scholarly journals Re:Learn

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Borg ◽  
Marie-Louise Eriksson

Librarians and writing tutors in higher education are working intensely to teach information literacy to students. But the extent to which this work is done collaborative or separately differs greatly between the universities. •How can we facilitate collaborative learning on questions regarding the teaching of academic information literacy? •How do we relate this teaching to various national and international frameworks and guidelines? •How do we find new ways and methods for writing tutors and librarians to work together? •Is it possible to create a platform to facilitate the exchange of ideas and tools? These are some of the questions that led us to start this project: to develop an open web course on student learning of information literacy in higher education. But instead of targeting students in higher education the target group for this course is librarians and writing tutors at Swedish universities. The project is funded by the Swedish library Association.The purpose of the course is to: •Place information literacy in an academic context, where academic writing is included together with information seeking, referencing, plagiarism etc. •Develop national cooperation on issues related to the teaching of information literacy and academic writing •To facilitate online peer learning between collegues on issues related to teaching information literacy and academic writing •Develop a platform for sharing experiences regarding tools and methods The participants will get the opportunity to participate in workshops and PBL-inspired group work on themes regarding the teaching of information literacy in higher education. In this way we hope to facilitate a creative and collaborative learning environment. The first iteration of the course will take place April-May 2021. This presentation will be about the development of the course and what we have learned so far.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Louise Eriksson ◽  
Linda Borg

Today many librarians and writing tutors are teaching information literacy in higher education. How can we facilitate collaboration on questions regarding this teaching? How do we relate our teaching to various national and international frameworks and guidelines? Is it possible to create a platform for the exchange of ideas and tools? How do we develop new methods for writing tutors and librarians to collaborate? These are some of the questions that led us to start this project: to develop an open web course on student learning and information literacy in higher education. But instead of targeting students in higher education the target group for this course is teaching librarians and writing tutors at Swedish universities. The project is funded by the Swedish Library Association. The purpose of the course is to: Place information literacy (where academic writing and information seeking both are natural components) in an academic context Develop national collaborationon issues related to the teaching of information literacy and academic writing To facilitate online peer learning between colleagues on issues related to teaching information literacy and academic writing Develop a platform for sharing experiences and best of practices regarding tools and working methods Strengthen the digital competence in the professions The participants in the course will get the opportunity to engage in inspirational workshops and PBL-inspired group work on for example flipped teaching, active learning, digitization issues and open networked learning with a focus on information literacy. In this way we hope to facilitate a creative and collaborative learning environment regarding the teaching of information literacy in higher education. The first iteration of the course will take place in October-December 2020 and will be held in Swedish. This presentation will be about the planning and development of the course. We will present the work done so far and look forward to feedback and input to the ongoing work.


Author(s):  
Magnus Olsson ◽  
Annika Bindler

Many academic libraries are asked to do more for less money. By reaching out to other academic services, for example, the writing centre, might make it easier to fulfil the expected goals placed upon the library by the University administration (Ferer, 2012). However, there are also pedagogical reasons for collaboration. Academic librarians and academic writing tutors who transcend the traditional organizational boundaries within a university can together provide a more integrated picture of information seeking and the writing process for their students. This team approach, which emphasizes helping students become independent and active learners, can strengthen their academic skills, such as information literacy, that are essential when attending university.Nevertheless, in Sweden the few university libraries that house writing centres simply share a location rather than collaborate on a routine basis. Umeå University Library is unusual because the Library and Writing Centre are organized in the same unit, Scholarly Communication, and work as a team. Collecting this expertise into one location allows students more comprehensive support and convenient access: "one-stop shopping" (Cooke & Bledsoe, 2008). Drawing on our practices, we will describe Umeå University Library’s collaborative approach to teaching information literacy.Academic librarians are taking a greater role as literacy educators in helping students create personal knowledge (Elmborg, 2006). This personal knowledge is then transferred into writing where students demonstrate their evaluation and understanding of sources and through writing enter the conversations in their field, thereby finding their own voice. Rather than compartmentalizing these information seeking and writing processes, librarians and writing tutors can work together with students to help them navigate and come to understand that these processes are intricately linked.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 174-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zaki Abbas ◽  
Andrew MacFarlane ◽  
Ayşe Göker

AbstractSmartphones have quickly become a key part of our daily lives. Over 70 percent of people in the UK own such a device and law students are no exception to this far-reaching trend1. The use of these devices has posed some significant questions on the extent of their impact on information seeking behaviour and in relation to information delivery of resources. Zaki Abbas, Andrew MacFarlane and Ayşe Göker, who have recently begun a research project together, seek to not only examine the information seeking behaviours (ISBs) of law students using their Smartphones for academic information retrieval, but also to investigate perspectives from subject law librarians from Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) throughout the UK. There is an impression that students tend to find Smartphones more appealing for their information seeking needs compared to the professional resources and services, such as virtual libraries, which their HEI have already invested in. The result leads to a deep concern from subject librarians that students may be at risk from weakening research skills as well as relying too much on poor information sources not specifically designed to meet their information needs within the academic context5. The authors also suggest that information service providers to be more pro-active in providing information to students through more user-friendly interfaces as well as capitalise on the growing use of the Smartphone as a means to deliver their product4,5,6,15.


Author(s):  
Solveig Kavli ◽  
Amund Børdahl

The online tutorial Søk & Skriv (Search and Write) was launched March 2007. The site has been under continuous development, from being an online tutorial in mainly information literacy connected with academic writing, to covering broader aspects such as intellectual property rights and thorough views on ethics and academic guidelines related to student work. The original Søk & Skriv is the result from a joined project between the academic libraries of Bergen University College, the Norwegian School of Economics and Bergen University Library. To improve the product we have extended the project group with the academic writing unit at the University of Bergen. The University of Oslo library has also joined the project group, in this way the online tutorial reaches further out nationally. The point of departure for launching the new version of Søk & Skriv is based in the findings from our online survey; Søk & Skriv i et brukerperspektiv: Rapport fra spørreundersøkelsen høsten 2010; a Danish evaluation done on three different online tutorials in information literacy in Norway called Studerende, læring og webtutorials, and readings on the so called Google generation. Our findings indicate that the generation n, persons born after 1980 tend to use a small amount of time to search for information (Feiertag and Berge, 2008). Information search as sense-making Information search is understood as an action. As you go along doing your searches you must decide and evaluate whether and how the information at hand will be useful for your research (Dervin, 1999, p.745). Like Dervin we understand information search as sense-making. The source alone is not the authoritative voice, but is dependent on the student who must define the value of the text, and take a stand. This also coincides with the use of Stephen Toulmins model on argumentation (Toulmin, 2003; Rienecker 2012, pp.299-319), both in the text the students are reading, and in the text they are to write themselves. By using Toulmins model in Søk & Skriv we demonstrate a tool on how to read and evaluate the sources by questioning the sources at hand. The purpose is to enable the students to decide whether the information will be useful for their research. Students must demonstrate how (and why) the sources they find are relevant for their thesis. The aim of this article is to present the work we have done in our new version of Søk & Skriv where the goal is to get students from generation n to invest time in searching, reading, evaluating and writing; and to connect their writing with ethical use of sources. The new version of the product www.sokogskriv.no is the result of a thorough collaboration between academic writing experts and librarians.   ReferenceDervin, B.B. (1999). On Studying Information Seeking Methodologically: The Implications of Connecting Metatheory to Method. Information Processing and Management 35(6), 727-750. Feiertag, J. & Berge, Z. L. (2008). Training Generation N: how educators should approach the Net Generation. Education + Training 50(6), 457-464. Retrieved from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1740424 Forras, P., Kavli, S., Mikki, S., Austrheim, G. & Elvebakk, E. (2011). Søk & Skriv i et brukerperspektiv: Rapport fra spørreundersøkelsen høsten 2010. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1956/4781 Hyldegård, J., Lund, H., Moring, C., Pors, N.P., & Schreiber, T. (2011). Studerende, læring og webtutorials: En analyse af 3 norske læringssystemer. København: Det informationsvidenskabelige akademi.


Author(s):  
Mohammed Banu Ali

IoT is a rapidly emerging technology in education that attracts researchers, students, and administrators. This chapter reviews the opportunities and challenges of the IoT to determine whether there are potential communication and information sharing cultures in higher education institutions (HEIs). Despite the findings revealing stakeholders' demand for a better collaborative learning environment and better information sharing capabilities, IoT has various security and interoperability concerns that present an unattractive prospect for HE stakeholders to embrace IoT. IoT has the potential to meet HEIs system expectations, though stakeholders remain distant toward embracing IoTs. This indicates that stakeholders are not ready to embrace IoTs, thus prompting the need to study why stakeholders are resistant towards the IoT.


Author(s):  
Susanne Mikki ◽  
Ingrid Cutler

The purpose of this paper is to present an example of teacher-librarian collaboration (TLC) in a highly diverse branch of geography as a part of bachelor's seminar teaching. One can say that everything is geography if the phenomenon in question is delimited in a certain region, place or space. Thus every other discipline provides its methods, paradigms and information sources into the use of geography. This obviously presents a challenge to the librarian as he tries to support the geography students' information seeking. The topics can vary between cellular biology applications to sociological perception which also means a large variety in information needs. In our paper we aim to describe different approaches of collaboration this kind of variety requires based on the experiences and feedback gathered in a project, the aim of which was to integrate information literacy (IL) into the academic curriculum. Collaborating with teachers with different backgrounds and from different scientific traditions can be challenging for the librarian. Not only the information sources, databases and methods are different but it is the whole approach to the science that is different. Thus it is fairly obvious that the competence of a single librarian or a teacher is not sufficient for an effective IL instruction. The key here is the collaboration when librarian's information literacy and teacher's academic subject competence complete each other. A successful TLC gives opportunity for both marketing the idea of information literacy and the competence of a library professional. It may also increase the efficiency of teaching and studies and even shorten the time for a student to graduate. Especially in the case of seminar teaching TLC seems to give a valuable opportunity to instruct the students' seminar thesis along the way. In 2008, Kumpula Campus Library launched a project to integrate the IL teaching into the academic curriculum and to enhance the collaboration between the campus library and academic staff. The aim of our case project was to support the bachelor level students in their work of their bachelor's thesis. The librarian participated in the bachelor's seminar by giving a lecture about information literacy and a personal guidance in the students' information seeking process. The main idea was to make a timely intervention in order to give the best possible support to the academic writing across the curriculum. The importance of a timely intervention is well described in the classical text of Carol C. Kuhlthau (1993). The students came from the department of geography in the faculty of science of the University of Helsinki. The personal guidance session was conducted together with the seminar teacher to support both academic writing and information seeking process. After the seminar, the effect of the IL teaching was evaluated by a feedback questionnaire.


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