Welcome to our metaliteracy learning community. Metaliteracy.org brings together ideas, resources, ongoing developments, and applications of metaliteracy across educational, professional, disciplinary, and international contexts. Co-edited by Thomas P. Mackey and Trudi E. Jacobson, the site also features contributions from collaborators and guest authors.

Most posts are written by one or both of us, and we also invite guest contributors to share new perspectives and applications of metaliteracy. These contributions expand the conversation through research, teaching practices, translations, international perspectives, and other innovative uses of the framework.

We invite you to explore, reflect, connect, and create with us.

What is Metaliteracy?

Metaliteracy is a pedagogical framework that empowers learners to be reflective and informed participants in collaborative information environments. It emphasizes the active roles learners take in evaluating, creating, and sharing information while developing greater awareness of their learning through metacognitive reflection.

We introduced the concept of metaliteracy in the 2011 College & Research Libraries article, “Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy.” Since then, the framework has evolved through research, publications, teaching, collaborative projects, and open learning initiatives.

Metaliteracy integrates four domains of learning—cognitive, metacognitive, affective, and behavioral—and emphasizes the multiple roles learners engage in as they interact with information, including producer, researcher, and collaborator. It also identifies learner characteristics, such as being open, adaptable, and civic-minded, that reflect their development as metaliterate learners. The Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives further translate the framework into practical applications for teaching and learning.

Today, metaliteracy provides a model for critically and ethically engaging with an increasingly complex information environment, including generative AI. It emphasizes learner agency, authorship, critical evaluation, collaboration, reflection, and responsible participation in the creation and sharing of information.

Editors

Thomas P. Mackey

Professor in the Department of Arts and Media, College of Arts and Sciences at Empire State University, where he serves as Program Coordinator for the BA and BS in Digital Media Arts. He co-originated metaliteracy with Trudi E. Jacobson and has co-written or co-edited four books with her about the model, including the award-winning Metaliteracy in a Connected World: Developing Learners as Producers (2022) and Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners (2014). His work focuses on metaliteracy in digital learning environments, with an emphasis on ethical and creative engagement with generative AI, digital storytelling, authorship, and learner agency.

He is also an international collaborator with the virtual exchange Intercultural Perspectives on Information Literacy and Metaliteracy (IPILM). The project brings together students and faculty from around the world to explore how the metaliteracy model applies to intercultural learning, digital culture, emerging technologies, and AI. A recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, he has also served as a SUNY Empire AI Fellow and SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador.

Visit Tom Mackey’s website for more about his work.

Trudi E. Jacobson

Distinguished Librarian Emerita at the University at Albany, SUNY, she co-originated metaliteracy with Thomas P. Mackey and has co-authored or co-edited four books with him on the framework, including Metaliteracy in a Connected World: Developing Learners as Producers (2022) and Metaliteracy in Practice (2015). Her work has explored information literacy, metaliteracy, open educational practices, renewable assignments, and learner-centered teaching. She served as co-chair of the ACRL task force that developed the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education and remains actively engaged with metaliteracy through the site and related initiatives.

In retirement, she contributes to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and the Historical Marker Database (HMDB.org), sometimes collaborating with AI to research and provide historical context for marker entries. She is currently providing context for 19th-century brownstones that sport Historical Albany Foundation plaques. She enjoys painting with pastels and regularly exhibits her work in local libraries and other venues.

Visit Trudi Jacobson’s website for more about her work.

Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative

The Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative emerged from a SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant in 2012 and has evolved along with metaliteracy itself. Rather than representing a fixed membership, the collaborative has expanded and changed over time as new colleagues, contributors, and partners have engaged with metaliteracy through research, teaching, open educational resources, publications, projects, and other applications of the framework.

This evolving collaboration has included faculty members, librarians, instructional designers, students, and other partners from SUNY and institutions around the world. Their contributions have helped develop, apply, and extend the Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives, metaliterate learner roles and characteristics, the four domains of metaliterate learning, digital badging initiatives, MOOCs, open educational resources, and other teaching and learning projects.

The collaborative continues to evolve as we connect with new contributors and as metaliteracy is applied across disciplines, educational settings, and information environments.

Contributors

The following contributors have participated in the evolving Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative through research, teaching, publications, open educational resources, projects, and other applications of the framework:

Join the Conversation

Whether you are encountering metaliteracy for the first time or have been following its development for years, we invite you to explore the resources and ideas throughout the site, reflect on their implications for your own work, connect with the metaliteracy community, and create new applications and possibilities.

We welcome you to share your own explorations of metaliteracy with us and consider contributing a guest post about your experiences.

Credits

The redesigned metaliteracy logo was created by Mariah Lamb for Tom Mackey’s AI Fellowship project at Empire State University. The new banner for Metaliteracy.org was developed with ChatGPT, using the redesigned logo and original Metaliteracy banner as visual references.