BiblioVerifica Blog Response to Metaliteracy Post-Truth MOOC

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We welcome this guest posting from Damiano Orrù, librarian at Vilfredo Pareto Library School of Economics at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata,” Italy. We met Damiano at the Conference on Learning Information Literacy across the Globe in Frankfurt, Germany in May 2019 and he has since completed our Metaliteracy MOOC Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World. He wrote this post in response to the Coursera MOOC as part of his own BiblioVerifica blog. Thanks to Damiano for completing our MOOC and providing these excellent resources!

BiblioVerifica Blog for Fact-checking by Citizens

Damiano Orrù, librarian at Vilfredo Pareto Library
School of Economics,  University of Rome “Tor Vergata”,  Italy

As a Coursera MOOC student, I completed the course “Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World” in 6 weeks, deepening the themes of disinformation and verification of facts and news.

All these contents and tools are useful to teach “how to spot fake news”[1] by the cognitive and behavioral domanins of Metaliteracy.  The cognitive domain of the Metaliterate Learner is important to understand information and news, analyzing sources and contexts. The behavioral domain is essential for a conscious sharing and production of content through chat, social media, e-mail, forums, blogs. Several Metaliteracy practices are excellent tools for empowering citizens to use critical thinking and to evaluate sources.

The BiblioVerifica[2] blog aims to support citizens (not just students) in the autonomous practice of fact-checking, based on open access and open data resources.  Currently, this idea embraces dissemination of open data and open access content for all fact-checkers citizens by eight librarians as editorial staff[3]. BiblioVerifica blog has developed a network of stakeholders in the library and school environment since 2017. For the future our intiative may involve teachers and librarians to develop and share open education oriented fact-chekcing practices and tools. This free digital reference activity will engage citizens and schools in Italy.  

The blog engaged citizenzs also by serious gamification app: BiblioVerifica Olympics[4] a contest based on 15 multiple choice quizzes, open to all citzens, for self assesment, available for free, without money prize or sponsor. In 2018 the first olympics quizzes covered the topics of reliable sources, verification strategies, research tools, etc…  The second edition covered the topics of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)[5] in the current year.  For the future may improve this tool for engage learners by Metaliteracy contents or debunking practices. 

Around European countries BiblioVerifica blog launched CrowdSearcher[6], an international platform supporting the European policy Tackling online disinformation[7] by open education resources, open contents, open data.

In the next weeks the BiblioVerifica bloggers will continue to support European citizens, also suggesting Metaliteracy’s tools, so useful, almost indispensable, to create tutorial and videos, serious games and infographics about media and information literacy.

This media and information literacy against misinformation is disseminated by librarians, without sponsor, without remuneration for posts or tutorial, by “BiblioVolontari“. As librarians the bloggers stick to IFLA Code of Ethics for Librarians and other Information Workers[8]:
a) access to information
b) open access and intellectual property
c) neutrality, personal integrity and professional skills

BiblioVerifica blog is open to all volunteer librarians around the world, fostering critical thinking, analysing personal BIAS, suggesting reliable sources, fighting propaganda and misinformation by empowering citizens in a Post-Truth World!

[1] https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/11174

[2] http://biblioverifica.altervista.org/

[3] http://biblioverifica.altervista.org/bibliovolontari/

[4] http://biblioverifica.altervista.org/olympics/

[5] https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300

[6] http://crowdsearcher.altervista.org/

[7] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/tackling-online-disinformation

[8] https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/11092

post-metaliteracy-final-work-orru-damiano-2019-oct-28-2Download
orru@economia.uniroma2.it 
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7493-5648 
https://linkedin.com/in/orrudamiano
Rome, October 27th 2019

Open Pedagogy and Metaliteracy Topic of ICIL Keynote

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Trudi Jacobson keynoting at ICIL in South Africa

Trudi Jacobson gave the last international keynote address at the International Conference on Information Literacy (ICIL) at North-West University (NWU) in Vanderbijlpark, South Africa on September 26. Her topic was Creating Shareable Knowledge: Exploring the Synergy between Metaliteracy and Open Pedagogy. She spoke about the components of open educational practices, including open educational resources, open pedagogies, open learning, open sharing of teaching ideas, and open technologies. She then asked participants to put themselves in the role of a student and to consider what might be different about their learning experience if open played a role. (Their responses are here, please feel free to consider the question and add your own ideas.)

Trudi delved into how metaliteracy can both scaffold and add to student learning in open pedagogical settings, using Caroline Sinkinson’s open pedagogy model to make connections. Trudi concluded by exploring the connections in two case studies. One, which was analyzed in-depth, is an information literacy/metaliteracy course in which students contribute to Wikipedia. The second, discussed more briefly, is a political science course in which metaliteracy OER play a large role and encourage elements of open pedagogy. If interested in this latter course, look for an article next year in the International Journal of Open Educational Resources that explores this professor/librarian collaboration in more depth.

Applying Metaliteracy in Teaching and Learning Practices Session at ICIL, South Africa

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Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson

Tom Mackey’s and Trudi Jacobson’s last, and rather unexpected, joint presentation while they were in South Africa was a session on September 25 at the International Conference on Information Literacy (ICIL) at North-West University (NWU) in Vanderbijlpark, South Africa. They were invited to give this presentation by Dr. Jako Olivier when another presenter’s session fell through. The presentation, Applying Metaliteracy in Teaching and Learning Practices, was very well attended, particularly for a last minute addition to the schedule. Trudi and Tom explored changing literacy types, the value of metaliteracy in an environment of competing and overlapping literacies, core components of metaliteracy, and the open educational resources available to embed in disciplinary courses. This last part of the presentation focused on the metaliterate learner badges and the metaliteracy MOOCs (massive open online courses), although other resources were also described.

Metaliteracy and Post-Truth Explored in Keynote at NWU in South Africa

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Tom Mackey presented an international keynote entitled Building Communities of Trust: Metaliterate Learning for a Post-Truth Society at the International Conference on Information Literacy (ICIL) at North-West University (NWU) in Vanderbijlpark, South Africa. Tom was invited to keynote at the conference by Dr. Jako Olivier, UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and OER and Professor in Multimodal Learning at NWU.

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Tom Mackey Keynoting at NWU (photo by Louise Olivier)

Tom’s keynote is based on the framing chapter he wrote “Empowering Metaliterate Learners for the Post-Truth World” for his latest metaliteracy book with Trudi Jacobson Metaliterate Learning for the Post-Truth World published by ALA/Neal-Schuman.

As noted in the abstract for this presentation: Metaliteracy is a reframing of information literacy to develop metaliterate learners as active producers of information in both local and global communities of trust. In today’s post-truth society, personal and political beliefs have diminished the meaning and impact of verifiable facts and truthful reasoning. Metaliterate learners are empowered through reflective practice to responsibly consume and creatively produce information in collaborative and participatory social spaces. Through informed civic engagement, individuals take control of their participation while working cooperatively with others to build responsible communities of trust. Visualizations have the power to enhance our understanding of and connections with the metaliteracy framework and several were shared as part of this presentation.

An analysis of the Open edX and Coursera versions of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World, demonstrated how metaliteracy is applied as a pedagogical model to the challenges of a post-truth society.

Metaliteracy/Information Literacy Workshop at North-West University, South Africa

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Trudi Jacobson at NWU

Trudi Jacobson and Tom Mackey presented a second workshop (see October 3 post for details about and slides for the first, on metaliteracy and open educational practices). This workshop entitled Integrating Metaliteracy and Information Literacy into Teaching and Learning, also held at the Potchefstroom campus of North-West University (NWU), South Africa, occurred on Friday, September 20. Trudi and Tom conducted the workshop at the invitation of Dr. Jako Olivier, UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and OER and Professor in Multimodal Learning at NWU.

The workshop, Integrating Metaliteracy and Information Literacy into Teaching and Learning, was designed to introduce metaliteracy and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education to participants. Of particular note was the unveiling of a new comparison of the metaliteracy learner characteristics and aligning dispositions from the ACRL Framework (slide 22). This figure and the accompanying investigation is the focus of a chapter by Trudi Jacobson, Tom Mackey, and Kelsey O’Brien, “Visualizing the Convergence of Metaliteracy and the Information Literacy Framework,” which will be included in a forthcoming book edited by Jannette Finch, Envisioning the Framework.

After a brief overview of the two frameworks, it was time for the participants to start applying concepts and ideas to their own teaching. Working in small groups, attendees identified an information literacy goal they have for their students, and determined how metaliteracy and existing metaliteracy OER might help to achieve this goal.

Metaliteracy/OEP Workshop at North-West University, South Africa

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Tom Mackey, Jako Olivier, and Trudi Jacobson

Trudi Jacobson and Tom Mackey facilitated an interactive workshop Applying Open Educational Practices to Develop Active Metaliterate Learners for faculty, librarians, and administrators on Thursday, September 19 2019 at the Potchefstroom campus of North-West University (NWU), South Africa.  Dr. Jako Olivier, UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and OER and Professor in Multimodal Learning at NWU invited Tom and Trudi to present this metaliteracy workshop in advance of the International Conference on Information Literacy (ICIL) in Vanderbijlpark.

Metaliteracy provides an integrated framework for student learning and growth when
implementing open educational practices (OEP). This session created an opportunity to gain familiarity with both open metaliteracy resources and sample open educational practice models that they support. Participants explored options to meet the needs of students and started to plan for possible implementation in courses and library collaborations. Teams brainstormed ways to apply metaliteracy open content to their own practices and left the session with ideas about OEP specific to their teaching, informed by feedback from colleagues.

Prestige Lecture at NWU in South Africa Features Metaliteracy

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Trudi Jacobson, Jako Olivier, and Tom Mackey pictured at the Prestige lecture.
Trudi Jacobson, Jako Olivier, and Tom Mackey

At the invitation of Dr. Jako Olivier, UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and OER and Professor in Multimodal Learning at North-West University in South Africa, Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson presented a Prestige Lecture entitled Exploring the Foundation of Metaliteracy in Theory and Practice at the Potchefstroom Campus on September 19, 2019. This collaborative lecture set the stage for two workshops with librarians, faculty and staff during the same week. All three events were presented in advance of the International Conference on Information Literacy (ICIL) at North-West University in Vanderbijlpark. Trudi and Tom both presented individual keynotes at ICIL as well as one additional collaborative presentation.