Internet – A Web-CT Course Teaching Information Literacy for Pharmacy Students in the University Of Kuopio.” BEE-j 1 (1). Retrieved from: http://bio.ltsn.ac.uk/ journal/vol1/beej-1-8.htm. 8. MacDonald, E. and J. Saarti (2005). “Evaluation of a Web-based Course Teaching Information Literacy to Third Year Pharmacy Students in the University of Kuopio, Finland.” Pharmacy Education 5 (1): 1-5. 9. Pirttimäki, S., Ritvanen, U., and T. Rytkönen-Suontausta (2005). “TieDot verkkokurssien pedagoginen arviointi.” TieDot, Kuopio. Retrieved 1 May 2006 from: http://www.uku.fi/~arjuntun/TieDot_raportti_050610.pdf. 10. Ryynänen, M. (1998). Report on the Green Paper on the Role of Libraries in the Modern World. European Parliament, Committee on Culture, Youth, Education and the Media. (A4-0248/98). Retrieved 1 May 2006 from: http:// www.cordis.lu/libraries/en/reportrole.html. 11. Ryynänen, M. (2003). “Informaatiolukutaito, kirjastot ja politiikot. Helsinki, kirjastot.fi.” Retrieved 1 May 2006 from: http://www.kirjastot.fi/fi-FI/ kirjastoala/julkaisut/informaatiolukutaito_kirjastot. 12. Sinikara, K. and L. Järveläinen (2003). “Information Literacy Development in Finland.” Library Review 52 (7): 333-339.

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Chapter IX LEARNING TO BE A STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS 8: AN INNOVATIVE EXAMPLE OF TEACHING INFORMATION LITERACY IN THE FIRST YEAR Mireille Lamouroux Abstract If the democratisation of access to higher education has been undeniable for the past twenty years, one cannot say the same about the democratisation of access to knowledge. However, the French university system has changed and become more and more interested in training and not only in teaching, as was the case before. One wonders about the failure or the interruption of studies as a result. Hence the necessity to think of supplementary devices for the students, intended to support their intellectual training. The objective is to allow beginners to discover and adapt to the intellectual processes necessary to think and do research by themselves. This implies some training in information methodology as early as the first year. It is fundamental because it clarifies the basic principles of access to knowledge and it helps students to understand how ideas are classified. The initiation of the new students to information literacy has come into general use today at universities, but Paris 8 takes a prominent position in teaching it (we know this thanks to Alain Coulon’s studies). Indeed, an innovative experiment has been developed since 1984 within the framework of the “fundamental languages” based on the law known as the “Savary Act.” A pattern was thus created with the help of the URFIST of Paris (Regional Unit for Training in Scientific and Technical Information), which was then developed and implemented in a quasi-homogeneous way with its principles. At Paris 8, it is the Department of Information Sciences and Documentation which organizes and coordinates the course of information research methodology. It results in a 36-hour semi-annual module, taught by 9 part-time lecturers. A short thesis due at the end of the 12 sessions (on a 3-hour basis each week) makes it possible to confirm the development of methodological knowledge. The question of the continuity of this training and its progression remains. A step has been taken with the creation of issued certificates on two levels (B2i and C2i), but the transitions, which have not been organized yet, are being studied by the different actors concerned.

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Preamble Documentary Methodology: an Innovation Begun in 1985 Brief historical reminder In 1984, within the scope of the reform of higher education, Paris 8 University introduced teaching in Scientific and Technical Information (IST), among the “Fundamental Languages” provided for by the law called the Savary Act. Their main goal was to give students working and studying methods deemed necessary to succeed at university and professionally. This was completed in 1997 with the obligation to teach “Methodology for University Studies” (MTU). This innovation was introduced thanks to the presidency of the university, the organizational research led mainly by the Department of Documentation and the University Library, together with the help of several professors from different departments. A layout used as a teaching framework was created by Claire Panijel (1993) from the URFIST of Paris. The lectures thus created have existed for more than 20 years now. They continued to be developed until 1997 and, most importantly, they have attracted a following (Panijel, 1996). For the past ten years the framework has been quite stable: between 700 and 1000 first-year students are taught documentary methodology. Two main reasons led to this initiative: 1) the high failure rate among firstyear students, and 2) the particular character of Paris 8 University among French universities. 1- The high failure rate among first-year students. It has always been high: at least half the first-year students drop out or repeat their first year. Unfortunately, we know now that this rate has not decreased; in fact it has remained approximately the same: 40%, according to the latest data. There are two explanations for this: the universities are higher education’s poor relation in France. It is a decrepit system which very often accepts students who don’t really know what to do. It has a limited autonomy due to its very low budget. The second reason is that secondary education does not prepare students for higher education. 2- The particular character of Paris 8 University. Situated in Saint Denis, in the north of Paris, and formerly known as Vincennes University, it served in 1968 as a catalyst for the student protests of that year. It is usually presented as a living legend with all the great names associated with it, such as Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault. It acquired a reputation for libertarian or even anarchist thinking and quickly became a place for experimentation with new projects. It is also unusual because it is an “open” university, a university of the second chance: it welcomes people who didn’t pass their final 134

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secondary school examination (which is normally qualifying for university entrance). It has a very heterogeneous population, with many employees trying to retrain or go back to school (professional subjects are offered for them). Finally, because it is situated in Seine-Saint-Denis, the proportion of foreign students is high, with 145 different nationalities. Our Teaching: Objectives, Programmes, Principles and Implementation The objectives of documentary methodology classes have been: • To know how to use documentary resources • To be able to read documents • To improve one’s memory • To organize one’s work These objectives, when reached, contribute decisively to the acquisition by the student of the autonomy deemed necessary in his studies. Here is the programme given in the booklet distributed to all departments: Methodology in documentary research and treatment of information Students must write a dossier made up of two parts (one dedicated to methodology, the other to the chosen subject) on a theme corresponding to their domain. When they are done with logical course, students have acquired the following four essential competences. They can: 1- Define an objective for their research: analyse a project, understand a subject 1.1 Organizational preparation: students learn to plan their work by cutting it into several phases, taking into account the kind of work they must write, and the time they have to do it. 1.2 Intellectual preparation: students learn to understand a subject, to ask precise questions: about the definition of the subject, its limits, its problems, its difficulties. They learn to interpret the subject through concepts and keywords. 2- Search for information: how to begin a project on a particular subject, to find useful information and then the needed documents. 2.1 Use of the general and specialised indexes and guides available in multimedia sources in order to find appropriate documents 2.2 Typology and organization of these sources: libraries, specialized documentary centres, classification systems (Dewey, CDU). 135

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2.3 Typology of the documents – research in all sorts of documents 2.4 Tools to have access to information –computer or paper supports: dictionaries, encyclopaedias, library catalogues, general and specific databases, the Internet. 2.5 Interrogation languages, Boolean operators, proximity operators. 2.6 How to recognize bibliographic references that seem likely to answer a question. 2.7 Finding and retrieving documents. 3- Select and use information 3.1 Using what neurosciences teach us about how we treat information – personal cognitive styles, systems of representation. 3.2 Pinpointing, selecting, establishing a hierarchy of the relevant information among the many available documents. 3.3 Leaning how to use fundamental documents -thorough reading, noting down -summary, synthesis, plan, introduction, conclusion 4- Produce a personal project: students have thus learnt to “elaborate” meaning, to communicate about their projects in writing and orally in a satisfactory way. They can: - elaborate a list of bibliographic references - write an introduction and a conclusion - make a synthesis and organise their ideas - format their writing according to the norms of university - present their projects orally or in writing These four competences aimed at by our programme gather the different aspects of the research process and the use of information. These aspects can be summed up as follows: 1st aspect: using reference tools to get general information, to define the context and the essential ideas of the subject, to spot appropriate sources of information, to start looking in the right direction from the beginning. The objective is to use encyclopaedias, specialised dictionaries, guides and indexes correctly, whether in their printed or computerized versions. 2nd aspect: using specialised bibliographies according to the subject or type of document or the format of the bibliography (books, CD-Rom, websites), with the particular techniques they require (common or retrospective contents, use of an index or thesaurus, choice of the criteria and the limits, Boolean operators, assessment of the relevance of the results). 136

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3rd aspect: access to the documents of the general and specialised libraries corresponding to the studied field, national and international indexes of documentary organisations, useful principles to find one’s bearings in a library (classification systems in book stacks, searching methods in manual files and computerised catalogues), finding and retrieving documents using shared catalogues and interlibrary loan, browsing through commercial bibliographies, online bookshops, etc. 4th aspect: use and presentation of the results of bibliographical research. It is always useful to recall a few basic rules (how to distinguish the different sources of critical literature, to respect copyright and to quote one’s sources, to pay attention to the date of publication and the critical apparatus, etc); then we can explain what the elements identifying a document are, where one can find them and how to present them according to the type of document one is describing. Beyond that, we take the occasion to improve (or, in some cases, to give) working methods (how to organise one’s time, read a document, note things down, synthesize, prepare an oral presentation, etc). The principles: a pragmatic choice and a disciplinary basis 1- A pragmatic choice We have chosen to be as concrete and pragmatic as possible. We don’t use too much professional vocabulary, we define the absolutely necessary technical words, and we put a special emphasis on the research approach of students rather than on the traditional categories of library and information science. So we start from the question, “Where do we find this type of information?” rather than some preconceived categorisation of reference books. Or else we start from concrete examples to determine the components – and their variations – of a bibliographic description. In keeping with the same idea, concerning research tools on the Internet, we do not mention the existing scores of general indexes, search engines and meta-tools; we just select one or two of them in each category, except Google, to show how they work and what their limits are. On the contrary, we insist on sites or resources specialised in the studied field and on the tools that make available a very precise sort of information (how to find the website of a university or a library, an electronic magazine, a book available online, etc.). To put it in a nutshell, we systematically try to make sure that the students will use the resources that are presented to them. This approach may seem exceedingly utilitarian. However we mustn’t forget that the objective is not to train 137

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future librarians but only enlightened users. What is at stake for the teachers, as well as for the librarians, is to give the students who start a research project enough landmarks to use the documentary resources at their disposal correctly. Correctly, that is to say neither too much nor too little. Students must not drown in an exponential bibliography that they cannot control because they only search for information without selecting it, but they must not miss important information either just because they do not know where to look. For the lecturer, this implies temporarily forgetting certain professional reflexes, such as organising the lecture according to typologies of publication, typologies in keeping with library and information science, since this does not always work for the students. It implies, again and above all, giving up any idea of exhaustiveness, it is more efficient to present a well-chosen selection of documentary resources rather than drown the audience under a flood of references. 2- Integration into the degree course and disciplinary basis The methods, tools and techniques that lie behind the “documentary methodology” are not studied as such; they belong to the instrumental knowledge and know-how that the study of any subject implies. Therefore, it is out of the question to create from scratch a course on documentary research without any link to the subject matter students are learning. In the same way, it is not possible to devise a course totally out of the disciplinary field which could be readily transposable to any type of research. This double condition of efficiency, that is to say integration of the documentary dimension into university teaching and adaptability to each subject, was reaffirmed in the conclusions drawn by the groups gathered by the sub-direction of libraries and working on the theme of training to information. Implementation These lectures last one semester and last 36 hours (12 times 3 hours). They are not always obligatory. They can be optional (in which case they are very often offered together with computer science). They are coordinated by the Department of Information and Documentation Sciences of the UFR LIT (languages, computer science, and technology). They are taught by a relatively regular team of a dozen part-time lecturers (all of them being professionals in information, mainly people in charge of services in well-known institutions such as the CIDJ (Information and Resource Centre for Youth), the public library of the George Pompidou Centre, UNESCO, the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the media library of the “City of Sciences and Industry” (a science museum in Paris), 138

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the association of people working in the field of information (ADBS), etc. I personally coordinate the team and am in charge of the services in a centre of the CNDP (National Centre of Pedagogical Documentation). Each lecture is attended by a maximum of 30 students. These lectures are given after consulting the faculty in charge of other departments and in close co-operation with the university library (the SCD or Common Documentation Service). Suggestions are exchanged mainly through e-mails, but also during meetings (especially meetings of the lecturers). With the SCD: for each lecture, three sessions take place in the library. One of the librarians organises these sessions, together with a team of volunteer colleagues. The first session is a visit to the library, the first visit for many students. Students must feel comfortable being there and using the catalog. They must feel they understand how the library works. The specific room dedicated to the students’ field is presented more thoroughly. The second session includes a demonstration of research tools in a training room equipped with about twenty computers, using a projector linked to a computer. Students learn how to browse the library catalogue, external catalogues, online encyclopaedias, databases of periodicals, etc. The main idea is to emphasize the tools that organize information. Examples are chosen from the students’ field of study. In the same way, we demonstrate a database dedicated to their domain. The demonstration session is led by a librarian, with the lecturer only attending. The third session is dedicated to practical work in this same room, which allows students to implement the advice given during the previous session (the group is cut into two parts so that each student can work alone on a computer. The other half of the group does documentary research in the library). Practical work is absolutely necessary after the “ex cathedra” demonstration. The session of practical work is prepared and led, in co-operation, by the lecturer and the librarian. Together with this strict organisation, the librarians offer help or personal training. They make themselves available for the students to develop what was explained to them relatively briefly during these methodology lectures. Among the programs adapted to different situations and different needs, we can mention: • visits to the library and training sessions of about an hour in the use of databases, which are offered several times a week (these sessions are advertised publicly) • informal help by the librarians who are at the disposal of the students • an equipped reference room which allows students to train themselves (students must sign up) • special sessions are organised for interested students with their lecturers. In a two-hour session they work on a specific theme chosen by the lecturer 139

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The co-operation between the Department of Documentation and the SCD is fundamental. Its main advantage is to show that documentary methodology, and in particular the correct use of research tools, is part of larger methodological training. The latter, under the responsibility of a lecturer, represents a guarantee of perpetuation, integration into the degree course and adaptation to the specific domain of each student. Finally, it allows students to benefit from the complementary approaches of the different partners and tools. The co-operation with the SCD was reinforced in 2004 with the creation of a partnership (a four-year contract) which was the occasion to clearly state the principles of this cooperation and to establish a frame of reference for this training. A team composed of five more people was created, each of them being specially qualified to train students. Working with the lecturers We ask the people in charge of each department what they need, how many students are registered, the how many courses they want to receive this training, and the schedule of these courses during the year. At the first meeting of each course, we explain what documentary methodology is and answer the students’ questions. The departments currently receiving this training are: • language sciences • foreign languages (in particular English and Spanish, but also Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew and sometimes German) • foreign languages applied to translation • arts • information and communication • geography In total this represents approximately 30 groups (15 for each semester), or 1000 students (that is to say 1 out of 8 first-year students). The grade obtained at the end of this training takes into account, as with any other course, the final production but also the students’ work and regular attendance. Examples of subjects chosen by students: - “The reasons for the success of Harry Potter” - “The image of the United States through paintings of the nineteenth century” 140

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Globally Positive Results Positive results appearing in Alain Coulon’s studies Professor Alain Coulon, who teaches ethnomethodology at Paris 8 University, has conducted several studies, beginning in 1993, in which he showed the importance of such training for the integration and success of first-year students (Coulon, 1999; Poitevin, Bretelle-Demezieres and Coulon, 1999). The first study showed that a student who had successfully passed the information literacy course was 8 times more likely to reach second year than a student who had not attended the course. These results are regularly confirmed. The academic achievements of the students attending a documentary methodology class during their first year are much greater. These students complete their first year and get their third-year diploma more rapidly. They are the least likely to drop out. 1- Intellectual affiliation Alain Coulon explained these results as soon as they appeared: the course contributes to what he called in 1989 “the intellectual affiliation” of the students. By “affiliation” he means the process of discovering and understanding the obvious and common elements hidden in the practices of higher education. When students fail and drop out massively during their first years, it is mainly because of a lack of fit between the demands of the university and the habits of the students (fresh out of high school). They lack the intellectual contents and methods to expose they need to gain knowledge. The pupil just out of high school must adapt to the codes of higher education, learn how to use these institutions, assimilate these routines and make them second nature in order to become academically competent. Training in documentary methodology is decisive in easing the passage from secondary school pupil to university student. As a matter of fact, one might say that being a student mainly consists in learning how to categorize the intellectual world. When one categorises the world in the same way as others, one gives the same meaning to the same objects or events. One is then recognized as a competent member of one’s society or the group in which one lives. One becomes affiliated with this group and its activities. Alain Coulon put the point this way: only he who affiliates will succeed. Intellectual work demands that the student gain control over its conditions which are, above all, practical. For new students, the intellectual contents first boil down to their formal practical rules, for example the use of vocabulary, of relevant oral contributions, of reading and writing practices, of concentration. Some time later, they will discover that there are also rules that they must master for intellectual work, in particular rules to classify ideas, concepts, disciplines, and university practices. 141

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2- Learning the rules of intellectual work When you are a first-year student, training in documentary methodology represents a decisive advantage because it allows you to clearly face the problems linked to learning the rules of higher education, and not only the technical rules, i.e., those that allow you to implement the acquired knowledge in libraries. To this first evident practical function of the lectures in documentary methodology, we can add another one, more symbolical, which is: • on the one hand, to allow the student to explicitly enter the world of ideas • and on the other hand, to invite them to use the skills they have acquired to transform into practical actions the intellectual instructions that students are constantly faced with. Therefore, they learn to use what Coulon called “the practicality of the rules” of intellectual work and this is, obviously, a decisive stage in acquiring the skill of “being a student” (Coulon, 2005). Training in documentary methodology allows students to first identify and learn the codes that are hidden in the practices of higher education and then to incorporate these codes. These codes, once accepted as normal by the student, become indicators of affiliation for others, since they show that the student can now categorise the intellectual world in keeping with the expectations of the lecturers. Training in documentary methodology allows the student to competently realise the three fundamental operations of any intellectual learning, i.e., “thinking, classifying and categorising.” Different sorts of difficulties 1- Difficulties in motivating students The first thing we notice is that in the third year it is difficult to motivate students. At that moment in their studies, they are more concerned with an immediate result than with the method to get it. They quite spontaneously take an interest in the most concrete aspects such as visiting the library or using the catalogue, but generally pay attention to personal research and bibliographies only when urged to do so by an assignment. We know that only in the fourth year do they take an interest in the training. These students have to produce a thesis, and that makes more receptive to questions of documentary methodology. As a matter of fact, the students of second or third who have been trained more thoroughly, and who are available at the library to help first-year students, are often asked by other second- and third-year students. In the library visits and training sessions are often cancelled for lack of interest.

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2- Uncertain knowledge The inevitable consequence of all this is that because finding and using information are seen as necessary only in the fourth year, it is not acquired by everybody. For lack of personal practice, many students are lost after the first year and ask elementary questions. In the fourth year, they are not prepared enough for research and they get rapidly confused by new demands such as the preparation of a bibliography. 3- The lack of recognition from lecturers This training is a quite recent innovation. Few lecturers have received this kind of training themselves. They are not always convinced of its importance. Some of them do not see what is at stake and think that, by offering a few methodology lectures in their particular domains about fast reading, taking notes, or textual analysis, they answer the same demands. In fact, these lecturers use the methodology lectures to teach traditional methods. Consequently: • the students do not master documentary methodology • they reproduce what they have been taught • they think that higher education is only for the deserving. Students have to find their bearings as they had to do themselves Because it lacks disciplinary specificity, documentary methodology has not yet acquired legitimacy. 4- A cultural obstacle In fact, there is a discrepancy between official speeches about the need to promote new technologies at universities and the culture of university lecturers. The obstacle to the motivation is cultural. Training in research techniques is, by definition, centered on the students. It aims to make them independent. It does not depend on the lecturers, their lectures, programmes or references. The literature lecturer, for example, mainly thinks in terms of groups of writers (the classics, the important books, etc.) whereas the search for information works as an opening onto the exterior world. The predominance of lectures in the pedagogical process (especially in the first year because of the huge number of students) leads to the common opinion that personal research is not a real way of learning.

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Challenges to take up 1- A progressive teaching It is certain that a progressive familiarization in the third year with the basic principles of documentary research, and above all practice in the implementation of these principles, would help the students a lot. 2- An adapted pedagogy… Because bibliographic work is something new for them, the training must help them situate their own work. Thus it is not superfluous to explain that the rules for presenting bibliographical references exist to allow other people to find the documents we used ourselves and not just to impose one more constraint. Using examples, students rapidly understand the interest of quoting the editions used precisely. In the same way, when the use of a database gives results that seem at first glance incoherent, they must be able to find by themselves what is wrong in the way they asked the question and how that is linked to the structure of the database itself. For example, the student who is looking in a catalogue for the works of a given author could be surprised to find irrelevant titles, just because this author wrote prefaces for them. In this case, the question was not incorrectly asked, but it is not obvious, for non-librarians, that a search by author will always turn up both primary and secondary works. On the contrary, they must understand that the question was badly asked when, to get the works of an author, they typed the author’s name as a subject keyword. A few hours’ training will not make anybody an expert but it can ease things for the students so that they do not feel lost when their searches turn up results they do not understand. …elaborated by librarians and part-time documentary lecturers whose first job is not teaching. Librarians, in particular, regret not being trained enough in teaching. 3- The Internet phenomenon This problem of mastering the results of search becomes particularly important with electronic documentation. For the most part, the research techniques used are not radically different from those that apply to the printed word. They consist in finding the key-notions of the subject, going from indexes to references, browsing bibliographies and indexes, and criticizing and interpreting the information. The main difference is the plethora of instantly available information. With manual files or printed bibliographies, a strategy of collection is possible: the researcher looks for the references in a corpus that remains of human size; 144

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exhaustiveness seems ambitious but not impossible. With the Internet, the major problem is to avoid the noise and to reduce the research. The snowball that progressively adds results rapidly becomes incontrollable. We are heading towards a much more selective logic. This approach is less difficult for students who are just starting to do research than it is for experienced researchers who must adapt to this new system. Paradoxically, the absence of familiarity with new technologies, often accompanied by a certain anxiety, can serve as a springboard for the documentary training. Lecturers who know little about electronic documentation are tempted to ask the SCD to train the students in “CD-Rom and the Internet”, as if it was a question of contents and not of supports. The pitfall would be to give credence to the idea that electronic documentation is, in itself, different. On the contrary, it is essential that training in documentary methodology first highlight the common basis of all the research methods in order to define later what is specifically linked to the different supports. It is also essential that lecturers and researchers be comfortable enough with electronic tools to extract their substance and integrate it into their teachings, not as an obligatory touch of modernity but as resources to use like any others. 4- Systematic training of all the first-year students Obviously, the Documentation Department has neither the means nor the skills to train all the first-year students from all the different fields in documentation. Presently, 1000 students are trained each year, i.e., approximately 1 first-year student in 8. However, the pressure is strong. It comes as a recommendation from the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. But it is also evident that not training the students just because they do not volunteer sets back their integration into the university and works against the development of the use of the library, since the more trained the users, the better used the resources. It is also obvious that a solution needs to be found rapidly in order to harmoniously integrate training in documentary research with the programme called C2i student, the first-level certificate in computer science and Internet use which is supposed to demonstrate “the acquisition of a series of necessary skills needed to get higher education” (guidelines for the programme were published in April 2005). The only thing to be feared is that the present 36-hour training will melt away and be limited to the instrumental aspect, which would be a soulless skeleton stripped of nearly all its initial purposes.

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Conclusion – Perspectives and Questions A recent national study showed that people going to university libraries are more numerous: today 3 students out of 4 regularly go to such a place, whereas 15 years ago only half of them did, i.e., 1 out of 2 (Les bibliothèques universitaires, 2005). • at Jussieu University, one of the Paris faculties, 80% go (among whom 54% go at least once a week) • the average time spent in the library is 2 hours • however, there are differences: there is 1 seat for every 4 students in Strasbourg and 1 for every 58 students at Paris 4 Among the well-known factors: • new spaces (more than 400 000 square metres in 15 years) • the development of open access, from 20 to 35% of the collections. • increased functioning budgets (+ 178% in 10 years) • diversification of the contents (with CD-Rom, etc.) • more opening hours (from 40 hours per week to 57 hours per week) There are also other factors, such as • a more educated society: 63% of pupils successfully passed their high school final exam in 2005 (40% in 1984). • an efficient training in the use of information in secondary school, even though it is not required in the school programmes (with transversal approaches such as the TPE, supervised personal work), which continues in all the institutions of higher education. • the spreading of the Internet: 93% of students have their own computers and 85% have access to the Internet. But 75% (the three fourths of them) prefer to work at home Only 7% of them use the catalogue of the university library to do some research (according to a study by the IEP, source from JLM communication). • Only 53% of students say they are familiar with scientific Internet websites (according to a CREDOC study by the University of Grenoble). 146

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• In some institutions of higher education, there is a lack of training in documentary research (according to the CREDOC study). • Brief analysis: the speeches about the promotion of the Internet insist less today on autonomy than on a desire for independence from supposedly excessive and unjustified obstacles. • The surrounding environment of our information society focuses on an irregular, fragmentary and exclusively utilitarian access to culture and knowledge. The network insists on a universal accessibility, everywhere and immediately, that tends to bypass mediations. • The knowledge and the position of the lecturer, bibliographic language, and the recourse to information professionals generally appear as arbitrary constraints. • A thorough transformation of the relationship between students and lecturers is in the sociological background. This is part of a larger transformation taking place in our culture around the use of information. • The studies by Alain Coulon have proved that information literacy courses are useful. Continuing this work by integrating new parameters is necessary to increase visibility. • Analysis and observation of the use of information literacy courses supports the claim that such courses should continue to be offered. REFERENCES 1. Coulon, A. (1999). Penser, classer, catégoriser : l’efficacité de l’enseignement de la méthodologie dans les premiers cycles universitaires. Le cas de l’Université de Paris 8. Saint-Denis: Association internationale de recherche ethnométhodologique. 2. Coulon, A. (2005). Le métier d’étudiant. L’entrée dans la vie universitaire. Paris: Economica. 3. Les bibliothèques universitaires (2005). Rapport public annuel de la Cour des Comptes. Retrieved from: http://www.comptes.fr/Cour-desComptes/publications/rapports/rp2005/bibliotheques.pdf. 4. Panijel, C. (1993). “Contexte d’élaboration d’une maquette d’enseignement en Information scientifique et technique.” In: L’évaluation des enseigne147

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ments de méthodologie documentaire à l’Université de Paris 8. Ss la dir. de Alain Coulon. Saint-Denis: Laboratoire de recherche ethométhodologique. 5. Panijel, C. (1996). “L’enseignement des méthodologies documentaires à l’Université de Paris 8: une formation au travail intellectuel.” Journée d’études de l’INFB, Institut National de Formation des Bibliothécaires. Retrieved from: http://www.ccr.jussieu.fr/urfist/infb.htm. 6. Poitevin, C., Bretelle-Demezieres, D., and A. Coulon (1999). Apprendre à s’informer : une nécessité. Quiz des formations à l’usage de l’information dans les Universités et les grandes écoles françaises. Saint-Denis: Association internationale de recherche ethnométhodologique.

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CHAPTER X INFORMATION LITERACY PROGRAMS FOR VIRTUAL MOBILITY Irma Pasanen, Eva Tolonen, and Linda Stoop Introduction In Europe, the Bologna Process aims to harmonize the structure of higher education to facilitate mobility and create a European Higher Education Area by 2010. Transnational recognition of professionally- and academically-oriented engineering degrees is a primary goal within the context of engineering education. Mutual and unconditional recognition of the learning outcomes of study programs between two or more institutes is expected to increase the mobility of students across Europe. Harmonized European university education can be condensed into the acceptance of the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), a method of measuring students’ progress to improve international comparability. One year of full-time study is the equivalent of 60 credits. The Bachelor’s Degree program requires 180 credits and normally takes three years to complete. The Master’s Degree program requires 120 credits and corresponds to two years of study following the Bachelor’s Degree. This paper will discuss the recent information literacy activities of two European university libraries in conjunction with the degree structure reform and student mobility. The paper highlights the experiences of the two in integrating an information literacy program into new curriculum. The paper will also briefly evaluate the potential of joint information literacy programs across Europe. European Union and the Erasmus Mobility Program Erasmus is the higher education initiative of the European Union (EU) Socrates II program. It seeks to enhance the quality and reinforce the European dimension of higher education by encouraging transnational cooperation between universities, boosting European mobility and improving the transparency and full academic recognition of studies and qualifications throughout the Union. Erasmus consists of many different activities. In addition to the ECTS, there are student and teacher exchanges, joint development of study programs, international intensive programs, thematic networks between departments and faculties across Europe, and language courses. Erasmus is targeted at higher education institutions and their students and staff in all 25 member states of the EU, the three 149

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countries of the European Economic Area (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), and the three candidate countries (Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey). Close to 3000 higher education institutions in 31 countries are participating in Erasmus. Mobility in general, and virtual mobility facilitated by the Internet in particular, is becoming increasingly important for educational policy makers, universities, and other institutions of higher learning. Virtual Erasmus can include both taking courses abroad while at the home university and vice-versa and/or complementing the existing physical Erasmus exchange programs with virtual preparatory and follow-up activities. Virtual Erasmus also offers exchange opportunities for those unable to participate in traditional Erasmus. The Internet, the explosion of scientific information in digital format, and the possibilities offered by distance education have been instrumental in shaping present-day information literacy programs in academic institutions. The course designated to teach information literacy to future engineers, “Searching for Scientific Information,” has been in the curriculum of the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), for several years. The 2 credit (ECTS) course is available both in Finnish and English. The online realization of the course promotes intensive integration of the networked electronic campus library materials. At present, the format includes a face-to-face start-up lecture, followed by three webbased distance education modules. Students work their way through the modules independently in groups tutored by library information specialists. At TKK some 200 to 300 students have taken part in the course annually. The course is designed especially to support students completing literary works, writing papers and/or reports. As an online course not limited to a narrow area within technology, it was of interest to the Real Virtual Erasmus (REVE) project. REVE – Real Virtual Erasmus Project The REVE project, carried out under the eLearning program of the European Commission, aims to enhance the impact and efficiency of traditional Erasmus programs. The two-year REVE project takes advantage of existing online courses, seeking to demonstrate concrete scenarios, models and implementation procedures, and best practice examples for implementing virtual mobility. The different courses offered within the REVE consortium have been analyzed to facilitate true Virtual Erasmus courses and computer-aided support system designs. Within the REVE project, the following five interaction scenarios have been identified: 1. Remote access: students from any number of consumer universities may participate in courses offered by a single provider university. 150

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2. Franchising: a course is provided by the provider university to any number of consumer universities. To coordinate the teaching, all universities form a teacher team for this course. Locally, each university offers teaching, tutoring, and assessment, in addition to an announcement of the course, student enrollment, student selection, and final registration of the students’ grades. We assume that students access the course through the learning environment of the provider university, but that local teachers provide local teaching services; except for enrollment and coordination of teachers, no further contact is required with the provider university. 3. Coordinated federation: a mix between remote access and franchised courses, wherein a course is provided by the provider university to any number of consumer universities, some of them providing no local support, others providing local support. To coordinate the teaching, all universities offering local teaching and tutoring form a teacher team for this course. 4. Joint course offering: teaching network. A course is provided by the provider university to any number of consumer universities, and each of the consumer universities provides local teaching support – i.e., franchising. Students primarily interact locally, and to a lesser extent globally, with peers from remote universities. 5. Course adaptation: a course is provided by the provider university to any number of consumer universities, while each of the consumer universities provides not only local teaching support – i.e., franchising – but also local adaptation of the learning material. This is similar to the joint course offering scenario, but introduces a new course preparation phase between announcement and enrollment phases. Within the REVE project, the TKK Library and the Catholic University Leuven (K.U. Leuven) Arenberg Library tested the course adaptation scenario. The course, “Searching for Scientific Information,” to acquaint engineering students with the most important scientific information sources in their field, help them select and search efficiently for information, and make them aware of information evaluation methods. In the preparation phase there has been consultation between the partners in the form of negotiations and visits. Announcing the course and recruiting the local teacher team is the responsibility of the consumer university. Students are enrolled via the local learning management systems and register locally. As the provider of the course, TKK does not have K.U. Leuven enrollment details or any contact with the K.U. Leuven students. K.U. Leuven informs its own students in all matters concerning the course. In the course phase there is collaboration among students only at local level. Tutors ex changed 151

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visits and planned video-conferences between the two university libraries. Teachers and tutors are trained in co-operation and familiarized with the local adaptation of the course. Student assessment is done locally at K.U. Leuven. There is no ranking and no information exchange concerning individual student assessments between the provider and consumer universities. As the consumer, K.U. Leuven applies the local practices in terms of ranking, grading, and registering results. Information Literacy and the New Study Structure In 2004 the recommendation for an information literacy study program was circulated in Finland as a result of a project funded by the Ministry of Education. This national study program for information literacy designed for Finnish uni152

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versities serves as a guideline for individual universities planning their new curriculum. It is hoped that the integration of the recommended study program into the curricula of universities will greatly enhance the comparability of degrees and the transferability of credits from one university to another. According to the guidelines the students graduating from Finnish universities should meet the minimum level of internationally-accepted information literacy competencies based on the “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,” issued by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in 2000 (2002). The proposed study program includes course descriptions for new students (principles of information acquisition), intermediate level students (Bachelor’s thesis seminar), and advance level students (Master’s thesis). The content of each course reflects the appropriate competencies required in the level (“Recommendation for Universities for Including IL Competency in the New Degree Structures,” 2004). Currently, Finland has decided to implement the study reform all at once whereas other European countries may execute the changes over a period of several years, finishing by 2010. In Figure 10.2 the new study structures of two European universities are presented. Figure 10.2: The study programs of the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), Finland and K.U. Leuven, Belgium, after the degree structure reform

At TKK in Finland, all students accepted after 2005 will study according the new degree regulations. The new Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree programs across the University are formed with modules as illustrated in Figure 10.2. The 153

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modules include one or several courses, and within a module, the students have both mandatory and optional courses, most of which are prelisted by the study program for a Bachelor’s Degree. Bridging courses are offered between the bachelor’s and master’s level. At TKK all programs are academically oriented. A Bachelor’s thesis is introduced and a Master’s thesis requires 30 credits. The postgraduate degrees Lic.Sc. (Tech.), and D.Sc. (Tech.) are intended for graduates with a Master’s Degree. At K.U. Leuven in Belgium the transition to the new system will be gradual. The Bachelor’s Degree is a three-year program that can either be professionallyor academically-oriented. The professionally-oriented bachelor is trained to enter the labor market immediately, whereas academically-oriented courses are intended to prepare students for the master’s program. Students with an academic Bachelor’s Degree (Figure 10.2) have the option of entering the labor market for a while or starting at least one complementary Master’s Degree course immediately and eventually upgrading it to a master-after-master course. Preparatory courses are offered for bridging the required appropriate knowledge and competencies. Another option is to start a master course that is not immediately connected to the previous bachelor course via a preparatory bridging course. This preparatory course aims to provide the knowledge and competencies needed to start the master’s program. Following completion of the Master’s Degree the student may start a doctoral course. A Master’s thesis is between 15 and 30 credits, depending on the study program. Experiences The TKK Library Experience At TKK, the Library information specialist has been actively participating in the University study coordinators network. Library information specialists have also actively participated in various training programs offered for University teachers (Kairamo and Pasanen, 2004). The objective has been to ensure that information literacy issues are incorporated into the new curriculum of TKK. As a result, the 10-credit module of a Bachelor’s thesis and seminar now has a built-in component of information literacy. The objective of the module is to develop the skills of information retrieval, scientific reasoning, analyzing and processing of information, and language and communication. To receive a Bachelor’s Degree the student is required to write a thesis. Supervisors are provided for the students and they also attend a seminar designed to aid them in this process. The topic of the thesis is agreed upon at the beginning of the seminar and the work is completed during the seminar. In the seminar there are lectures prepared by the language centre and the Library to supplement the subject-oriented lectures organ154

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ized by the different departments and study programs. After the thesis is completed, the student presents the results in the seminar. The TKK Library has two lectures, one on information retrieval and one focused on using references. To supplement the lectures, a set of assignments is integral to the e-learning / course management system. The assignments highlight a self-assessing quiz, reading assignments, and use and personalization of the information retrieval portal. As illustrated, scalability will be an issue for the Library because face-to-face training sessions with all students is not feasible. The supervisors, however, are available for personal interaction. In the Master’s Degree study program negotiations with administration about Library involvement in the module “Methodological Principles” are in progress. Even if the course “Searching for Scientific Information” is, in a sense, approaching the end of its life cycle, it is by no means outdated, and valuable feedback information has been gathered over the years from students as part of quality assurance efforts. For example, the majority of the engineering students are quite happy with the e-mail-based feedback they get from their tutors. Additionally, as Table 10.1 illustrates, student perceptions about the usefulness of the course clearly reflects their level of studies. During the REVE project, a survey of TKK students who had recently spent a term abroad as exchange students was conducted. In terms of library support initiatives for student mobility, remote access to electronic library collections of home university was identified as a way to overcome the language barrier experienced by some exchange students. Libraries could also promote exchange study possibilities through bulleting boards with information about available jobs, grants and exchanges abroad. Extensive curriculum description listings were needed to enhance decision-making processes (choice of universities, choice of individual courses). According to the students, libraries should also organize library introduction events in conjunction with the general introductory program of incoming exchange students. Library use should also be easy for exchange students and unnecessary bureaucracy should be avoided. Table 10.1: The usefulness of the course “Searching for Scientific Information” as perceived by the students from 2003 to 2005 (N=422, p-value 0.000)

The usefulness of the course “Searching for Scientific Information” Bachelor students (three or less years of study) Master’s level (four or more years of study)

Benefit materializes immediately

Benefit materializes later

No direct benefit

29 %

52 %

19 %

61 %

22 %

18 %

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The graduate-level students who responded to the survey were clearly more likely to consider taking the course “Searching for Scientific Information” or another similar course from the home university via distance education means during their time abroad (Figure 10.3). In conjunction with general library use during exchanges, a difference between bachelor- and master-level students was also evident. Figure 10.3: TKK student responses to question: “During your time in exchange, could you have considered taking the course ‘Searching for Scientific Information’ or another similar course from your home university via distance education means?”

Consideration to take courses from hom e university during exchange N=83, p=0.0196

master´s level no yes bachelor´s level

0

20

40

60

80

100

percentage

The K.U. Leuven Arenberg Library Experience In 2002, the new K.U. Leuven Arenberg Library brought together numerous faculty and smaller branch libraries in the fields of science and technology. Previously, library introductions were only occasionally organized by branch libraries. From the beginning, the Arenberg Library included activities related to information literacy skills into its strategies. Since the opening of the new Library, first-year students have been offered an introduction to information acquisition. It was obvious, however, that the course needed to be mandatory to reach all students, and in 2004 the course was made obligatory for all students. The course is prepared in close cooperation with the faculties: the students receive their assignments from their professors and look for appropriate information in the Library. 156

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The Library has initiated discussion about information literacy competencies within K.U. Leuven. There is support for information literacy from the University’s top management, interest among the faculty, and consensus regarding the need for Library and faculty collaboration. At present, however, the curriculum of the University does not include information literacy courses that would go beyond the introductory phase of information acquisition. The objective of the campus Library Arenberg is to develop an online information literacy tutorial that would be context-specific and adapted to the local environment. In this respect the REVE project and the course “Searching for Scientific Information” was of interest at the campus Library Arenberg. Prior to offering the course at the K.U. Leuven Library Arenberg, the responsible librarian (course tutor) together with the Library director visited the TKK Library to finalize REVE project plans for course adaptation. The English version of the course was executed in Belgium during a five-week period, AprilMay 2006. Altogether 23 graduate and doctoral students, including Erasmus students from abroad, were recruited to participate. The course schedule start-up lecture was offered twice to allow everyone the opportunity to participate. At the end of the lecture the participants received the course schedule, including a summary of the assignments connected to a specific part of the course with the deadlines and guidelines for the return of each assignment. Participants were given passwords to enter the course via the Library website. The total workload of the course over the five-week period was estimated to be roughly 4 hours per week, and the participants were informed of this. All throughout the course there was continuous communication by e-mail between the course tutor and the participants. The communication included reminders about the deadlines, guidance concerning individual search topics, and feedback regarding completed assignments. The feedback was quite positive although some technical problems were encountered. In the end, eight students completed the course in its entity, and they were interviewed as part of the REVE project. They all shared the opinion that an information literacy competencies course such as “Searching for Scientific Information” should be integrated into the curriculum, preferably before the start of the Master’s thesis. Student motivation had two distinctive elements, the need to know about the available scholarly information sources and the systematic approach to the information searching process. The estimated 20-hour workload was seen as sufficient enough for an introduction to the information searching process. However, for more thorough searching, more hours would be needed. The international students also expressed the need to include a general library introduction and

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guided tour of the library in cases where these were not integrated into orientation days for exchange students. An information literacy course for advanced students has not been integrated into the curriculum at the K.U. Leuven. However, the REVE project experience has promoted the discussions within the University. In the near future the objective is to develop an information literacy program in the format of an online tutorial. The structure of the curriculum and levels of the study program will be reflected in the tutorial, making it easy to integrate the tutorial with model assignments into the educational modules. The two-year educational and innovative project is scheduled to start in the fall of 2006 with an in-depth analysis of student information search behavior. Figure 10.4: The course website at K.U. Leuven Arenberg Library

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Conclusions Harmonization does not unify the curriculum, consolidate study programs, nor does it standardize courses in European universities. It does, however, offer new possibilities for both students and teachers to take advantage of the online environment. Christine Bruce and Philip Candy (2000) have concluded that information literacy programs are successful when the planning for the study course/program has been context-specific, adapted to local environments and to the educational curricula. Furthermore, successful examples indicate that conscious intervention – usually by information professionals – and collaboration between all parties involved in the education and innovative use of technology enhance the success of the course/program. In terms of information literacy course adaptation, our experience in the REVE project demonstrates that adaptation is necessary at the curriculum level. Mere technical adaptation is not sufficient. Many differences, such as varying thesis requirements, make it difficult to anticipate that one model suits all. Furthermore, the local technological environment may sometimes be a barrier to incorporating advanced solutions from other universities. Student motivation is the driving force in practical course implementation. The student drop-out rate is a recognized problem with online courses. Mandatory participation, credits and a clear vision of the benefits are ways to overcome this issue. In terms of student mobility, another interesting scenario is the possibilities of home universities serving students visiting abroad. REFERENCES 1. ACRL (2002). “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.” Retrieved July 2007 from: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/ standardsguidelines.htm 2. Bruce, C., and P. Candy, eds. (2000). Information Literacy around the World: Advances in Programs and Research. Wagga Wagga, Australia: Centre for Information Studies. 3. “Curriculum Plan for Information Literacy: A Joint Virtual University Project of the Finnish University Libraries 2004-2006” (2004). Retrieved 2 October 2006 from: http://www.helsinki.fi/infolukutaito/english/. 4. Kairamo, A. and I. Pasanen (2004). “Use and Production of Digital Information and Knowledge in Technical University Education – Co-operation of Faculty and Support Units.” LIBER Quarterly 14 3/4: 306-312. 159

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5. “Recommendation for Universities for Including IL Competency in the New Degree Structures” (2004). Retrieved 3 October 2006 from: http://www. helsinki.fi/infolukutaito/english/recommendation.pdf. 6. REVE – Real Virtual Erasmus (2006). Retrieved 3 October 2006 from: http:// reve.europace.org/.

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