Metaliteracy Presentation at LIT Virtual Conference

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The Learning with Innovative Technology (LIT) Conference at SUNY Empire State College will include a presentation by Trudi Jacobson, Kelsey O’Brien and Tom Mackey about the development of a metaliteracy module for the Lumen Learning iSucceed College Success course. The presentation, entitled Preparing Metaliterate Learners for the College Environment with SUNY’s iSucceed College Success Course, will take place at this virtual conference on Friday, July 10 2020 at 9:15am EDT (UTC -4).

Students entering or preparing for college typically find themselves in a very different environment from high school. They must make more decisions on their own, from organizing their time to making health-related choices. How they engage with information must also change based on the demands of the college experience. Becoming producers of information in both academic and quotidian settings that are often collaborative and online requires a shift in mindset that can benefit students throughout their lives. COVID-related circumstances may cause many more students to live at home while starting college, requiring them to take on new responsibilities and self-regulation strategies without the typical face-to-face support from instructors and peers. 

SUNY OER Services has adapted Lumen’s “College Success” online course to include two new modules in its “iSucceed” version, one of which focuses on metaliteracy. This course is available not only to SUNY students but also, in a modified form, to anyone interested in applying the metaliteracy model to lifelong learning. This session will provide a brief overview of the iSucceed College Success course and then focus on how the metaliteracy course module can be used to introduce students to the importance of this information and learning framework. As educators transition to fully online, blended, and remote learning in response to the COVID-19 crisis, this new metaliteracy resource provides adaptable content for both K-12 and college settings. The metaliteracy module guides students through this process as they learn the definition of the term, examine metaliterate learner roles, goals, and characteristics, and explore how to become a metaliterate digital citizen. This flexible, interactive unit includes videos, assignments, and self-check quizzes that are adaptable to a range of disciplines and educational settings.

Metaliteracy Presentation at the Information Literacy & Democracy Conference

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Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson will present Advancing democratic dialogue by applying metaliteracy in teaching praxis at the Information Literacy & Democracy Virtual Conference June 19-20. The video presentation is available in advance of the conference and their live session will take place on June 19 at 11:30 am Eastern Savings Time (5.30 p.m Central European Summer Time – CEST). To join the live session, register for free by sending an e-mail to infodem (at) uni-hildesheim.de. All of the conference presentations are available via the Information Literacy & Democracy conference web site and YouTube. The Information Literacy and Democracy (IDE) project is supported by the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony, Germany.

Tom and Trudi’s presentation explores metaliteracy as a pedagogical model to develop a metaliteracy mindset for effectively consuming, producing, and sharing information. This comprehensive framework promotes democratic dialogue with learners to uphold democracy in a post-truth world of misinformation and disinformation. This presentation describes the four components of metaliteracy and offers ideas for advancing democratic dialogue with learners.

Metaliteracy Featured on The Academic Minute

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The Academic Minute

How do we prepare learners to be informed consumers and ethical producers of information? This is the central question of Tom Mackey’s segment for the NPR/WAMC program The Academic Minute entitled Metaliterate Learners. The Academic Minute is a WAMC national production hosted by Dr. Lynn Pasquerella, President of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and features daily highlights from faculty about their research. The program is broadcast on 70 radio stations in the United States and Canada, including WAMC, and is featured on multiple social media platforms and Inside Higher Ed.

The metaliteracy segment explores why it is essential to apply metacognitive strategies to prepare learners for today’s challenging information environment. According to Mackey:

Metaliteracy prepares individuals to be informed consumers and ethical producers of information. This model is especially relevant today when misinformation circulates online, and personal beliefs or feelings displace objective reasoning. Metaliterate learners reexamine individual bias and rethink fixed mindsets to contribute in meaningful ways. They adapt to changing technologies and leverage these resources to create and share original content.

(https://academicminute.org/2020/05/thomas-mackey-suny-empire-metaliterate-learners/)

The learner as producer theme is core to the metaliteracy framework and is the topic of a new book project that Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson are currently working on for ALA Neal-Schuman Publishing.

The full script of the metaliteracy segment is available at The Academic Minute web site. The audio for this module was recorded at the WAMC studio in Albany, New York.

Let us know what you think about this brief metaliteracy piece and feel free to share it with your colleagues and students!

Metaliteracy Keynote Features Open Resources for Teaching and Learning at a Distance

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Tom and Trudi at Virtual Keynote

Trudi Jacobson and Tom Mackey keynoted on Teaching Metaliteracy as a Vital Literacy for Today’s Digital World at the Edge consortium’s Annual Teaching with Technology Showcase: Excellence in Action on April 24. This conference was transitioned to a virtual format as a result of the COVID-19 crisis and the presentation includes open resources that are available to faculty and librarians who have transitioned to online and remote teaching during this crisis. The keynote also features adaptable reflective questions about the information we consume, produce, and share at a time when accurate and reliable information is more important than ever. Trudi and Tom were invited to keynote by Nancy Zimmerman, Executive Director for EdgeEvents and Print Communications. Edge is the regional technology partner for colleges and universities in New Jersey. If you have any questions about the slides or would like to continue the conversation let us know!

Metaliteracy Keynote at Virtual Teaching with Technology Showcase on April 24

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The Annual Teaching with Technology Showcase: Excellence in Action, an entirely online event, will feature an invited keynote by Trudi Jacobson and Tom Mackey about metaliteracy on Friday, April 24. The keynote entitled Teaching Metaliteracy as a Vital Literacy for Today’s Digital World will explore metaliteracy and its relevance to educators and students, especially during this time of the COVID-19 crisis, when the ability to produce and share truthful and trusted information is essential. The keynote will examine metacognitive reflection and self-regulation as part of the scaffolding that metaliteracy provides for successful student participation in open pedagogical settings. Several open digital learning projects produced by the Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative will be introduced as part of this interactive presentation.

Roles of the Metaliterate Learner Figure (Mackey & Jacobson, 2014)

Registration is open for this virtual conference that is sponsored by Edge, the regional technology partner for colleges and universities in New Jersey. Edge responded quickly to the COVID-19 crisis and moved this conference to an entirely online format and will pilot the Run the World platform as part of this transition.

The conference starts at 9:30am with opening remarks by Nancy Zimmerman, Executive Director for EdgeEvents and Print Communications. Trudi and Tom’s keynote address is at 11:45 am. Throughout the day, presenters will address such relevant topics as: promoting the adoption of technology by faculty, video games for learning, technology preferences of Generation Z college students, virtual experiences in art and science, creating OER initiatives, interactive polling, using makerspaces in college, applying augmented reality and gamification to deepen learning, and much more!

We look forward to seeing you at the virtual conference and will share our slides after our keynote!

-Tom & Trudi

Metaliteracy Resources for Online or Remote Teaching & Learning

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As educators respond to the COVID-19 crisis and transition to online and remote learning, or expand what they are doing at a distance, consider several metaliteracy resources that are adaptable for these purposes. We’ve seen an increase in the use of our MOOCs during these unprecedented times and would like to highlight those resources and other OER that were designed for teaching and learning with metaliteracy:

iSucceed College Success – SUNY OER Services recently launched this expanded College Success course with a new metaliteracy module to prepare students for the college environment. The Metaliteracy Module is adaptable to K-12 and college environments and provides open content, learning objects, videos, and assignments that are adaptable to your educational setting.

Metaliteracy: Empowering Yourself in a Connected World – This was our first Coursera MOOC that introduces metaliteracy and was recently revised with updated content and streamlined to a four-module format.

Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World – This Coursera MOOC addresses the challenges of the post-truth world and is especially relevant now that accurate and reliable information is paramount during this global pandemic.

Metaliteracy Digital Badging – All of the content developed for our Metaliteracy Digital Badging system is openly available to apply online and through remote learning.

Metaliteracy Learning Goals and Objectives – This resource is at the heart of metaliteracy and has undergone revisions to address post-truth issues while expanding to include several new translations to address the international interest in metalieracy.

Metaliterate Learner Roles – This diagram features the essential metaliterate learner roles and associated questions that spark reflection and online discussion in multiple disciplines.

Metaliteracy and Your Role as a Metaliterate Learner – This resource also features the learner roles and the four domains of metaliteracy and features reflective questions written and shared by Professor Sally Friedman, University at Albany.

Metaliterate Learner Characteristics – This interactive learning object highlights the characteristics that individuals strive toward as they develop as metaliterate learners.

Metaliterate Learner Characteristics Aligned with the ACRL Framework Dispositions – This open model is ideal for faculty and librarians teaching information literacy with the ACRL Framework while incorporating key elements of metaliteracy.

Metaliteracy YouTube Channel– All of the videos we’ve created for our MOOC projects are openly available in one location via the Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative YouTube Channel.

Additional resources are available through this blog and if you would like to share any open metaliteracy resources that you have developed be sure to let us know.

Take care and be well during this challenging time.

Tom, Trudi, and Kelsey

Knowing Metaliteracy: A reflective digital story of my metaliteracy journey

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Reflective Digital Story

We thank Mehreen Tahir, Information Commons Librarian at Forman Christian College, for providing this guest posting about Knowing Metaliteracy: A reflective digital story of my metaliteracy journey. Mehreen developed this final project as part of her participation in our Coursera MOOC, Metaliteracy: Empowering Yourself in a Connected World. We invite you to do the same!

Greetings Everyone,

I am excited to share that I have successfully completed the Coursera online course Metaliteracy: Empowering Yourself in a Connected World by The State University of New York (SUNY). Metaliteracy has always been my area of interest and thanks to the instructors Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson for developing this course with their colleagues at SUNY. This MOOC experience was an amazing learning opportunity for me to explore the concept of metaliteracy, its various learner roles, Creative Commons licensing, creating digital stories, and much more. 

My digital story is basically a reflective journey of my understanding of the different metaliteracy learner roles and the way I identified them during this course. It helped me in recognizing the roles I have been silently playing in my activities online through different social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram on a daily basis, but also urged me to build a creative thinking mechanism to incorporate these roles in the future as well. I feel like developing a sense of being a responsible digital citizen, reflecting upon my own experiences while navigating through these 21st century social media environments. Hoping to learn and explore more in this area.

Thanks,

Mehreen Tahir

SUNY Incorporates Metaliteracy Module into Lumen Learning’s College Success Online Learning Resource

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Metaliteracy has joined ten other learning modules in SUNY’s iSucceed version of Lumen Learning’s online College Success course: 

College Success provides new students with an orientation to the college environment. It works to build more capable lifelong learners by combining conceptual knowledge with practical strategies and skills. With engaging content and a focus on applying course concepts to real-world situations, College Success is particularly helpful for first-generation students and those entering college underprepared, academically or otherwise. This course was developed by Lumen Learning with contributing work from Linda Bruce of Goucher College, Ronda Dorsey Neugebauer and Zack Varpness of Chadron State College, and others. (https://oer.suny.edu/courses/college-success/)

SUNY OER Services provides a variety of ready-to-adopt open courses and modules. They recently announced a version of Lumen’s College Success featuring additional modules and videos that is free for all in the SUNY system (and a text version that is free to everyone). iSucceed is also available to SUNY students and instructors in two other enhanced formats: the Waymaker version (“User-friendly digital courseware with data-driven learning design, personalization, and messaging tools that can increase student engagement, persistence, and passing rates”) or Candela (“curated and outcome-aligned open educational resources (OER) in a convenient e-book format”).

The Metaliteracy module includes a number of small sections that lead learners through the metaliteracy framework while they have the opportunity to explore how it impacts their learning and the roles in which they see themselves in relation to information. Some of these sections address:

  • What metaliteracy is
  • The roles, goals, and characteristics
  • Being a metaliterate:
  • Researcher;
  • Producer and collaborator;
  • Digital citizen;
  • Lifelong learner

Interspersed throughout the content are videos, assignments (optional unless assigned by an instructor), and, in the Waymaker version, self-check quizzes.

The Metaliteracy content was created by Trudi Jacobson, Tom Mackey and Kelsey O’Brien as part of our work together in the Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative. We thank Lisa Stephens of the University of Buffalo for inviting us to work on this project and Tony DeFranco of SUNY OER Services for working so closely with us. We also appreciate all the help that Diana Metcalf of Lumen Learning provided.

The other modules in the College Success course are:

  • Motivating Success
  • Goal Setting and Time Management
  • Career Exploration
  • Social Interaction and Diversity
  • Thinking and Analysis
  • Learning Styles and Strategies
  • Study Skills
  • Beyond the Classroom
  • Health Management
  • Financial Management

If you are new to open and online learning, or an experienced instructor, we encourage you to explore the Metaliteracy module and the course as a whole. These materials are adaptable to a range of settings and are also appropriate for lifelong learners seeking self-paced pathways for success!

Portuguese Translation of Goals and Learning Objectives Available, More May Be Forthcoming

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Hot on the heels of the Spanish translation so kindly provided by Dora Sales, Senior Lecturer in Information Literacy for Translators at Jaume I University in Spain, we now have available a Portuguese translation of the numbered goals and learning objectives, thanks to Maria Pinheiro, doctoral student at the Faculty of Information Science at the University of Brasília, Brazil. We very much appreciate this, Maria!

Florent Michelot, who translated the goals and learning objectives into French last year, has graciously shared with us some of his investigations into translation services. Based on his assistance, we are looking into this way of making the goals and learning objectives, and possibly other content, available to more people. Florent is a doctoral candidate at the University of Montreal.

Spanish Translation of Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives Now Available

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We would like to thank Dora Sales, Senior Lecturer in Information Literacy for Translators at Jaume I University in Spain for our newest translation of the Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives. We have seen that much literature citing metaliteracy is produced in Spanish, and expect that having a Spanish translation will assist the work of Spanish-speaking researchers. Thank you very much, Dora.

Currently, we have translations of the goals and objectives into Afrikaans, French, Italian, Setswana, and Spanish. if you are able to assist in translating them into another language, we would love to hear from you. Please contact Trudi (tjacobson@albany.edu) and Tom (Tom.Mackey@esc.edu).