Register today for the upcoming virtual event Developing Metaliteracy to Teach and Learn with Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) presented by Tom Mackey on April 24 (1pm CDT and 2pm EDT) at the Alabama Association of College & Research Libraries (AACRL) Annual Meeting. Registration is free and open so sign up today for this engaging and interactive conversation about metaliteracy in a world of GenAI.
As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) transforms higher education, how do we prepare learners for this rapidly evolving technology? How do librarians, faculty, and learners analyze the ethical dimension of GenAI? What does it mean to be an active producer and participant in these dynamic information environments? How does metaliteracy prepare reflective metaliterate learners to address such revolutionary changes to our learning communities?
Thanks to Jennifer Long, Vice-President of the Alabama Association of College & Research Libraries (AACRL) and the Executive Board of the Alabama ACRL Chapter for the invitation to present!
We welcome this guest essay by Dr. Melissa Atkinson, Director of Distance & Online Library Services at Abilene Christian University (ACU) Brown Library.
Metaliteracy, as introduced by Mackey and Jacobson in 2011, has been instrumental in developing metaliterate learners in a variety of contexts. The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, published in 2016, transformed the previous InformationLiteracy Competency Standards for Higher Education (ACRL, 2000) into frames that build upon each other and were not prescriptive in how to assess students’ learning. Many librarians turn to the Framework as a guideline for developing information literacy courses, tutorials, guided studies, and assessments. Libraries and librarians create assessments of the Framework that are varied and individualized.
Using the Framework in conjunction with metaliteracy goals and learning objectives can enhance the student experience as well as give librarians a standard to follow that ensures development of skills needed in a participatory, connected environment (Mackey & Jacobson, 2011). Notes that reference metaliteracy and metacognition can be found in the Framework (2016). The Framework does have its strengths, but incorporating metaliteracy goals and learning objectives into the frames can aid in assessment and add to the knowledge and skills students should develop throughout their lifetime, not just when they are participating in higher education.
Using the original set of metaliteracy goals and learning objectives found on metaliteracy.org (Forte, et al, 2014), a metaliteracy course was developed in the Learning Management System (LMS) Canvas, specifically for fully online Ed.D. students, preparing them for research-related content encountered in their courses (Atkinson, 2019). The original course by Atkinson (2019) compared pretest, posttest, and metacognitive skills, using the Metacognitive Strategies for Library Research Skills Scale (MS-LRSS) developed by Catalano (2017).
The course was designed using backward design methods (Wiggins & McTighe, 2006) to introduce online doctoral students to common library terminology, metaliteracy, and metacognitive concepts. The metaliteracy course was not intended to take the place of library tutorials, individualized instruction, or research consultations–all of which are critical to meet the needs of doctoral students in an online environment.
The metaliteracy course consists of five modules, four of which are directly related to the metaliteracy goals and learning objectives from 2014 (Forte, et. al., 2014). The fifth module relates to specific skills students need to be successful, particularly in the Ed.D. program such as requesting materials through InterLibrary Loan, identifying research methods, and recognizing specific library databases. Each module consists of a pretest, an overview and videos (most of which are three minutes or less), and a posttest. Each module name, the video titles, and learning objectives are listed below.
Objective: Metaliterate learners evaluate information critically by determining authority, relevancy, accuracy, and validity of each source regardless of the information’s delivery method.
By the end of this module, learners will be able to:
1) Recognize the criteria for evaluating authority, relevancy, accuracy, and validity of information sources
2) Determine context of an information source by considering purpose and format
3) Distinguish between scholarly and non-scholarly sources
4) Understand the process of peer review and its purpose in scholarly research
Module 2: Information Ethics
Two Videos: Academic Integrity, Copyright, and Plagiarism; APA Style
Objective: Metaliterate learners understand and differentiate between their own intellectual property and others’ intellectual property, and give credit to others’ work using proper citation style methods.
By the end of this module, learners will be able to:
1) Understand the concepts of academic integrity, copyright, and plagiarism
2) Differentiate between various forms of attribution
3) Identify parts of a citation in APA style
4) Recognize elements of APA style in context
Module 3: Information Creation, Sharing, and Collaboration
Three videos: Social Media; Digital and Visual Literacy; Creating Original Content
Objective: Metaliterate learners are aware of their online environments, participate collaboratively, transfer information from one format to another, and produce and share original content.
By the end of this module, learners will be able to:
1) Understand the various ways of sharing original content
2) Consciously participate in social media environments
3) Describe digital and visual literacy and their importance to metaliterate learning
4) Identify digital and media formats and the uses and purposes of each
Module 4: Lifelong Learning Research Strategies
Two videos: Information Needs; Metacognition
Objective: Metaliterate learners connect learning with personal, professional, and lifelong goals using their experiences. Metaliterate learners recognize metacognitive principles of learning by acknowledging that learning is a process and can reflect on research difficulties to improve strategies.
By the end of this module, learners will be able to:
1) Know which search strategies are appropriate for the information needs
2) Determine tasks involved to develop research questions
3) Reflect on one’s own knowledge and determine ways to increase metacognition skills
4) Recognize the process of critical thinking that leads to metaliterate learning
Module 5: Research Skills Proficiency
Three videos: Types of Sources; Requesting Materials and ILL; Research Methods
Objective: Metaliterate learners are proficient in distinguishing between types of sources, describing research methods, and understanding how to request materials to find relevant, scholarly, and authoritative information sources.
By the end of this module, learners will be able to:
1) Describe research methods, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods
2) Distinguish between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources
3) Recognize ACU library’s databases, authentication process, and InterLibrary Loan procedures
4) Understand how to request physical materials
The original course has been modified to reach other fully online student audiences such as undergraduate students and Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) students. The undergraduate metaliteracy course is embedded in a critical thinking course that is taken by all online undergraduates. The program directors for the Ed.D. and DNP programs encourage students to self-enroll in the Canvas metaliteracy course specifically designed for those students in each program. Currently, a LibGuide is being developed to bring the metaliteracy course to a wider audience than is currently reached in Canvas. The full metaliteracy course will be available at this link (forthcoming), https://guides.acu.edu/metaliteracy, and currently includes all of the learning objectives and videos for each module.
A mapping of the ACRL Framework to the metaliteracy course objectives can help expand the knowledge and skills students need to succeed in their courses and beyond. The concept of metaliteracy is important for either an introduction for undergraduate students to library and research terminology or for graduate and doctoral students who already have these concepts developed as well as students who have not been to school for a long time and need a refresher on these concepts. Future plans include updating the metaliteracy course to incorporate the updated metaliteracy goals and learning objectives from 2018 (Jacobson, et al, 2018) as well as an update to the mapping of the Framework.
References
Association of College and Research Libraries. (2000). Information literacy competency standards for higher education. Retrieved September 29, 2023, from https://alair.ala.org/handle/11213/7668
Association of College and Research Libraries. (2016). Framework for information literacy for higher education. Retrieved September 29, 2023, from https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework
Atkinson, M. D. (2019). The relationship between metaliteracy pretest, posttest, and Metacognitive Strategies for Library Research Skills Scale: Creating a metaliteracy course for online Ed.D. students [Doctoral dissertation, Regent University]. https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/library_pub/32
Catalano, A. A. (2017). Development and validation of the Metacognitive Strategies for Library Research Skills Scale (MS-LRSS). Journal of Academic Librarianship, 43(3), 178–183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2017.02.017
Fulkerson, D. M., Ariew, S. A., & Jacobson, T. E. (2017). Revisiting metacognition and metaliteracy in the ACRL Framework. Communications in Information Literacy, 11(1), 21-41. https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2017.11.1.45
Mackey, T. P., & Jacobson, T. E. (2011). Reframing information literacy as a metaliteracy. College & Research Libraries, 72(1), 62–78. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl-76r1
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2006). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Pearson.
Dr. Melissa Atkinson is the Director of Distance & Online Library Services at Abilene Christian University (ACU) Brown Library. In her 23-year career as a librarian at ACU, she has served as Online Learning Librarian, E-Collections & Web Services Librarian, Serials & Assessment Librarian, Electronic Services & Serials Librarian, and Reference Librarian. She is currently a dissertation chair for five dissertation students, one of whom recently successfully defended their prospectus. She earned a Ph.D. from Regent University in Education (Distance Education concentration) in May 2019. Her research interests include metaliteracy, information literacy, online pedagogy, andragogy, and instructional design methods for library instruction. Her dissertation titled, “The Relationship Between Metaliteracy Pretest, Posttest, and Metacognitive Strategies for Library Research Skills Scale: Creating a Metaliteracy Course for Online Ed.D. Students,” is available in Proquest and ACU’s institutional repository (Digital Commons). In 2020, an article based on her dissertation was published called, “To Frame or Not to Frame: Creating a Metaliteracy Course for Online Ed.D. Students” in Library Hi Tech News (https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/library_pub/41/).
In Metaliteracy in a Connected World, Thomas Mackey and Trudi Jacobson make a strong case for the adoption of the metaliteracy framework, a pedagogical model that seeks to empower learners to be reflective and informed consumers and producers of information in an increasingly connected (digital) world. This monograph builds on Mackey and Jacobson’s previous efforts, spanning two decades, to normalize metaliteracy as the framework for teaching and learning in libraries.
(MURGU, 2022, P. 863)
Murgu highlights the theoretical chapters (1,2 and 6) as well as those focused on practice (3, 4, and 5). He is especially interested in the way the book applies the metaliteracy model to open pedagogical settings as defined in chapters 3 and 4. This latest review joins the insights offered by Jodie R Heap from Staffordshire University in a review in the Journal of Information Literacy.
We appreciate this interest in our latest book and welcome your insights about how metaliteracy is applied in a wide range of disciplines and pedagogical settings.
Tom and Trudi
MURGU, Cal. Metaliteracy in a Connected World: Developing Learners as Producers. Thomas P. Mackey and Trudi E. Jacobson, eds. Chicago, IL: ALA Neal-Schuman, 2022. 232p. $64.99 (ISBN: 978-0-8389-4944-3). Special issue of C&RL, edited by Nicole Pagowsky, [S.l.], v. 83, n. 5, p. 863, Sep. 2022. ISSN 2150-6701. Available at: <https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/25597/33504>. Date accessed: 18 Sep. 2022. doi:https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.83.5.863.
You may want to walk through the slide show asynchronously to gain new insights about the content presented. All of the interactive components are still available so feel free to jump in and contribute to the following:
Participants in this event will go through the core components of this holistic framework, including learning domains, learner roles, characteristics, and the reinforcing goals and learning objectives. The instructors will explain the relationship between metaliteracy and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Participants will explore options for learning design that will meet the needs of their students and start a plan for incorporating metaliteracy in their formal or informal teaching. The instructors will provide opportunities to discuss and adapt the metaliteracy goals and learning objectives to multiple disciplines and settings.
The new metaliteracy book written by Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson will be published by ALA/Neal Schuman in summer 2021!
The fourth metaliteracy book in a series is entitled Metaliteracy in a Connected World: Developing Learners as Producers and will focus specifically on the metaliterate learner as informed and ethical producer of information in collaborative social settings. The Foreword to this book will be written by Jako Olivier, UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning, and OER Professor in Multimodal Learning, North-West University, South Africa.
In this newest book in their series, the authors carefully examine the central role of learners as producers of information, a foundational idea for the metaliteracy framework and one that’s more important than ever in our current media and information environment. They emphasize the active role today’s learners play as individual and collaborative metaliterate producers of information in various forms, including writing, digital stories, digital artifacts, and multimedia productions. The authors explore a range of connected social settings from online courses to social media to open learning environments.
We are excited to announce the forthcoming publication of our next book and will provide updates via Metaliteracy.org as we get closer to the publication date so stay tuned!
The forthcoming metaliteracy book Metalierate Learning for the Post-Truth World, edited by Thomas Mackey and Trudi Jacobson will be published in spring 2019. Metaliteracy is a pedagogical model for ensuring that learners successfully participate in collaborative information environments, including social media and online communities. Today’s post-truth world requires learners to ethically produce and share information while checking their own biases, and critically evaluating the proliferation of false or misleading information, unfiltered content, and outright denialism of facts. Indeed, it is clearly evident that the competencies, knowledge, and attributes of metaliterate individuals are critical for grappling with the post-truth era. Metaliteracy supports reflective learning through metacognitive thinking, the ethical production of new knowledge, the critical consumption of information, and the responsible sharing of verifiable content across media platforms. Through metaliteracy, learners are envisioned as teachers in collaborative social spaces. This book examines the newest version of the Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives, including the four domains of metaliterate learning. Several chapter authors explore the relationship between metaliteracy and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.
This new metaliteracy book includes a Foreword written by Troy Swanson, MLIS, Ph.D., Department Chair Library Services, Moraine Valley Community College and features persuasive contributions from information literacy instructors, librarians, and disciplinary faculty. All of the chapter authors present effective methods for advancing metaliterate learning in the post-truth world, exploring such relevant topics as:
Theory
Strategies for empowering metaliterate learners through the newly developed metaliterate learner characteristics and revised Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives in the framing chapter by Thomas P. Mackey, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Arts and Media at SUNY Empire State College
Documentation as an expanded dimension of the metaliteracy model to reinforce ethical and responsible information practices examined by Marc Kosciejew, M.L.I.S., Ph.D., Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences in the Department of Library, Information, and Archive Sciences, University of Malta
Inoculation theory as a way to build resistance to influence in the post-truth world theorized by Josh Compton, Ph.D., from the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric at Dartmouth College
Scientific literacy enhanced as a holistic learning strategy through metaliteracy examined by Allison B. Brungard, M.L.I.S., from Slippery Rock University and Kristin M. Klucevsek, Ph.D., from Duquesne University
The synergistic relationship between text and image in photojournalism analyzed by Thomas Palmer, M.S., Digital Media Lecturer from the University at Albany, SUNY, and Editorial Design Director / News Editor at the Times Union newspaper
Practice
The role of LIS professionals in supporting metaliterate learning and the ACRL Framework in a chapter co-authored by Nicole A. Cooke, Ph.D., M.Ed., M.L.S., and Rachel Magee, Ph.D., M.A., from the University of Illinois
Teaching students to be wrong through lessons designed with metaliteracy and the ACRL Framework in a freshman seminar developed and taught by Allison Hosier, M.S.I.S., Information Literacy Librarian, at the University at Albany, SUNY
Developing metaliterate learners as analytical readers and writers through genre analysis and fictionality in first-year writing instruction as described by Jaclyn Partyka, Ph.D., in the English Department at Temple University.
Incorporating Poetic Ethnograpy and digital storytelling based on poetic narratives from neighborhoods in Philadelphia in the closing chapter by Kimmika L. H. Williams-Witherspoon, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Theater at Temple University
Metaliteracy is an empowering pedagogical model for preparing learners to be ethical and responsible participants in today’s divisive information environment. This new book showcases several teaching and learning theories and practices that have already proven effective and are certain to inspire new ideas. Metaliterate Learning for the Post-Truth World builds on the two previous metaliteracy books Metaliteracy in Practice (2016) and Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners (2014).
Metaliteracy.org 