AARL

The Role of Academic Libraries in the Development of the Information Literate Student: The Interface Between Librarian, Academic and Other Stakeholders.

Maureen Nimon

Abstract: Information literacy has been a major concern of the library profession in Australia over the past decade. In our economic rationalist world, where value must be seen to be returned for the investment of money and time, academic libraries must show that their resources and services are effective in aiding student learning and supporting the research activities of staff and students. A partnership between library and academic staff to foster students'information literacy has long been seen to be the most effective way to achieve this goal. However, as progress is made in establishing such partnerships and the policies and strategies by which they are implemented, experience shows that work remains to be done at the point of 'customising'information literacy initiatives to fit the teaching programs of individual academics. This paper explores some of the issues which have arisen recently in one institution well advanced in its information literacy program. It argues for effective measurement of program outcomes through shared assessment of student learning.

Information literacy has been a major concern of the library profession in Australia over the past decade. At present there is no indication of any slackening of interest in the topic. The number of recent conferences on information literacy and the related and more encompassing term, life long learning, attests to this. For example, in the span of eight months, the University of South Australia's fourth national conference on information literacy was held in December 1999[1], the Life Long Learning Conference organised by Central Queensland University took place in July 2000[2], and a workshop sponsored by CAUL on Information Literacy Standards for Higher Education was conducted in Adelaide in September 2000.[3] A theme consistently present throughout these events has been the need for partnerships between library and academic staff to develop students'academic literacy more fully.

Considerable experience in implementing such partnerships has already been gained in Australia in higher education. Yet the progress made reveals that when initial barriers are surmounted, other issues emerge. It is clear that there is still a lot to learn about the conditions necessary to ensure that information literacy programs maximise student learning by combining the expertise of librarian and academic effectively. This paper aims to draw attention to some current developments in one Australian institution and to put forward a case for attention being given to a particular aspect of partnership, that of the effective measurement of program outcomes through shared assessment of student learning.

Senior Management as Part of the Partnership

The role of managers outside the library and the academic unit may be critical to success. The substantial and important program at the University of Ballarat was made possible by 'the University's commitment to Information Literacy as a major organising feature of its academic work'.[4]

Strong administrative support and some special funding were made available. Nevertheless, it was reported that one hindrance to progress was that no time provision was made to enable librarians and academics to meet as a whole team and to reflect on stages of implementation,[5] suggesting that even closer links to management are desirable.

Strong managerial leadership and support are features of information literacy education at the University of South Australia. An institution-wide strategy to embed information literacy in the curriculum has been devised as part of planning and developmental activities focussed on attaining specific curriculum outcomes. These curriculum outcomes are determined by the university's adoption of seven graduate qualities, the second of which is that a graduate of the University of South Australia 'is prepared for lifelong learning'.[6] This in turn requires all who contribute to student learning in some way to foster the skills and understandings in graduates necessary for an effective professional life. The strategy comprises three elements:

• 'a framework which identifies the characteristics of a lifelong learner'
• the marshalling of staff development expertise and other resources to support the incorporation of lifelong learning approaches in subjects and courses, and
• the construction of an audit tool by which to measure 'the lifelong learning dimensions of subjects and courses'.

Elements two and three are still being developed as 'field and discipline-specific resources and exemplars'are gathered and organised and the audit tool is refined.[7]

Thus a major commitment to information literacy education has been made at the institutional level and the outcome will illuminate in time the strengths and possible weaknesses of such an approach. The University Library, however, has already commissioned a report to complement the institution-wide program. Entitled 'Learning Place and Space', it contains 53 recommendations, the first of which is that 'the library should systematically seek from academic staff their perception of collaboration with library staff and the type of `interaction the library should provide to partner their teaching'.[8] Its author emphasises that sustained attention should be given to 'customising'library information literacy strategies and programs at the point of implementation.[9]

Such a recommendation to customise programs is a bold one in today's environment where there are considerable pressures to deliver programs that are generic. It is always arguable that the generic approach is the best use of resources. However, we should remind ourselves that we have long known the principles of teaching for successful skill development and that these are highly relevant to library-based information literacy programs many of which are essentially concerned with skill development. At the same time reflection on the principles and on the time at which they were originally published is a salutary reminder that achieving our goals is not an easy matter, even when we know how we should proceed.

Principles of Teaching and Learning for Skill Development

1. The skill should be taught functionally, in the context of a topic of study, rather than as a separate exercise.
2. The learner must understand the meaning and purpose of the skill, and have motivation for developing it.
3. The learner should be carefully supervised in his [sic] first attempts to apply the skill, so he will form correct habits from the beginning.
4. The learner needs repeated opportunities to practice the skill, with immediate evaluation so he knows where he has succeeded or failed in his performance.
5. The learner needs individual help, through diagnostic measures and follow-up exercises, since not all members of any group learn at exactly the same rate or retain equal amounts of what they have learned.
6. Skill instruction should be presented at increasing levels of difficulty, moving from the simple to the complex;…
7. Students should be helped, at each stage, to generalise the skills, by applying them in many and varied situations; in this way, maximum transfer of skills can be achieved.
8. The program of instruction should be sufficiently flexible to allow skills to be taught as they are needed by the learner; many skills should be developed concurrently.[10]

We must constantly remember that these principles all spring from the learner's needs, not those of the library seeking to promote proper use of its resources nor those of academics trying to pass the responsibility for the identification of appropriate resources to students. Nevertheless there are many difficulties in building programs based on these principles in the demanding, high-pressure environments in which we work, programs which embed skill development in the real learning tasks of the students and at the same time are able to be tailored to the needs of individuals. Major hurdles to this goal are a lack of resources, especially time, and the consequent attempt to deceive ourselves that technology itself will solve the conundrum. But generic skills programs are an educational nonsense. They may be politically valuable, convincing administrators of our efficiency and effectiveness in mounting them, but they deliver minimum outcomes in terms of student learning. If they are our principal strategy, librarians will continue to bemoan the students'inability to exploit library resources. Lecturers will continue to rely on textbooks and set readings (printed and packaged). The students will go to the reserve desk and borrow the set readings. And all of us will be defeated by our 'efficiency and effectiveness.' It is therefore the argument of this paper that, difficult though customisation is to achieve, it is necessary.

'Customising' Information Literacy Programs

Exploration of the perceptions of some academic staff in regard to library information literacy initiatives was undertaken informally at the Research Focus Day held by the School of Communication and Information Studies on 20 September 2000. Two themes emerged. One concerned the right of academics engaged in research to request search services from the librarians; the other, the views of the same academics as to how librarians could contribute to the education of research students.

One academic expressed the fear that workload pressures on library staff were encouraging librarians to try to make academics self-sufficient in the area of information retrieval. While the academic made her comment in a jocular manner, discussion stimulated by her remark showed that some academic staff were unclear as to when they were entitled to ask for expert library searches or even if they were entitled to ask at all. It seems that evolving working conditions have upset previous customs and understandings. They knew that if they worked in exclusively research or commercial institutions, they would have access to experts to undertake searches on their behalf. They were also aware that their position in an institution that has a teaching role makes problematic at times the distinction between where service should cease and instruction begin.

In regard to the maintenance of their personal information-seeking skills, the academics present revealed that they kept abreast of knowledge production in the very narrow spheres of their expertise without recourse to librarians, or even the library, to any great extent. They typically subscribe to key journals and buy essential books, which are thus available to them long before the same items are processed in the library. They regularly scan at least one, perhaps two, databases they perceive as highly relevant and convenient to use. Beyond this they attend conferences at which research in progress is reported and email colleagues working in the same areas. They are confident that their strategies keep them at the forefront in their own targeted areas. They seek from the library occasional help to explore a new database, but only when this is likely to fit within the scope of their immediate interests. They do not want to learn more than this. On the other hand, they accepted that their practices limited their ability to search beyond sources they used regularly and to give their students a broad-based training in information-searching and selection. The outcomes of the session were agreements that:

• in regard to the needs of academic staff, guidelines should be developed to clarify the conditions under which major literature searches may be requested by academic staff.
• in regard to the information literacy education of research students, the expertise of liaison librarians was required to supplement the induction given by academics.

This latter point merely confirmed a position already adopted by the research staff of the school a little earlier in the year. During the months June to August 2000, the liaison librarian for the school attended all planning meetings at which the group worked on the design and documentation of a professional doctoral program in communications. The program, to which candidates will be admitted in 2002, is a research degree in which students undertake one third of their studies as coursework and two thirds as research located in their professional spheres. One of the coursework subjects is The Literature Review. The basis of it as planned by the working party is the partnership between academic and library expertise advocated by Macauley and McKnight[11] in which the librarian becomes co-supervisor of students in the major information search section of their projects and remains a guide throughout a student's candidacy. This represents an important example of customisation of library input into student learning.

In another forum for curriculum planning elsewhere in the university, teaching staff, librarians and staff development staff comprise a working party responsible for the 'implementation within courses and subjects'of 'Life Long Learning characteristics'. This group, chaired by a Dean, Teaching and Learning, began its work early in September 2000. Already its deliberations have identified two matters of significant concern to all parties, the expectations of many students that 'all [study] materials will be provided for them'and if their needs go beyond the learning package supplied for each subject, 'their dependence on a librarian to locate the [required] material for them'.[12] In discussing this barrier to information literacy growth, members acknowledged that the most obdurate cases related to students who were not ignorant or lazy, but who were severely pressed for time because of the need to work long hours to support themselves while studying. Often they had other, perhaps family, responsibilities as well. It was agreed that the difficulties of such students must be borne in mind and creative solutions to their dilemma sought.

For whatever the ideal information literate graduate we may seek, we will not succeed unless our students are also active partners in our goal. They must be convinced of the immediate value to them of any strategy. Bruce reminds us that at the heart of any promotion of information literacy, there is the need to understand how students approach learning and how they conceive learning.[13] It follows, then, that one measure of a successful information literacy program will be evidence that students believe that they have become more effective learners as a result of it.

Assessment of Outcomes: The Need for Partnership

Delivering a course is one thing; achieving outcomes is another. It is notable that in a paper published in 1999 about programs begun in 1995, Roth summarises progress in information literacy implementation mainly in terms of funds invested and programs devised. She does refer to one pilot study of the skill levels of graduates conducted at California State University San Marcos and it may well be that publishing deadlines prevented her from including further references of this kind. It is desirable, however, that future publications highlight assessment of results.[14] Admittedly, measuring information literacy outcomes will be difficult and will need to be context-specific to be meaningful. Moreover, appraisal must be a joint effort between academic and library staff and not conducted solely in terms of what one party or the other believes is sufficient.

It is important to bear in mind that one's own professional practice gives one a particular slant on topics of major significance such as information literacy. Even while conscious of this, librarians may slide into a view that is narrowly instrumentalist. The description of information literacy devised by the American Library Association Committee on Information Literacy is grounded in the concept of information-as-thing.[15] Given that libraries exist to identify, evaluate and provide access to information, it is scarcely surprising that they tend to equate stored data with information. Indeed, such an equation is valid in its context. But it is one that has particular consequences.

Firstly, the information literate person becomes someone who, recognising that he or she has a need for information, locates, selects and applies this 'thing', information, to that need. Next, the definition permits librarians to judge the adequacy of their clients'use of library resources by measures they, librarians, find meaningful. That is, librarians calibrate their clients'use of library resources both qualitatively and quantitatively against what librarians themselves know to be the possible scope of a search by the terms in which a client expresses to a librarian the nature of his or her information 'need'.

This is a very seductive approach to measuring students'information literacy because the criteria of measurement are easily identified and concrete, allowing a quantitative assessment of how far a student's performance meets them. The approach is demonstrated in the way in which the ALA definition has been extrapolated to build the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Drawn up by a task force of the Association of College and Research Libraries, the standards describe actions taken by the information literate person that the task force believes would ensure consistent effective exploitation of relevant resources in meeting an information need. They also set out the criteria for judging effectiveness. For example, the first performance indicator and its measurable outcomes are:

The information literate student selects the most appropriate investigative methods or information retrieval systems for accessing the needed information.
Measurable outcomes:
The student:

1. identifies appropriate investigative methods
2. investigates the scope, content, and organisation of information retrieval systems
3. selects efficient and effective approaches for accessing the information needed.[16]

The clarity of expression and the logic of the standards are admirable. But these qualities distract attention from the fact that the standards are composed to judge effectiveness and efficiency from the perspective of someone who knows the resources available and what may potentially be used. Thus the basis of judgment of 'correct' response assumes that the task requires such an exploitation, that the student aspires to the use of the full range of information available and that relevant information is held within the systems.

As these assumptions may not be right, then any assessments based on them will be fallacious. The competency standards will only be useful where the task requires the student to undertake an efficient literature search and lecturer, librarian and student are agreed that this is what the task in this instance is.

Yet despite the limitations underlying the 'library'approach to measuring information literacy, its strengths constitute the precise contribution which librarians have to offer information literacy programs. The discussion at the Research Focus Day underlined the limitations of academics in regard to the first, second and third of Bruce's seven faces of information literacy. Additionally, in teaching academic staff emphasise content knowledge and intellectual and philosophical methods of inquiry specific to their discipline. It is not easy for them to focus sufficient attention on the changing information environment in which their teaching occurs and how it may be harnessed to transform learning. The information sources which underpin a subject are important to academic staff, but once they have found some useful references, academic teachers will often use them repeatedly without much consideration as to whether they ought to be changed or whether better ways exist to achieve the same learning goals. Time pressures, together with the need to ensure all students in a subject have adequate access to resources no matter how, when or where they study, push academics towards conservatism in recommending information resources to students and setting assignment tasks related to them. Such conservatism also facilitates the provision of the 'all in one'learning package that many students, especially part-time students, seek. Updating a learning package has implications whatever format it takes. Technology may provide greater physical and temporal accessibility in that online programs are theoretically available all the time and everywhere. In practice 'all the time'and 'everywhere'are illusions for many other than the most fortunate. Moreover intellectual access created by careful design of online programs and monitoring of chat rooms, for example, is as staff intensive and expensive as traditional modes of staff to student assistance.

Because of the different concepts of what information literacy means in different contexts and to different people, it is essential to the success of information literacy education that the needs, goals and contributions of all taking part in them are made explicit. The only way that the success of programs may be measured is by assessing them against criteria reflecting the goals of all partners contributing to the design of the program. Students, too, must be partners in measuring a program's effectiveness. Student evaluation of the program must be appropriately tailored to show whether its goals were readily visible to the learners and whether the learners considered them met.

It will be necessary to design assessment tasks for students that embody the goals of both library and academic staff. It will be necessary for the assessment of student work to be at least in part a joint responsibility.

Neither of these ideas is new. They have been tried in various forms before. But they are an essential part of customising library information strategies. What we do know is that the design of any assessment task is critical to the learning students will achieve. Students learn principally what the assessment requires of them. (In the author's personal teaching experience, in recent years she has noticed students focussing more intently on assignment tasks and less on the exploration of the scope of the subject.) Yet such design requires expertise and planning. Other factors to consider in attempting joint responsibility in these matters relate to time and workload pressures. Assignments must be distributed to markers, marked and returned to students in time for the feedback provided to be useful in guiding them in their next assignment. The time it takes to 'turn around'an assignment and get it back into a student's hands is always important but even more critical where the students are external and returning papers must provide for dispatch time and postal deliveries. Marking emailed papers directly on screen is not a universal solution to time delays. Introducing double marking, once by an academic and once by a librarian, is therefore not likely to be a practical option. How each may contribute will require careful planning. However, initiatives in this area will provide us with important insights into how effectively we are helping our students to become information literate.

Research at the University of South Australia over the next two years will aim to advance understanding of some of these issues by testing the efficacy of the audit tool for measuring the success of information literacy programs and developing refinements of it. Additionally, the subject, The Literature Review, to be taught jointly in the professional doctorate program of the School of Communication and Information Studies, will allow an academic and a liaison librarian to test assessment measures embodying the major perspectives of both. Finally, this subject will be structured to allow the students to take an active role in directing their learning within it in order to maximise their opportunity to meet their own needs. Thus by the end of 2002 those concerned with these projects should be in a position to add specific exemplars to our knowledge of the effective measurement of the impact of information literacy programs.

Notes

1. D Booker Concept, Challenge, Conundrum: From Library Skills to Information Literacy. Proceedings of the fourth National Information Literacy Conference conducted by the University of South Australia Library and the Australian Library and Information Association Information Literacy Special Interest Group 3-5 December 1999. Adelaide University of South Australia Library 2000
2. K Appleton C Macpherson D Orr Life Long Learning Conference. Selected papers from the inaugural international Life Long Learning Conference Yeppoon Queensland Australia 19 July 2000. Rockhampton Life Long Learning Conference Committee Central Queensland University 2000
3. Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education National Workshop 22-23 September 2000. City West Campus University of South Australia
4. N Radomski Implementing Information Literacy: Themes, Issues and Future Directions. Ballarat University of Ballarat 1999 foreword
5. Ibid p57
6. For the graduate qualities, see www.unisa.edu.au/usainfo/gradquals/
7. R George H McCausland D Wachem and I Doskatsch 'Information Literacy - An Institution-wide Strategy'in K Appleton C Macpherson and D Orr (eds) p181
8. I Doskatsch Learning Place and Space, The present and potential contribution of the University of South Australia to student learning and information literacy. Commissioned report (unpublished) internal to the Library of the University of South Australia September 2000
9. Email to author from I Doskatsch (Campus Librarian) Magill 28 April 2000
10. Cited in K and C Haycock Kids and Libraries. Vancouver Dyad 1984 p24. Originally published in the yearbook of the National Council for the Social Studies 1963
11. P Macauley and S McKnight 'A New Model for Library Support for Off Campus and Post Graduate Students.'Paper given at Managing the New Agenda Quality in Post Graduate Research National Conference Adelaide 12-14 April 1998
12. Minutes, Information Literacy Meeting 15 September 2000
13. C Bruce The Seven Faces of Information Literacy. Adelaide Auslib Press p1
14. L Roth 'Educating the Cut-and-Paste Generation' Library Journal 1 November 1999. http://www.britannica.com/bine/article/print/0.5746 JANE [28 August 2000]
15. M K Buckland 'Information as Thing 'Journal of the American Society for Information Science vol 42 no 5 pp351-356
16. Association of College and Research Libraries Information Literacy Competency Standards For Higher Education - Draft http:///www.ala.org/acrl/ilcomstan.html [23 August 1999]

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