Standards and Frames: Can They Get Along?

A group of academic librarians in New Jersey have put out this Open Letter Regarding the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. The letter essentially states that, while the Framework is good, we should not completely discard the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards. (The letter also points out some problems with the parallel structure of the "Frames," which is a separate thing.)

I'll admit, even though I'm an Instructional Services Librarian, and I am passionate about information literacy, and I have read through at least two iterations of the Framework for Information Literacy, and I think the Framework is a great effort that gets at the more conceptual, overarching meaning of information literacy, I haven't felt overly compelled to express strong opinions about the Framework either way. Partly this is because I am extremely busy as a community college librarian who wears many hats; but I also tend to be a "let-the-cards-fall-as-they-may" kind of person. Sometimes. When the stakes aren't extremely high.

And I guess I feel like I've got a firm enough grasp of info lit and learning outcomes and assessment and all that jazz that I don't believe that any particular document or iteration of that document is going to truly change what we are about as librarians, or what information literacy is. Because information literacy is something that exists in and of itself, and that evolves along with society and culture -- we librarians are just attempting to lasso this set of skills and concepts, give them neat categories and labels, and figure out how to teach and assess those skills and concepts. The Framework gives librarians an opportunity to think more broadly about these concepts and how they extend across a student's lifetime, and to use those ideas to help our practices to evolve -- just as all things, including information literacy itself, evolve. But perhaps I am getting too existential...

Bottom line: we needed this Framework, this heady and theoretical but imperfect document that takes information literacy to a new level of intellectualism and, I think, elevates it as an academic field. At the same time, I think these New Jersey librarians make some valid points; I signed their open letter in agreement. There are good reasons to keep, but update, the Standards -- not least of which is, they are still true (with perhaps some updating needed). Just because we now have the Framework doesn't mean that students don't still need to learn to recognize their information needs and access, evaluate, and use information ethically and legally. They very much do! And, as mentioned in the Open Letter, these Standards have now been infused in many colleges' and universities' general education goals, and other assessment guidelines.

So, "getting rid" of the Standards not only doesn't really make much sense -- it's kind of impossible. Sure, you could physically take down those pages on ACRL's website, and consider any old evidence of the preexisting Standards to be null and void -- but that doesn't mean they won't rise again, like the Phoenix from the ashes, as we attempt to develop concrete student learning outcomes for each "Frame"... At the same time, when writing SLOs, it's important to think about the broader, overarching understandings that we are trying to get at in our instruction, for those are the things that students will take with them when they leave us. The Framework gives us "labels" for those understandings, while also keeping us from falling into our old, compartmentalized, overly-detailed librarian ways when it comes to instruction.

The Framework and Standards: they can go hand-in-hand. Let's figure out how to make them talk together.

The Limitations of Teaching Sources as Objects

Reading Holliday and Rogers' article, "Talking About InformationLiteracy: the Mediating Role of Discourse in a College Writing Classroom," has turned my brain upside down in the way I think about our information literacy instruction, and has even informed the way I work with students at the reference desk and in one-on-one research consultations.  It had never occurred to me that the very language we use in instruction actually serves to propagate students' perceptions of sources as "containers" to be "located" and "incorporated." The idea of using sources of information for the purpose of "inquiry" -- something that the new ACRL Framework is leading us to do -- gets lost as information has become a commodity to be "retrieved."

Even when faculty, with good intentions, try to guide students to "better" sources by restricting certain kinds of sources (for example, certain websites,) this only serves to emphasize to students the idea of sources as something for them to obtain, as a consequence eliminating the understanding of sources being more or less valuable because of the information they impart. This is something that I think librarians and faculty have always known and try to convey, but we are coming at it the wrong way. The use of "evaluation criteria" checklists as the predominant tools used to teach how to evaluate sources (which I personally have come to despise and refuse to use in my instruction) tops off everything else to create a complete package of denigration of the use of information.

I love the ideas espoused in this article from George Mason University, The Learning Library in Context: Community, Integration, and Influence. While the college or university library is often described as the "heart of campus," the article describes how the arteries and veins of this heart can intertwine themselves with the entire campus and the academic curriculum.  The library "pumps blood" into the efforts to instill in students the critical thinking and lifelong learning skills that colleges and universities aim to help students develop.

Some pertinent quotes (emphases mine):

"Rather than an external "add on" to the educational experience, the library, as information resource and gateway, is a primary catalyst for cognitive, behavioral, and affective changes in students -- as they interact with information resources as directed by faculty, as they complete assignments and study with peers, [...] seeking connections and making meaning in more self-directed ways.  The learning library, rather than a repository of materials or a study hall, is therefore an agency of change in students' lives" (124).

"In the Vygotskian sense, the learning library is the constructivist laboratory for students to make their own meanings, but only by moving through a series of 'zones of proximal development' with research strategies and information sources and with the coaching and guidance of more knowledgeable others"(124).


"Because of the continually changing nature of information access[...] students need a conceptual foundation for research. This approach fosters the underlying processes, mainly critical thinking and problem solving, that allow them to adapt to new situations" (129).

College Handouts Don't Make the Grade

I can't say enough about the reports coming out of Project Information Literacy.  Report #3, How Handouts for Research Assignments Guide Today's College Students, gives a detailed analysis of the information conveyed to students in research assignment handouts, compared to the needs of college students during their research processes (as determined in a prior study).  It outlines how often specific resources are mentioned, including help from librarians.  Very eye-opening and great fodder for developing more collaboration between librarians and faculty in designing research assignment descriptions.

Library Video Using Xtranormal

You might have seen these types of videos floating around -- people are making these for a vast variety of reasons.  I've seen library-related and educational videos made with this online software, and my husband commented last night that people on his Corvette forum have posted these types of videos as well (I didn't ask what, exactly, the videos on his forum were about).

Here's one I created about our library's one-on-one consultation service. It was easy and fun to do.  

And this one was created by my co-worker, Jessica Ambrose.

Here's another one that I really liked that was posted by Sheila Webber on her blog.



From a pedagogical standpoint, I admit I really didn't understand the point of these until I made one. I think that, as with any technology, it's what you do with it and how well and soundly you use it. 

A few points/rules of thumb that I can think of:

• Keep them short.  More than two-three minutes and you've lost your audience with these. All of the above videos are 40-50 seconds long, but they each serve their purpose: to inform about one concept, service, or process. 
• Make them as content-rich as possible in that limited time. 
• Think about your audience and write the script accordingly.  Don't be overly corny or trying-too-hard-to-be-cool if you are writing for students. 
• Make use of humor to capture the audience's attention.  Selecting two characters who are just plain-looking, for example, and having a boring script defeats the purpose. If you want to make a boring video, then make a regular video and make it professional-looking.  Only use Xtranormal or a similar script-reading video technology if you are going to capitalize on the tongue-in-cheek nature of the graphics and crudeness of the technology. (Disclaimer: by crudeness I am referring to the "low-tech" nature of it -- I am NOT suggesting that it should be used to create lewd or lascivious videos!)

Old IL Instruction Videos

These old videos are delightfully nostalgic:

http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/2011/12/old-information-literacy-videos-online.html

Aside from the dated content, I find it especially astonishing that the videos are 10-20 minutes in length!!  Can you imagine a student today sitting for that long to watch these??  (And maybe they didn't even back then...)

Project Information Literacy

Just came across an excellent research project, Project Information Literacy, that is currently being conducted to fill in some of the gaps in our understandings of how young adult college students conduct research and engage with information technology and social media. Their latest report, Balancing Act: How College Students Manage Technology While in the Library During Crunch Time (Oct. 2011) is excellent.  It really gives an intimate snapshot of how today's students are using library spaces and resources, technology, social media and sources on the Web for academic as well as social purposes. Very eye-opening, and even encouraging. The report is long, but very readable, with lots of charts that make it easy to skim through the information, so I highly recommend taking the time to look at it. (Another nice feature: the authors have put their methodology information at the end of the report, so you can read the really interesting stuff first.)