Conference Agenda

Research Background and Methodology

The study investigated how students’ personal characteristics and information and communication technology (ICT) skills relate to their level of information literacy (IL), with the aim of identifying the ICT/psychological concepts that are most closely related to IL and could help in planning future IL education in terms of focus, methods and timing. The study determined the IL level of 498 undergraduate students using a 40-item knowledge test (Boh et al., 2016), examined the influence of demographic parameters (gender, study major, year of study), compared the IL with two aspects of ICT literacy measured by the 26-item questionnaire (Šorgo et al., 2016), and examined IL’s relation to seven psychological characteristics, using a 70-item questionnaire (Juriševič et al., 2016).

Results

Students demonstrated moderate IL knowledge (M=67.3%, SD =12.3%). Gender and study major type (science vs. social science) were not significant factors, unlike year of study. Factor analysis revealed three areas of ICT tool use: a) general (e.g., search engines, social media, videos), b) learning (office tools, virtual classrooms, bibliographic databases), c) working (image/video editing, programming). IL correlated best with general use (r=0.16). Factor analysis revealed three areas of Internet confidence: a) general (e.g., search engines, social media), b) advanced (forums, presenting work), and c) specialized (scientific databases). General factor correlated best with IL (r=0.23). Of the seven psychological characteristics (PSY), self-concepts about learning (r=0.25) and problem solving (r=0.23) correlated best with IL. Factor analysis on PSY revealed three factors: a) learning/motivation, b) problem solving/self-efficacy, c) external motivation. Factors a) and b) correlated best with IL (r=0.23 and 0.17, respectively).

Conclusions

Our results offer some suggestions for IL practice. Although studies often show that digital natives are not necessarily information literate, we found that students’ IL was associated with both frequency and confidence of search engine use and confidence using social media. Therefore, ICT skills conducive to IL should be emphasized in IL education. Students’ problem-solving ability correlated positively with both IL and ICT literacy, implying that IL education would benefit from incorporating a problem-based approach wherever possible. External motivation did not have a significant effect on IL in our study, so students’ autonomous motivation should be addressed more during IL instruction. The characteristics of the curriculum combined with small differences in IL between 1st and 2nd year students suggest that the 2nd year of study may be optimal for introducing an IL course.

Acknowledgements

The study was financially supported by the Slovenian Research Agency, project J5-5535.

References

Boh Podgornik, B., Dolničar, D., Šorgo, A., & Bartol, T. (2016). Development, testing, and validation of an information literacy test (ILT) for higher education. J. assoc. info. sci. technol., 67(10), 2420–36.

Juriševič, M., Baggia, A., Bartol, T., Dolničar, D., Glažar, S. A., Kljajić Borštnar, M., Pucihar, A., Rodič, B., Sajovic, I., Šorgo, A., Boh Podgornik, B. (2016). Motivational aspects of information literacy in higher education. In The International Conference on Excellence & Innovation in Basic-Higher Education & Psychology, Rijeka, Croatia, May 18-21, 2016 (p. 93).

Šorgo, A., Bartol, T., Dolničar, D., & Boh Podgornik, B. (2017). Attributes of digital natives as predictors of information literacy in higher education. Brit. J. Educ. Technol., 48(3), 749–67.

The aim of this paper is to identify the relationship between game literacy (GL) and information literacy (IL), in order to provide cross-disciplinary insight as a foundation for future research. This will be done:

• By examining the origins, definition and treatment of the two literacies in scholarly literature in the disciplines of Games Studies and of IL, and;

• By using examples drawn from two recent mixed methods research studies of information behaviour and information literacy in video games, to illustrate the connections between GL and IL.

Previous studies investigating video games and IL have tended to focus on the elements of IL used in gaming (e.g. Beutelspacher, & Henkel, 2021), rather than, as in this paper, the conceptual intersection between IL and GL. IL and GL developed in different disciplinary contexts. Whilst the concept of IL emerged from the field of librarianship and the online information industry (Nazari, & Webber, 2012), GL emerged in the field of literacy studies, influenced by the New Literacies movement’s focus on multimodality and social practice, and stimulated by a desire to include cultural media popular with young people (Squire, 2008). Initially, definitions and frameworks of IL focused on practical skills applied to published print or digital material. However, more recently IL experts have identified IL as socially situated, involving production as well as consumption, and engaging with multimodal information, for example in Mackey & Jacobsen’s (2022) definition of metaliteracy. This brings IL ontologically closer to Hayes & Gee’s (2010, p. 69) conception of GL as “a family of different practices engaged in by different social groups with a variety of cross-cutting similarities and differences”.

Despite this, the information literacy component of GL is not surfaced in GL definitions, and nor does engagement with games feature explicitly in IL definitions and frameworks. This paper aims to fill this research gap by (1) drawing on the scholarly literature to compare and relate definitions of GL and IL, and (2) illustrating the connections between GL and IL with findings from two investigations supervised by the author (both of which received ethics approval). Wang (2022) used questionnaires (n=600) and six interviews with Chinese gamers to investigate information behaviour in the ban-pick phase of League of Legends (an internationally popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game). Using similar methods (164 questionnaires; six interviews) Meng (2022) researched Chinese gamers’ IL in playing the social deduction game Dread Hunger. The three dimensions of Bourgonjon’s (2014) model of game literacy (i.e. operational, critical and cultural) will be used to identify how IL is intertwined with GL. For example in compiling and analysing clues that indicate whether a player is the traitor in Dread Hunger IL and GL are required in both operational and cultural dimensions. Further examples will be given in the final paper.

References

Beutelspacher, L., & Henkel, H. (2021). Information literacy in video games’ affinity spaces: A case study on Dota 2. In S. Kurbanoğlu, S., Špiranec, S., Ünal, Y., Boustany, J., Kos, D. (Eds.), Information Literacy in a Post-Truth Era, The Seventh European Conference on Information Literacy, ECIL 2021, online, September 20-23, 2021: Revised Selected Papers. Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) 1533. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Bourgonjon, J. (2014). Meaning and relevance of video game literacy. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 16(5), 8.

Hayes, E. R., & Gee, J. P. (2010). No selling the genie lamp: A game literacy practice in The Sims. E–learning and digital media, 7(1), 67–78.

Mackey, T. P., & Jacobson, T. E. (2022). Metaliteracy in a connected world: Developing learners as producers. Chicago: Neal-Schuman.

Meng, X. (2022). Investigating social deduction computer games’ impact on players’ information literacy, using Dread Hunger as an example. [Unpublished master’s dissertation]. University of Sheffield.

Nazari, M., & Webber, S. (2012). Loss of faith in the origins of information literacy in e-environments: Proposal of a holistic approach. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 44(2), 97–107.

Squire, K. (2008). Video-game literacy: A literacy of expertise. In J. Coiro, M. Knobel, C. Lankshear, D. J. Leu. (Eds.), Handbook of research on new literacies. (pp.635–670). London: Routledge.

Wang, Y. (2022). Information behaviour in ban pick phase of League of Legends. [Unpublished master’s dissertation]. University of Sheffield.

Nowadays, the web is where we most often search for information, and generalist search engines are the access point and filter that lead us in the overwhelming ocean of digital documents. One key challenge for current Information Literacy (IL) education is understanding how young people search online and interact with search engines. While algorithms grow more and more complex and efficient, research suggests that online search practices can take many different forms depending on topic, situation and searcher’s expertise. When teaching IL and online search, teachers grapple with a compelling difficulty: while search results can be made tangible as a report or a presentation, the search process remains often confined to individual screens and hidden from the teacher’s eye (Botturi et al., 2022b). Research evidence also indicates that users are often unaware of their own actual search process, and post-search accounts are mostly inaccurate (Teevan, 2008). This prevents teachers from capturing “teachable moments” (Hansen, 1998) and and providing effective process-oriented feedback, which is important for the development of self-awareness and self-regulatory skills (Corral, 2017; Bruce, Edwards & Lupton, 2006). The invisibility of the search process also hinders learning from peers, as search behaviors cannot be compared and discussed.

In a research project funded by the Swiss National Research Foundation we investigated online search behaviors, and developed techniques to capture and analyze search stories. Search story is the digital record of the actions that a user performs to solve an online search task (Botturi et al., 2022a). We developed a system to generate graphic and interactive visualizations of search stories to allow researchers and teachers to inspect them (Botturi et al., in press).

Between November 2022 and March 2023, 29 lower and upper secondary school classes (involving 535 students aged 12-18 and 16 teachers) participated in a two-phase IL education activity aimed at developing online search awareness and self-regulatory skills. In the first phase (1 contact hour or at home), students engaged in 3 pre-defined online search tasks. Their navigation actions were captured and visual search stories generated. The second phase (2 contact hours) started with an analysis of their own search stories in order to discuss a selection of relevant topics (e.g., the use of queries, reading time, search strategies) and included the solution of a new search task.

The activity was evaluated through an online post-session questionnaire with both closed and open items. Results so far indicate that students found the activity useful (average score 8/10); the content analysis of open answers reveals that the most appreciated learnings included reflecting on the reliability of online information, and the increased awareness that searching online is not so easy or “natural” as one might think.

References

Hansen, E., J. (1998). Creating teachable moments... And making them last. Innovative Higher Education, 23(1), 7–26.

Botturi, L., Addimando, L., Giordano, S., Hermida, M., Luceri, L., Bouleimen, A., Galloni, M., Beretta, C. & Cardoso, F. (2022a). Finding visual patterns in information Search Stories. European Conference on Educational Research 2022, Yeerevan (August).

Botturi, L., Addimando, L., Hermida, M., Beretta, C., Bouleimen, A., & Giordano, S. (2022b). Understanding Online Information Search Practices with Search Stories. American Educational Research Association – AERA Annual Meeting, Chicago (13-16 April).

Bruce, C., Edwards, S., & Lupton, M. (2006). Six Frames for Information literacy Education: A conceptual framework for interpreting the relationships between theory and practice. Innovation in Teaching and Learning in Information and Computer Sciences, 5(1), 1–18.

Corrall, S. (2017). Crossing the threshold: Reflective practice in information literacy development. Journal of Information Literacy, 11(1), 23–53.

Teevan, J. (2008). How people recall, recognize, and reuse search results. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 26(4), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1145/1402256.1402258

This communication is the result of an ethnographic research about a digital device created by a French publishing house to make pupils and students write, read and print short stories: the “Cub’Edito”. I count this device as an action apparatus (Barrère, 2013), a tool made to support selected cultural practices.

Objectives

The analysis of such an apparatus by studying how it is used by teachers and students is one way to question links between written culture and information literacy in a digital era. I am trying to critique “digital dualism” (Gourlay, et al., 2015) and demonstrate that there is a practice’s and skill’s continuity between written culture and digital culture. I seek to show that digital devices are both communication and documentation machineries. Digital information literacy could be regarded as a reconfiguration and amplification of written literacy because digital devices are textualization devices (Després-Lonnet & Cotte, 2007), technologies to make, share and record documents.

Methodology

Analysis of the digital device and pupils’ works employed a semiotic approach. I observed training sessions, pedagogical projects with pupils, and evaluation meetings concerning those projects and this apparatus. Semi-structured interviews with teachers, librarians, and teenagers’ focus groups were also conducted.

Outcomes

Uses of Cub’Édito appears like a way to practice and understand computers and Internet as document technologies. The Cub’Edito interfaces set ways to access, read and publish texts: it depicts text’s visibility and readability at a digital era. This device re-enacts written culture (digital or not) by introducing terminology and injunctions about literary genres, collections, authors, indexation, editing, approval and print processes. Moreover, most of the observed pedagogical projects play with textual materialities and genres by relying on the device’s platicity. Thus, they participate in the covenant between a long-term written culture and digital textual practices and norms. They show the cultural and skills’ continuity between writing and reading, the cultural poaching (De Certeau, 1990) between ordinary written culture and school written culture, and between literacy, information literacy and digital literacy. I count this device, its uses and its escort discourses as an apparatus (Foucault, 2001) to regulate writing and reading practices.

References

Barrère, A. (2013). Les établissements scolaires à l’heure des «dispositifs». Carrefours de l’éducation, 36, 9–13.

De Certeau, M. (1990). L’invention du quotidien: 1. arts de faire. Paris: Gallimard.

Després-Lonnet, M., & Cotte D. (2007). La sémiotisation d’une pratique professionnelle. L’activité de montage numérique dans l’audiovisuel. In C. Tardy, & Y. Jeanneret (Ed.), L’écriture des médias informatisés: espaces de pratiques. Paris: Hermès science.

Foucault, M. (2001). Le jeu de Michel Foucault. In Dits et écrits II (pp. 298–329). Paris: Gallimard.

Gourlay, L., Lanclos, D. M., & Oliver, M. (2015). Sociomaterial texts, spaces and devices: Questionning “digital dualism” in Library and Study Practices. Higher Education Quaterly, 3, 263–278.

Writing a short literature review at university can be a useful assignment to develop a variety of academic (Sharples, 2022) and information literacy (IL) skills. However, recent technological developments have provided students with a new shortcut, artificial intelligence (AI), which can provide a coherent, albeit somewhat technical and stilted output (Sharples, 2022, p. 1122). As “AI-assisted writing is already deeply embedded into practices that students already use” (Fyfe, 2022, p. 2), the faculty and librarians at universities face numerous questions that challenge traditional practices of teaching students academic writing and supporting IL skills. The issues of plagiarism and bias (Fyfe, 2022), fake references (Sharples, 2022), opacity of algorithms (Lloyd, 2019), and questions about trust and neutrality (Haider & Sundin, 2022) are but a few of these questions.

This presentation focuses on an intervention of applying the GPT-3 in the process of writing students’ short literature reviews. Writing a short literature review has been a traditional task to support Information Management students’ IL skills during ‘Information Behavior Theories and Practices’ course at University of Tartu. During the spring semester of the 2022-23 academic year, this task was enhanced by adding a request to use GPT-3 (such as OpenAI playground) in the writing process and reflect upon using the new technology. Of particular interest in the reflections was the students’ perceived usage of AI, hence the research questions:

• How do students evaluate the usability of AI in terms of searching, evaluating, and presenting information?

• What are the benefits and problems related to using AI in process of writing?

During the introduction of this assignment, the usage of reflections in research was covered, including the possibility to opt-out at any time without any negative consequences. The students’ reflections (N=26) were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify themes related to using AI in academic writing process. Despite the initial excitement, the students presented critical attitudes toward the results provided by GPT-3. Nevertheless, AI provided help with translations, and sometimes finding new perspectives. In line with Dinneen & Buginger (2021), this study contributes to the discussions around the usage of AI in academic tasks that have predominantly benefitted from the domain of information literacy.

References

Dinneen, J. D., & Bubinger, H. (2021). Not quite ‘Ask a Librarian’: AI on the nature, value, and future of LIS. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 58(1), 117–126.

Fyfe, P. (2022). How to cheat on your final paper: Assigning AI for student writing. AI & SOCIETY, 1–11.

Haider, J., & Sundin, O. (2022). Paradoxes of media and information literacy: The crisis of information. Taylor & Francis.

Lloyd, A. (2019). Chasing Frankenstein’s monster: Information literacy in the black box society. Journal of Documentation, 75(6), 1475–1485.

Sharples, M. (2022). Automated essay writing: An AIED opinion. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 32(4), 1119–1126.

Due to a rapid development of digital services and digital transformation in a wide range of disciplines, new challenges have emerged seeking out to acquire digital skills and gain digital competence (Vuorikari et. al., DigiCompEdu 2.2, 2022). Learning about information technology can be quite challenging for STEM-oriented students, and it’s even more challenging for non-STEM students (May, 2022). However, new possibilities to teach non-STEM students about fundaments of information technology have emerged as a result of new developments in the fields of artificial intelligence, gaming, virtual reality, etc. In order to provide an effective education approach for non-STEM students a model that uses advanced artificial technology has been formed. In this model students learn about a non-STEM subject by using information technology paired with artificial intelligence. More precisely, students boost their literacy skills by writing a story that will be used as a scenario. This scenario has to be structured well-enough to be processed by algorithms based on artificial intelligence that generate a video game based on a created scenario. Regarding the scenario, technics and methods, students learn more about both structured writing and literacy, and information technology at the same time.

Gamification as a method, among others, describes a social context by game-elements such as awards, rule structures, and interfaces that are inspired by video games. Mathias Fuchs et. al. (2014) analyses the role and impact of gamification method in business and wide society suggesting revising the question of re-thinking the method by applying it in a number of other fields (e. g. education, business, health, wide society, etc.) (Hartmann, 2022).

By integrating literacy and creativity fostered by gamification method, non-STEM students learn about literacy and coding simultaneously and boost-up their STEM skills. They get more familiar with STEM aspects by mapping information literacy in the field, and their motivation is increased since they are provided with engaging and assisted environment. This process has been based on the gamification method with an aim to support process of strengthening four different competences 1) literary competences, 2) writing in a foreign language, 3) coding and STEM skills and 4) lifelong learning competences.

References

Fuchs, M., Fizek, S., Ruffino, P., & Schrape, N. (Eds.). (2014). Rethinking gamification. Lüneburg: Meson Press.

Hartmann, F. G., Mouton, D., & Ertl, B. (2022). The Big Six interests of STEM and non-STEM students inside and outside of teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 112, 103622. Elsevier Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2021.103622

Kampylis, P., Punie, Y., & Devine, J. (2015). Promoting effective digital-age learning - A European framework for digitally-competent educational organisations. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.

Kergerl, D., Heidkamp-Kergel., B., Arnett, R., & Macino, S. (2020). In Communication and Learning in an age of Digital Transformation. Routledge Press.

May Brienne, K., Wendt, J. L., & Barthlow, M. J. (2022). A comparison of students’ interest in STEM across science standard types. Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 6, 100287z. Elsevier Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2022.100287

Vuorikari, R., Kluzer, S., & Punie, Y. (2022). DigComp 2.2: The digital competence framework for citizens, EUR 31006 EN. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. https://dx.doi.org/10.2760/115376

ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) software and tools are already changing the world. ChatGPT can pass an MBA exam from an Ivy League Institution (Terwiesch, 2023). It can also create disinformation on topics like “vaccines, COVID-19, the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, immigration and China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority” (Associated Press, 2023). Current AIs have the ability to provide seemingly valid information that is, in fact, devoid of any relationship with reality.

Consider a state actor who uses a propaganda model leveraging the fact that “information overload leads people to take shortcuts” in deciding on the trustworthiness of information (Rand, 2016). New AI systems can more cheaply and easily than ever before create plausible, yet ultimately false, information about healthcare choices or a political candidate. It is not difficult to imagine a deluge of mis- or dis-information that becomes extremely difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to separate the true from the mostly true from the blatantly false.

Information Literacy (IL) theorists and practitioners are uniquely positioned to lead and facilitate important discussions around these topics as there are real implications for healthcare, education, and democracy. Yet existing IL theory, practices, and research are not currently adequate to address the challenges new developments in AI pose. Accordingly, this conceptual paper will identify three specific areas IL professionals can devote time and resources to address some of these problems.

First, we can advocate for new kinds of AI systems designed with specific limitations and parameters. Similarly, we can further explainable AI (XAI) research that aims to help users “understand, trust, and manage” AI applications (Gunning et al., 2019). Secondly, we must reconsider IL and higher education instruction in light of the new ability for students to easily create AI-generated text. Embracing certain elements of AI tools intentionally could lead to pedagogical innovation yielding new ways to teach and learn—including new strategies to sift through a tremendous glut of AI-generated content of unknown veracity. Lastly, information professionals have the opportunity to refine or develop IL theory that can provide holistic, strategic thinking and justification for how educators, policy-makers, and the general public should treat and approach AI systems.

The future of AI is uncertain. What is clear is that without intentional forethought for how we design and use such systems we invite serious, and likely deleterious, consequences.

References

Terwiesch, C. (2023). Would chat GPT get a Wharton MBA? A prediction based on its performance in the operations management course. Mack Institute for Innovation Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved February 1, 2023 from https://mackinstitute.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Christian-Terwiesch-Chat-GTP-1.24.pdf

Associated Press. (2023). Learning to lie: AI tools adept at creating disinformation. Retrieved February 1, 2023 from https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2023-01-24/learning-to-lie-ai-tools-adept-at-creating-disinformation

Paul, C., & Matthews, M. (2016). The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” propaganda model: Why it might work and options to counter it. RAND Corporation. Retrieved February 1, 2023 from https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE198/RAND_PE198.pdf

Gunning, D., Stefik, M., Choi, J., Miller, T., Stumpf, S., & Yang, G.-Z. (2019). XAI—Explainable artificial intelligence. Science Robotics, 4. https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.aay7120

Background

Personal health and medical information can be textual, numerical, and visual. Medical information is preserved and managed in professionally maintained medical records, but also privately by patients. The ways of preservations vary, from digital to paper-based approaches, but increasingly, medical records and health services overall have turned digital. However, not all favor digital services, especially when it comes to older adults. Negative attitudes towards digital health services can reflect attitudes towards digital technology (Knapova, Klocek & Elavsky, 2020) or appreciation of direct interaction with healthcare professionals. Moreover, patient-accessible services shape people’s personal health information management behavior (Anonymized for review). This study contributes to filling the gap observed in a systematic review indicating that relatively little attention has been paid to examining people’s experiences on eHealth services, including their benefits (Anonymized for review).

Methods and data collection

A postal survey was mailed to a random population sample of 1,500 individuals aged 55-70 obtained from the national Population Information System of Finland. A total of 373 completed surveys (25%) were received. The mean age of the final study population was 63.2 (SD 4.7) years and 225 (60.6%) identified themselves as women. This study focuses specifically on the open-ended questions of the survey. These focused on personal health information management and views of current and future eHealth services. Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis.

Findings and conclusions

Older adults’ experiences of personal health information management and the use of and attitudes towards the role of digital health services are divided. Fears, trust, and motivation, as well as general everyday life information practices and routines, guide their experiences and behavior with digital health records. Without any limits in resources or available technologies when developing a digital health service, according to respondents, the best possible service would contain versatile health information and combine information from different sectors of healthcare. It would be easy to use, clear and up-to-date, but would also allow the possibility to contact a real human being, a healthcare professional, for instance, via video connection.

References

Anonymized for review

Anonymized for review

Knapova, L., Klocek, A., & Elavsky, S. (2020.) The Role of Psychological Factors in Older Adults' Readiness to Use eHealth Technology: Cross-Sectional Questionnaire Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(5), e14670. https://www.jmir.org/2020/5/e14670/

Introduction

In the last decades, our society evolved from information scarcity to information abundance. For the many things that we need to do in everyday life, we often find ourselves overloaded with information on how to do things. A visit to an Internet search engine (e.g., Google) or a visit to an online video library (e.g., YouTube) can often lead to multiple results on how to do the same thing. The problem of information seeking often turns into a filtering and evaluation problem.

In the context of information abundance, Information Literacy becomes a vital competence so that individuals can filter information (Abdallah, 2013) in everyday life. This is important in order to achieve desirable outcomes.

In this research, we built upon extant theory on information literacy (Sample, 2020), rich media (Ishii, et al. 2019) and information seeking in everyday life (Savolainen, 2017) in the context of students’ fitness and physical exercise. This is important as student practices of fitness and physical exercise can lead to desirable outcomes such as health and well-being, or negative outcomes such as pain and injury. In a world where so much information is available in multiple formats, it matters to understand how students seek information for the practice of fitness and physical exercise.

Method

This qualitative study addresses “how students seek information in the context of fitness and physical exercise”. This work-in-progress research is based on eight interviews and in-situ observations on the premises of a Nordic University that provides sports services to its students. We cover different fitness modalities such as calisthenics, basketball, weightlifting, stretching, and foam rolling.

Preliminary Findings

We found that even if students exhibited elevated levels of literacy in academic issues, they sought and evaluated the information pertaining to their fitness and physical exercise in a quite different way from their study and academic issues. As expected, students preferred rich media information in digital format, but it is striking how every student consumed information in a completely unique way – most of them consumed very different content even if practicing the same modality. This is explained by the high personalization, high interactivity, and high intrusiveness of the information providers’ platforms. Students valued the corporeal landscape of information literacy. Also, they consumed published research on sports science, but only indirectly. Some often provided information to others as well.

We will discuss the integration of our findings with information literacy theory, rich media theory, and information seeking in everyday life. Furthermore, we will also suggest avenues for future research that should engage in cooperation with other disciplines (e.g., media studies, sports science, artificial intelligence).

References

Abdallah, N. B. (2013). Activity theory as a framework for understanding information literacy. In S. Kurbanoğlu et al. (Eds.), Worldwide Commonalities and Challenges in Information Literacy Research and Practice, European Conference on Information Literacy, ECIL 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, October 22–25, 2013: Proceedings. Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) 397 (pp. 11–30). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Ishii, K., Lyons, M. M., & Carr, S. A. (2019). Revisiting media richness theory for today and future. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 1(2), 124–131.

Sample, A. (2020). Historical development of definitions of information literacy: A literature review of selected resources. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 46(2), 102116.

Savolainen, R. (2017). Everyday life information seeking. In Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences: Fourth Edition, (pp. 1506–1515). CRC Press.

The basis of all learning is information. The notion of learning lies at the heart of information literacy. For example, information literacy is sometimes promoted as an approach to learning, or a way of learning. Very often the exercise for children in early school age is to investigate beyond the textbook about an item or subject, a phenomenon or a term. They are usually aware that they are unable to fulfil the exercise by themselves and ask their parents or siblings for help. Children learn through experiences and in the preschool age they begin to develop their independence, but they are aware they still need the parents’ help when they want to know or do something, especially when they obtain information about something from unknown or new sources (Shenton & Dixon, 2004). The idea of informed learning was developed to direct attention toward those interpretations of information literacy that involve using information to learn (Bruce, Hughes & Somerville, 2012, p. 524). Therefore, in order for an individual to be able to participate promptly and actively in a world saturated with information, it is necessary to work from an early age on the development of information skills that deal with proper procedures in the sea of information. However, the authors mostly focus on the development of information skills in adults or older children, but very few authors decide to explore information skills in young children through library services (Barriage, 2021). It is suggested that children can engage in evaluation and application of knowledge which influences their academic outcomes (Greene, Cartiff & Duke, 2018). Eisenberg and Berkowitz (1999) dedicated part of their work to the youngest users of the library, including preschool children. In their work, they designed the Super3 program specially for information literacy of preschool and early school age children. Eisenberg and Berkowitz in the extended version of Big6 single out the skills that need to be acquired in order for an individual to be an information literate person, but for children these skills are simplified to: plan, do and review, also called as Super3 (https://thebig6.org). The aim of this research is to investigate the basic knowledge of children, age 5 to 8 years old in Croatia, about information and sources of information and about their basic information literacy skills. The research questions are: 1. What does the concept of information mean to early school-age children?; 2. What kind of sources of information do early school-age children use?; 3. How do early school-age children actively seek information by themselves?; and 4. Are workshops based on Super 3 an appropriate method to teach information literacy skills of early school-age children? Methods applied in this research are survey, in-depth interviews and action research – with carefully designed materials and workshop for teaching information skills using Super 3. Results of this research show that children in the early school years have poorly developed information literacy skills, due to their age, this was to be expected. Furthermore, they hardly understand the meaning of the term information, where the information came from and how one can find them. The problem lies in the fact that children are expected to already be familiar with the concept of information at the entering school and know how to handle it for the purpose of completing school assignments, without prior training in this field. After this workshop we can conclude children’s knowledge and skills are improved. The workshops within this action research serve as a kind of guidelines for the organization and implementation of such workshops for intentional teaching information skills of children in the early school years. Furthermore, it plays on a basic approach to supporting planning and implementation school library programs for developing and improvement of information literacy skills of children from early school age.

References

Barriage, S. (2021). Young children’s information-seeking practices in center-based childcare. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 54(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000620962164

Bruce, C., Hughes, H. & Somerville, M. M. (2012). Supporting informed learners in the twenty-first century library. Trends, 60(3), 522–554.

Shenton, A., & Dixon, P (2004). The development of young people’s information-seeking behaviour. Library and Information Research, 28(90). https://doi.org/10.29173/lirg172

Eisenberg, M. B., & Berkowitz, R. E. (1999). Teaching information & technology skills. Worthington, OH: Linworth.

Greene, J. A., Cartiff, B. M., & Duke, R. F. (2018). A meta-analytic review of the relationship between epistemic cognition and academic achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 110(8), 1084–1111. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/edu0000263

Nelson, A.C.H., & Du Puis, D. N. (2010). The adventures of Super3. Linworth.

Bartow, C. et al. (2018). The Big6. Retrieved from https://thebig6.org

There is a growing need to design creative teaching methods early in the school curriculum to empower children with information literacy (IL) skills. This will prepare them for battling mis/disinformation, so that they can be safe, understand the value of critical engagement with online information, and express their perspectives while opening dialogue about their experiences. Previous research in the U.K. has found that children lack the critical IL skills for identifying fake information and are least likely to speak to their teachers (National Literacy Trust, 2018, p. 4). Connecting online happens at an increasingly younger age, with UK research estimating that up to half of children 8-12 years have set up their own online profile, while a third include a false date of birth (Ofcom, 2022). After surveying 25, 101 children, the EU Kids Online project identified a significant increase in screen time, which had almost doubled in some EU countries (Smahel et al., 2020). This project empowered young people with IL skills by means of opening dialogue around the phenomenon of mis/disinformation and the ethics of online connectivity. We followed the principles of the United Nations Convention of the ‘Rights of the Child’ that extend to the online environment where digital technologies should “adopt the principles of privacy, resilience and harm reduction” (Scottish Government, 2022) and where programmes should incorporate children’s “rights to seek, receive and impart information” (OHCHR, 2021, p. 3). The project took the form of a collaboration between the educational project, ‘Maddie is Online,’ and the Modiano Elementary Library of Anatolia College (a private non-for-profit organisation in Greece). ‘Maddie is Online’ is an innovative community-led project, funded by the Scottish Government and the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC). Ituses creative storytelling, with an emphasis on opening dialogue around experiences of online connectivity, using video animated stories with children’s voice overs, digital lesson plans, and reflective exercises. We incorporated ‘Maddie is Online’ resources into the library IL program, aimed at Year 5 students (10 years old), with a total of 90 pupils from 3 classes. The lessons were delivered by the Elementary Librarian in collaboration with teachers. We collected qualitative data from pupils who, after watching the video stories and completing the toolkit exercises engaged in discussion in small groups, reflecting on their own experiences and exploring how they would address the challenges that Maddie encountered. This allowed opportunities for dialogue and exploring skills for information searching, evaluation, and critical judgement. Pupils submitted anonymous data via question-and-answer home quizzes that tested their comprehension. We explored the learning experiences of pupils and their perceptions of misinformation through an online survey while we collected qualitative feedback on experiences around delivering the sessions from staff.

References

National Literacy Trust. (2018). Fake news and critical literacy: The final report of the commission on fake news and the teaching of critical literacy in schools. Retrieved March 7, 2023 from https://cdn.literacytrust.org.uk/media/documents/Fake_news_and_critical_literacy_-_final_report.pdf

Ofcom. (2022). Children’s online user ages. Retrieved from https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/245004/children-user-ages-chart-pack.pdf

OHCHR. (2021). General comment No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment. Retrieved March 7, 2023 from https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/general-comments-and-recommendations/general-comment-no-25-2021-childrens-rights-relation

Scottish Government. (2022). Building trust in the digital era: achieving Scotland’s aspirations as an ethical digital nation. Retrieved March 7, 2023 from https://www.gov.scot/publications/building-trust-digital-era-achieving-scotlands-aspirations-ethical-digital-nation/pages/2/

Smahel, D. Machackova, H., Mascheroni, G., Dedkova, L., Staksrud, E., Ólafsson, K., Livingstone , S. & Hasebrin Smahel, U. D. et al. (2020). EU kids online 2020-international report. Retrieved March 7, 2023 from https://www.eukidsonline.ch/files/Eu-kids-online-2020-international-report.pdf

In my dissertation (Alamettälä, 2022), I investigated how lower secondary school teachers (n=3) developed their instruction practices of online research skills after having been introduced to a pedagogical framework, Guided Inquiry Design (Kuhlthau, Manioites & Caspari, 2015), and examined the short- and long-term effects of the intervention on students (n=58). It was a longitudinal study: I followed the same students from 7th to 8th grade. During these two years, the students participated three teaching intervention courses that focused on different subtasks of online research: information search, evaluation, and use. The control group received standard instruction based on the curriculum. The results showed that the intervention had a positive effect immediately after the intervention, but this effect did not last until the following year (Alamettälä, 2022). Therefore, it is important to investigate how the students themselves experienced the intervention and how they reflected on their own working and learning after the intervention courses.

There are only a few intervention studies related to teaching of online research skills or information literacy skillsin lower secondary schools and even fewer investigated students’ experiences. My study provided students’ perspective on the topic. In this paper, I focused on how the students themselves experienced the intervention and their own actions during the intervention courses.

The research questions are:

1. What kind of new competencies did the students feel they achieved during the intervention?

2. How did the students indicate they worked during the intervention?

3. What kind of challenges did the students report that they had during the intervention?

4. How do students’ learning experiences, classwork, and challenges correlate?

I collected the data between 2015 and 2017. Through the questionnaire I surveyed students’ learning experiences, classwork, and challenges during the intervention courses. I analysed the data using quantitative methods.

The results showed that, concerning online research skills, the students reported most learning during the first intervention course. However, , the students reported learning more than online research skills in that they also learned subject content and working practices. According to the students, their classwork was quite exemplary; they felt that they had followed teacher’s instructions. The students did not report about any major problems. Most challenging for them was planning the work and using the inquiry log.

Correlation analysis show that good classwork was linked to positive learning experiences. A negative correlation was found between classwork and perceived challenges: the better the classwork, the fewer the challenges. There was no significant correlation between learning experiences and challenges in either direction. The same results were observed after each intervention course.

References

Alamettälä, T. (2022). Development of online research skills among lower secondary school students: The roles of formal instruction and personal factors. [Doctoral dissertation]. Tampere University. Retrieved from https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-2248-9

Kuhlthau, C. C., Maniotes, L. K., & Caspari, A. K. (2015). Guided inquiry: Learning in the 21st century. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

In 1974, Paul Zurowski coined the term “information literacy” (IL) (Badke, 2010, p. 48) and brought attention to the burgeoning production and complexity of information and the need to study and understand it, given its power and possibilities for shaping/influencing daily life. Writing in 2013, Zurkowski made clear that “[w]ays must be found to enable ordinary[,] every day citizens [to] produce and wield countervailing power to effectively restrain” “special interest money” (p. 2). For Zurkowski, “a combination of IL and a Direct Democracy movement, offer the library community such an opportunity to remodel itself while building, along what [he called] “The Direct Democracy Coalition for Citizen Rights and Responsibilities,” the power to address … [the] “issues” he identified then. Quite clearly, Zurkowski had deep ethical concerns about the socio-economic and political life of citizens around the world. He identified IL and information professionals including librarians, as significant to creating a more just and equitable world for all. My paper is embedded in critical, sociocultural/sociohistorical perspectives (Freire, 1970) and informed by Zurkowski’s vision, and Lloyd’s (2012) “people-in-practice” perspective about IL. I highlight contemporary examples of children and youth in the practice of “generating” (Zurkowski, 1974), and simultaneously using informational texts and literacies to agentically ‘speak truth to police power,’ thereby alerting society of their lived realties of fear and injustice. The Canadian information landscape is characterized by “a range of state statistics and figures related to the disappearance and death of Indigenous women and girls…” (Scribe, 2018, p. 48). Jonnie et al.’s (2019) compelling work of youth advocacy is provoked by fear of going missing and winding up dead through misrepresentation/dehumanization, absence, and need for information, and desire for safety. This takes place in the face of what Amnesty International (2021) describes as “appalling statistics … consistent with previous estimates from sources such as Statistics Canada that have long pointed to a greatly disproportionate level of violence against First Nations, Inuit and Métis women and girls” (para. 4) in Canada. My presentation employs “description, analysis, and understanding of experiences” to illustrate their value in understanding the “life worlds” of those we serve as information professionals (Bruce, p. 12), in places marked by ongoing colonial oppression. I was guided by theory of phenomenography (1981) and Bruce’s (2013) application of it to IL research. I feature epistolary writing of adolescents along with relevant interpretive/theoretical frameworks, such as Indigenous feminism (Joyce, 2020) and reader response theory (Rosenblatt, 1978). This work instantiates critical youth agency/IL practices through centering multimodal literature produced by youth for the purposes of sharing information about life-threatening phenomena characterizing their life-worlds. Thereby, illustrating youths’ critical awareness of, and need for the “transformative and empowering” possibilities of IL itself, in and beyond their contexts (Bruce, 2013). Furthermore, my presentation offers insights about IL practices for youth in underserved populations and their resistance to indifference and argues for, and contributes to scholarship about the phenomenographic, “experiential [and relational] perspective” (Ibid).

References

Amnesty International. (2021). Missing and murdered indigenous women and girls: The facts. Retrieved from https://amnesty.ca/blog/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-facts/

Badke, W. (2010). Foundations of information literacy: Learning from Paul Zurkowski. Online, 34(1), 48–50.

Bruce, C. S. (2013). Information literary research practice: An experiential perspective. In S. Kurbanoğlu et al. (Eds.), European Conference on Information Literacy: Proceedings, ECIL 2013, CCIS 397 (pp. 11–30). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum.

Jonnie, B., Shannacappo, N., & Shingoose, N. (2019). If I go missing. James Lorimer & Company.

Lloyd, A. (2012). Information literacy as a socially enacted practice. Journal of Documentation, 68(6).

Marton, F. (1981). Describing conceptions of the world around us. Instructional Science, 10(2), 177–220.

Mithlo, A. M. (2020). “A Real Feminine Journey”: Locating Indigenous feminisms in the arts. Meridians, 19(1).

Rosenblatt, L. M. (1978). The reader, the text, the poem. Southern Illinois University Press.

Scribe, M. (2018). Pedagogy of indifference. Canadian Woman Studies, 32(1/2), 47–57.

Zurkowski, P. (2013). Information literacy is dead …. Long live information literacy. In S. Kurbanoğlu et al. (Eds.), European Conference on Information Literacy: Proceedings, ECIL 2013, CCIS 397. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Information literacy is something that all libraries strive to provide for their patrons, students, and community members. What most people don’t think about is that information literacy is something that we all do every day, whether it is watching television or getting information from social media, we consume information constantly. While we constantly consume, we often also do not think of how to accurately assess information through the lens of information literacy. Though social media has been something people have used for several years, it can be argued that within the last couple of years the ability to understand and digest information through social media has become crucial for internet users. In their paper “Investigating the Relationship Between Information Literacy and Social Media Competence Among University Students” Zhu et al discuss how social media has changed information literacy stating, “The growing use of social media, such as microblogs, social networks, bookmarking sites, community blogs, or video sharing sites, has not only changed the way people communicate, but has also triggered considerable changes in peoples’ information behavior”. It is only through adjusting the way we teach and explain information literacy that people’s ability to discern credible information via social media can be improved. They go on to explore information literacy through three stages. 1. The “germination stage” which was before the 1970’s where library skills were a type of information literacy. 2. From the 1970’s to the late 1980’s where the idea of information literacy “shifted from simply emphasizing literature retrieval…to encouraging the use of information tools” and 3. From the 1980’s to the end of the 1990’s where the “ability to criticize and evaluate information was valued” (Zhu et al, 2021). It can be argued that from the 2010’s to now, a new type of information literacy is needed, that of competent information gathering skills where credible information is emphasized. Zhu et al discuss this need stating “due to a lack of relevant legislation, social media have witnessed an increase in problematic behaviors, such as sharing misinformation, which might be disguised as ‘breaking news’ or factual information” (Zhu et al, 2021). This emphasis on credibility and misinformation is something that libraries should focus on, especially university libraries.

This presentation looks at social media and explores students behaviors towards it and information gathering through a class presentation assignment. Each student should use TikTok, Instagram Stories, Facebook Reels, or YouTube shorts to explore the idea of credible information relating to their desired topic. Through this assignment, students needed to explore social media that they use every day (mainly TikTok) and should be able to articulate whether the information presented to them is credible or not. This assignment not only allows for gathering information on how students think about information literacy without being exposed to formal information literacy training, but it also allows for talk about how we consume media and information and how we organize the information we consume constantly. This is a best practice because it approaches information literacy from a social standpoint instead of purely from an academic standpoint. It allows for better discussion of information and social media, and how we navigate the rocky road of information literacy.

References

Zhu, S., Yang, H. H., Wu, D., & Chen, F. (2021). Investigating the relationship between information literacy and social media competence among university students. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 59(7), 1425–1449. Retrieved from https://doi-org.lib-e2.lib.ttu.edu/10.1177/0735633121997360

As a result of the growing number of alternative media, the rise of distrust in the media, and fears of possible hybrid attacks, gaps in media literacy have become a societal problem (Haider & Sundin, 2022). Media literacy development is both increasingly important and highly underestimated in the Czech Republic’s educational system.

Interactive Courses for Secondary School Students and Senior Citizens

The paper will present the project “Media Literacy Interactively and for All” (https://medgram.cz/), which is being developed in cooperation with the Library of the Czech University of Life Sciences, the Faculty of Education of Charles University, and the University of South-Eastern Norway. The project focuses on the two most vulnerable groups regarding media literacy levels – high school students (jsns.cz, 2018) and senior citizens (Moore & Hancock, 2022). The project also connects them and tries to increase understanding between generations.

A Synergy of Knowledge and Potential of Several Universities

Libraries, in general, are a natural environment to educate the public in media literacy. This education has also been declared as a key theme for Czech libraries for 2022 – 2024. University libraries in the Czech Republic have great opportunities to contribute to the promotion of media literacy. However, they have not yet made much use of it. This paper will present how we have taken advantage of the opportunities provided by inter-university cooperation and present outcomes that can be used in more than just the Czech Republic.

In the project, we use not only the contacts we have as universities through a network of cooperating secondary schools and a network of centres for lifelong learning but also modern teaching methods and software tools. The main core consists of two MOOC courses designed to meet the needs of each group. The courses use a newly developed system of interactive electronic learning e-books and come with detailed methodologies and tutor guides. In addition, we create an escape game that links general media literacy topics with real-life examples.

References

Haider, J., & Sundin, O. (2022). Paradoxes of media and information literacy: The crisis of information. New York, NY: Routledge.

JSNS.cz. (2018). Mediální gramotnost středoškoláků a jejich postoje k mediím: Research report. Praha. Retrieved from https://www.jsns.cz/nove/projekty/pruzkumy-setreni/medialni_gramotnost_zaku_2018.pdf

Moore, R. C., & Hancock, J. T. (2022). A digital media literacy intervention for older adults improves resilience to fake news. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1-9.. Retrieved February 1, 2023, from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-08437-0

In many frameworks, information literacy skills are seen as part of a much broader set of skills: digital skills. Although information literacy also includes non-digital skills, it is evident that digital competence is an important part of the information literate student (Leaning, 2019).

Consequently, in many educational institutions in the Netherlands, skills education has now broadened to include digital skills. Following a previous project in which IL educational materials were shared, the Dutch IL working group has now taken the initiative for nationwide sharing of digital skills educational materials via the national Dutch search portal Edusources.

To create optimal support, the IL Working Group sought cooperation with six other national library working groups. This makes the project unique.

Such cooperation prevents many parties from doing the same thing through different platforms. Cooperation is also important in defining a common scope that has translated into a Digital Skills taxonomy. As a basis for that taxonomy, all major digital skills frameworks, such as DQ framework and Digcomp 2.2 (DQ Institute, 2019; Vuorikari, Kluzer, & Punie, 2022) were compared and analyzed. Based on that, a first draft was developed that became final after incorporating feedback from a broad spectrum of relevant working groups and stakeholders. That taxonomy will have a place in the edusources search portal to increase retrievability and thus promote reuse.

During this presentation we will briefly discuss the relationship between information literacy and digital literacy and you will get an idea of the different facets of sharing (DS) educational resources.

References

DQ Institute. (2019). DQ (Digital Intelligence) Global Standard on Digital Literacy, Digital Skills and Digital Readiness. DQ Institute, Global. Retrieved from https://www.dqinstitute.org/global-standards/

Leaning, M. (2019). An approach to digital literacy through the integration of media and information literacy. Media and Communication, 7(2), 4–13.

Vuorikari, R., Kluzer, S., & Punie, Y. (2022). DigComp 2.2: The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens - With new examples of knowledge, skills and attitudes (EUR 31006 EN, JRC128415). Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. https://doi.org/10.2760/115376

If students are doing independent research projects for their thesis, basic data management skills should be part of their curricula. Also reusing existing data requires understanding of data citation and management. Both Bauder (2021) and Marzal and Prado (2013) consider data literacy as part of information literacy. Bauder continues that data related skills are a good fit in the 2016 ALA Information Literacy Framework even more substantially than textual literacies. Data literacy as part of information literacy is important as so-called transferable skill that will greatly benefit those students that leave academia and enter the workforce. Smits and Teperek (2020) noticed in their study of Master students that data management often comes up piecemeal, for example, in the context of method studies or thesis seminars, but was not treated in a coherent manner. There is a need for systematic data management guidance also on the undergraduate and graduate or Master level.

Helsinki University is a multidisciplinary research university, largest in Finland and ranked 110 in the THE University Ranking. Helsinki University Library has had a data management team since 2009 and has been teaching data management planning and other skills for researchers since 2017. The education so far has reached researchers and administrative staff, but not bachelor and master students. Also, since the changes in the data privacy legislation namely the EU GDPR, the demand for timely data management education for all levels is genuine.

When teaching undergraduates an obvious challenge will be the sheer scale of students that need to be addressed. How to address the right group of students at the right time? Who will teach? Could data management teaching for undergraduate level be embedded in thesis seminars or will the academics be reluctant to take on new responsibilities? It is vital MA students know how to handle personal data according to GDPR requirements before they start their projects, so that they don’t just start collecting data and forget to inform the research participants correctly. Students also need to know what the special categories of personal data are and how not to cause risks to these vulnerable groups with how they handle this kind of data.

In Helsinki University Library we figured that we need more than one approach to reach the students. As starting points we are preparing a short self-study guide in simple language on data management for undergraduates and a test form for personal data – “Do I handle personal data in my thesis?” To deepen the learning more in context of the thesis seminars we concluded a pilot with a Master program together with the responsible University Lecturers. With simple exercises aimed at first just recognizing data features in publications of selected research groups the students took the first steps in learning the different dimensions of data management. Our data management team is also developing a data management introductory wizard tool with CS students. Data Support team is working together with the library Pedagogical Team responsible for Information Literacy teaching to further embed data themes into student resources.

References

Bauder, J. (2022). Teaching research data management. American Library Association.

Calzada Prado, J. & Ángel Marzal, M. (2013). Incorporating data literacy into information literacy

programs: Core competencies and contents. Libri, 63(2), 123–34. https://doi.org/10.1515/libri-2013-0010

Burress, T. (2022). Data literacy practices of students conducting undergraduate research. College and Research Libraries 83(3), 434–451. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.83.3.434

Smits, D. A. B. & Teperek, M. (2020). Research data management for master’s students: From awareness to action. Data Science Journal, 19(1). Retrieved from https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85106864849&doi=10.5334%2fdsj-2020-030&partnerID=40&md5=387b83348a741146c3fb46eda6df251e

The evaluation process of school libraries, developed by the Portuguese School Libraries Network (RBE), has been carried out through the application of a self-evaluation model (MABE). This evaluation seeks to establish a relationship between processes, the impact or value they generate, and the prospects for future development (Bastos, Martins & Conde, 2011). The model contemplates four domains, which constitute parts of analysis and evaluation in harmony with the main axes of work of the school library (SL). The instrument used by teacher librarians (TL) is based on a set of elements, including the collection of data through questionnaires applied to students of different schooling levels.

Therefore, in the framework of an agreement between Universidade Aberta with the RBE for research purposes, we examine the responses obtained through the surveys carried out in that context, to students from the Portuguese districts of Évora, Leiria, Setúbal and Vila Real, in 2015, 2017 and 2019. The analysis is focused on activities related to MIL, considering that primarily it concerns with competencies and skills, but can also be devised as the basis for a democratic society in which all citizens can participate (Haider and Sundin, 2022, p. 15). According to the orientations published by RBE (2017), students need to critically engage with media and information, namely in digital settings, and it is of the utmost importance to identify how students evaluate SL’s action and to realize whether the SL is achieving its goals in this area.

This study is based on a mixed methods approach and crosses the four regions (representative of different geographic and social contexts) and the three indicated time periods, verifying the incidences and contrasts in the dimensions studied in the observed universe. We want to understand how students face the contributions of the school library in the development of their skills in information and media literacy by means of a statistical analysis of the answers given to MABE surveys. These data are crossed with the Improvement Reports, from 2016 and 2018, in particular the strengths and weaknesses pointed out by the TLs. From this analysis it is possible to identify what has been the role of SL in the development of MIL skills, as well as the constraints and improvements in the action of libraries during this period of time. Being widely considered that MIL is the answer to today’s information crisis and that schools have an important role to play in this context, we think that SLs are right at the center of this process. This study is particularly relevant as it analyzes unpublished data collected by RBE, especially considering that the SL evaluation model has become an instrument to guide good practices, monitoring and evaluating the different intervention areas, certifying processes and results, and informing decision-making.

References

Bastos, G., Martins, R., & Conde, E. (2011). A self-evaluation model for school libraries in Portugal. In L. Marquardt & D. Oberg (Eds.), Global Perspectives on School Libraries: Projects and Practices (pp. 11–21). Berlin: De Gruyter Saur.

Haider, J., & Sundin, O. (2022). Paradoxes of media and information literacy: the crisis of information. New York: Routledge.

RBE. (2017). Aprender com a biblioteca escolar. Lisboa: Rede de Bibliotecas Escolares.

An essential component of the information society is intellectual property (IP) knowledge, in particular copyright and related rights. IP has become even more relevant with the increasing openings allowing people to create and promote their work in online media.

There are a lot of different versions of copyright surveys in Social Sciences in Bulgaria because the specialists in this field find their spheres of realization in different public institutions. As cultural and information institutions where using or producing information resources is the basis of their activity, specialists need to be well informed on IP protection, especially copyright (Trencheva & Denchev, 2016; Todorova & Trencheva, 2014; Todorova et al. 2014). However, a survey dedicated to copyright awareness among future media specialist had not been performed.

The paper presents the methodology and results of a survey which aims to establish, systematize, and analyse the current level of awareness about copyright issues among trainees in the media field.

The survey instrument was developed by the authors in order to collect data, regarding students’ knowledge, awareness levels and attitude of copyright issues. The questionnaire consists of 40 main questions in four panels.

The survey was conducted in nine universities in Bulgaria, among students in the public communications and information sciences, with specialties such as journalism, media, public relations, arts, and creativity. It was conducted from 1st April – 26th May 2021. The general aggregation, consists of 449 effectively surveyed Bulgarian students in Bachelor, Master and Ph.D degree programs. The study was done on the principle of systematic random selection with stratification to 10% of the students in the mentioned professional field. Data collection was carried out by Google survey.

The survey provides information on copyright literacy and the attitudes of young people to IP and was conducted at a time when the rights of authors and journalists were in focus and their value emphasized. In this sense, it can be assumed that the answers of the respondents indirectly influence the public debate on the IP topic. The analyzed information serves as a starting point for a model for increasing copyright literacy among future media specialists.

References

Todorova, T., Тrencheva, T., Kurbanoğlu, S., Doğan, G., Horvat, A., & Boustany, J. (2014). A multinational study on copyright literacy competencies of LIS professionals. In S. Kurbanoğlu et al. (Eds.), Information Literacy, Lifelong Learning and Digital Citizenship in the 21st Century, Second European Conference on Information Literacy, ECIL 2014, Dubrovnik, Croatia, October 20–23, 2014: Proceedings. Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) 492 (pp. 138–148). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Todorova, T., & Trencheva, T. (2014). Copyright literacy in memory institutions: Findings from scientific research project in Bulgaria. In Proceedings of the 3th International Conference on NPSE (pp. 169–172). Florence: PIXEL.

Trencheva, T., & Denchev, S. (2016). Intellectual property awareness of sulsit’s students: Survey results and curricula reflection. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference of E-Society (pp. 79–86). Vilamoura, Algarve: Portugal.

Recently, the global information and educational space has been constantly and intensively enriched with new phenomena and forms of their presentation that needs to be comprehended and analyzed. Over the past few months the authors of the article have chosen a specific segment of Facebook network and have tracked a small part of this global phenomenon. In our first publication we pre sented a content analysis of individual information and educational Facebook Pages. That study aroused public interest, prompting us to conduct a comparative analysisof related objects and phenomena. It should be noted that all educational pages on Facebook are professionally oriented and serve to develop the professional and medical competence of the interested educational community.

We attempted to compare thematic pages created or moderated by authors by means of content analysis. We give for comparison the statistical data of two author multi-thematic FB-pages.

“Медіашкола професора Ганни Онкович”, “Media School of Professor Ganna Onkovych” had 2,000 registered participants, URL: https://www.facebook.com/groups/898909013519964/about). Освіта за спеціальністю “Нафтогазова інженерія та технології”, Education by profession “Oil and Gas Engineering and Technology”, had registered 1,200 participants (URL: https:// www.facebook.com/groups/145315129579851/about). They are led by professors G.V. Onkovych from the department of Ukrainian and Latin languages of Kyiv Medical University, where a special course “Professional-oriented media education” is offered , and V.S. Beletsky, professor of the department “Oil, Gas and Condensate Extraction” of the National Technical University “Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute”.

Every page has associated statistics, that are automatically updated continuously. A comparative analysis of Facebook informational and educational pages provides opportunities for obtaining versatile information that can be useful in the processes of monitoring and regulating information flows and in particular, professional information.

Objectives

Students are arguably one of the most-researched populations, including in the context of information literacy (IL). However there is significantly less research on Ph.D. students. Nevertheless, the information competences of doctoral students are crucial factors that impact the efficiency and validity of their research and future career prospects. We will discuss the development of an ILDoc questionnaire dedicated to researching IL of Ph.D. students.

Methodology

The first step was to refer to well-known and verified tools such as ILSES (Kurbanoglu, Akkoyunlu and Umay, 2006), IL-HUMASS (Pinto and Sales, 2010; Pinto, 2012), PKIM (Świgoń, 2013), and ALFINVES (Pinto et al., 2013). The other step was to include the learning outcomes approach into the questionnaire. Quantitative data from the survey allowed for statistical analyses to identify potentially core variables. The CAWI technique was used due to its applicability in the case of a dispersed group such as Ph.D. students. The survey was conducted between September 2022 and January 2023 among Ph.D. students from five Polish universities. The selection of universities was dictated by a pragmatic approach in which we focused on easy access to the sample. Due to the important context of systemic changes, we chose only research universities which we knew offered the unique perspective of doctoral schools. The population of Ph.D. students at Polish universities is about 12,000, therefore the required number of people to take part in the survey amounted to 261. Responses were collected from 294 students of various disciplines using snowball sampling - the survey was distributed via peers from selected institutions. Data was analysed using internal consistency reliability tests, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, as well as structural equation modelling.

Outcomes

This paper describes the development of the ILDoc questionnaire and the results of a preliminary study. Using factor analysis, we identified 14 core variables that reflect four theoretically consistent factors. Based on the findings, we propose that these identified latent factors could form the basis for determining the variables in the SEM analysis. The presented approach provides valuable insights into the key factors that shape the information literacy of Ph.D. students in Poland, grounded in their self-assessment of skills, knowledge, and attitudes.

References

Kurbanoglu, S. S., Akkoyunlu, B., & Umay, A. (2006). Developing the information literacy self‐efficacy scale. Journal of Documentation, 62(6), 730–743.

Pinto, M. (2012). Information literacy perceptions and behaviour among history students. In Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives, 64(3), 304–327.

Pinto, M., Fernández-Ramos, A., Sánchez, G., & Meneses, G. (2013). Information competence of doctoral students in information science in Spain and Latin America: A self-assessment. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 39(2), 144–154.

Pinto, M., & Sales, D. (2010). Insights into translation students’ information literacy using the IL-HUMASS survey. Journal of Information Science, 36(5), 618–630.

Świgoń, M. (2013). Personal knowledge and information management–conception and exemplification. Journal of Information Science, 39(6), 832–845.

One of the key questions of information literacy instruction is tailoring the content of sessions to the students’ needs and interests. While we can get information from the faculty members, we rarely hear from the students themselves. In this study I aim to contribute to filling this gap. This case study is situated in an R-1 U.S. university with a first-year writing course that has an embedded information literacy curriculum. One of the instructors assigned students an activity where they anonymously submitted their questions about information literacy topics including questions regarding use of libraries, finding sources, academic integrity, and so forth. The course librarian answered the questions and posted the answers to the course management system.

I looked at three semesters’ worth of questions with a total of approximately 100 questions and took a mostly qualitative approach, focusing on thematic and sentiment analysis. The results showed the themes of the questions and the emotions expressed in them, such as an expressed fear of accidentally breaching academic integrity policies. In my presentation I will show the changing and stable levels of interest in topics across the semesters and will map the students’ questions on the information literacy curriculum to discuss common and differing areas. I will conclude the presentation with discussing implications and possible future actions.

Background

The Library of the Law and Administration Faculty of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow is currently preparing a complex reform of its website and profiles in social media in order to comply with the best benchmarks in this domain. This operation has been preceded by a two-stage study of Library’s users’ information needs and expectations concerning the website’s future architecture and design. We purposefully limited the target group to active scholars and academic teachers only. The paper exposes the results of the study and possible practical implementations of its empirical findings. The research project discussed herein is the first large scale mixed-method survey conducted in our Library.

Objectives

We defined the objectives as follows:

1) discover, with the utmost precision achievable, actual needs of faculty members staff regarding the offer of resources and services displayed by the Library via its website and social media profiles;

2) assess the concordance of discovered user’s needs with the best benchmarks as recognized optimal models of law libraries website design and organization;

3) compare obtained findings with similar studies (e.g. McAllister & Brown, 2020; Uwaechina & Eze-Onwuzuruike, 2019) and identify potential particularities of local law scholars; and

4) assess the feasibility of implementing modifications recommended by faculty members.

Methodology

The study is a mixed-method research relying on the application of: 1) a large scale online survey addressed to the whole community of the faculty members and 2) a focus group interview with 10 scholars, fully transcribed and explored via discourse analysis conducted according to the principles of the cognitive imaging method.

Outcomes

The main outcome generated by the study is an accurate panorama of information needs and expectations expressed by the faculty members with respect to the Library’s website and social media profiles. Indications emerging from this first-of-this-kind research will guide modifications and extensions introduced in the Library’s website so as to better address and anticipate scholars’ requests. The study is in line with current research trends that stress the utility of improving libraries’ communication via digital media in order to sustain users’ satisfaction (McCaffrey, 2019; Indrák & Pokorná, 2021; Fu, 2021; Mărginean & Kifor, 2021).

References

Fu, Y. (2021). Experiencing the academic library in the digital age: From information seeking and user experience to human information interaction. [Doctoral dissertation]. UCL (University College London).

Indrák, M., & Pokorná, L. (2021). Analysis of digital transformation of services in a research library. Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication, 70(1/2), 154–172.

McAllister, C., & Brown, M. (2020). Wrangling weirdness: Lessons learned from academic law library collections. Retrieved December 19, 2022 from https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/charleston/2019/collectiondevelopment/21/

Mărginean, E., & Kifor, C. V. (2021). Academic libraries as user-centered organizations. Case study: Quality of services provided by LBUS Library. In MATEC Web of Conferences, 342, (p. 09002). EDP Sciences.

McCaffrey, C. (2019). Transforming the university library one step at a time: A ten year LibQUAL+ review. New Review of Academic Librarianship, 25(1), 59–75.

Uwaechina, C. G., & Eze-Onwuzuruike, J. (2019). The role academic law libraries in meeting information needs of legal clientele. Library Research Journal, 4, 133–137.

Information literacy is a tenet of school librarianship (ALA & AECT, 1988, 1998; AASL, 2018a, 2018b). Although most school librarians were once classroom teachers, these individuals do not always possess adequate information literacy skills (Burchard & Myers, 2019) even though it has been shown that the students of teachers, who possess these skills, have higher levels of information literacy themselves (Solmaz, 2017).

Do students leave library school with the skills to answer their own information needs? Does preparation for the profession encompass essential skills necessary for success (Whitton, 2019)? In this paper, authors will provide a holistic view of the responsibilities and information necessary to meet those responsibilities while sharing selected results from a recent study exploring the professional information needs of early-career school librarians and library school students wishing to become school librarians. Utilizing a mixed-method approach, we used surveys and interviews to explore and understand the information needs of participants as well as ways they met those information needs.

Initial results revealed the source of support for these early career professionals resided in participation in professional learning communities and networks, whether ad hoc or more formal. Early-career school librarians relied on the mentoring found in these groups to ensure their success. Responsibility lied with the employer and preparation program to build on students’ and early-career school librarians’ inherent and emerging information literacy skills to foster expertise. We anticipate that additional analysis will aid school library preparation programs and school administrators in developing a more strategic approach to supporting the success of the future and early-career school librarian.

References

American Association of School Librarians. (2018a). National school library standards crosswalk with ISTE standards for students and educators. American Library Association. https://standards.aasl.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/180828-aasl-standards-crosswalk-iste.pdf.

American Association of School Librarians. (2018b). National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries. American Library Association.

American Library Association, & Association for Educational Communications & Technology. (1988). Information power: Building partnerships for learning. (ED 315028). ERIC. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED315028.pdf

American Library Association, & Association for Educational Communications & Technology. (1998). Information power: Building partnerships for learning. ALA Editions.

Burchard, M. S., & Myers, S. K. (2019). Early information literacy experience matters to self-efficacy and performance outcomes in teacher education. Journal of College Reading and Learning, 49(2), 115–128. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10790195.2019.1582372.

Solmaz, D. Y. (2017). Relationship between lifelong learning levels and information literacy skill in teacher education candidates. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 5(6), 939–946. https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2017.050605

Whitton, C. A. (2019). A study of school librarian job advertisements and the inclusion of AASL standards. Teacher Librarian, 46(4), 26–30.

Our contribution aims to summarise the results of evaluating information literacy instruction focusing on plagiarism prevention and appropriate work with scientific information sources using the HUMAN framework. A team from Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt presented this frameworkat ECIL 2021 (Baldarelli et al., 2022) as a tool for developing the information literacy competencies of German engineering students. We followed up on this initiative by further adapting the framework to the context of healthcare studies in a Czech university.

Czech law mandates that midwives and paramedics receive a bachelor’s degree to perform their work (Act on non-medical health professions, 2004). This entails a requirement to master academic writing, including proper use of information sources. However, these claims usually do not meet the interests and expectations of healthcare students, who are rather practically oriented and, hence, consider the requirement of these academic competencies unjustified. In this situation, we were looking for a way to convince them that it is necessary to address this problem by adopting a different perspective. The HUMAN framework, which had been previously successfully piloted with similarly practically oriented engineering students (Baldarelli et al., 2022) and in a practical-oriented international management course (Trefer, 2022), provided us with such a solution.

In cooperation with the framework’s authors, we created self-study materials (including a video presentation), exercises (consisting of categorisation of the sources used in a preselected scientific article), and a workshop using the HUMAN framework. We subsequently tested and evaluated the materials in class with 27 students of midwifery and emergency medical services study programs. To improve the reliability of the research, we used a combination of research methods: an analysis of students’ outputs from the exercise and a self-assessment questionnaire.

The effect of the teaching method proved to be considerable. Before the lesson, more than half of the students assessed their ability to work with sources as poor or very poor. While after completing, all but one rated their ability as rather good or somewhat good (the average increase was 1.3 steps on a five-point scale). The evaluation of the framework as a teaching method showed that the students appreciated the video presentation but would welcome more examples of the application on specific scientific texts. Another finding highlighted the importance of choosing an appropriate article for student assessment. The analysis of the students’ outputs showed that the findability and availability of full texts of the sources cited in the assessed article played an essential role in their correct categorisation according to the HUMAN framework.

References

Act on non-medical health professions, nr. 96/2004 (2004). Retrieved from https://www.zakonyprolidi.cz/cs/2004-96

Baldarelli, B., Trescher, K., Treffer, A., & Jakobs, L. (2022). Learning how to avoid plagiarism: A new approach in information literacy sessions for computer science and engineering students. In S. Kurbanoğlu, S., Špiranec, S., Ünal, Y., Boustany, J., Kos, D. (Eds.), Information Literacy in a Post-Truth Era, The Seventh European Conference on Information Literacy, ECIL 2021, online, September 20-23, 2021: Revised Selected Papers. Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) 1533. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99885-1_45

Treffer, A. (2022). Design digitaler Lernmedien zur Quellenkompetenzvermittlung. [Unpublished master thesis]. Brandenburg: University of applied Science.