Thanks to Troy Swanson Department Chair and Teaching & Learning Librarian at Moraine Valley Community College for posting the video of our keynote Changing Models, Changing Emphases: The Evolution of Information Literacy at the 2014 IL Summit. We enjoyed our time at the summit and appreciate this opportunity to share the video.
Last week we presented a collaborative keynote address at the IL Summit at Moraine Valley Community College in Illinois. The conference was sponsored by DePaul University Library and Moraine Valley Community College Library and focused on the theme Into the Next Generation: The Future of Information Literacy. We also presented a collaborative workshop entitled Designing Digital Badges to Generate Engaged Learning. We enjoyed our time at the conference and greatly appreciated the opportunity to engage with all of the participants. Our keynote examined Changing Models, Changing Emphases: The Evolution of Information Literacy and is available on SlideShare.
New Metaliteracy Book
Our new co-authored book Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners (April 2014) has been published by ALA Books/Neal-Schuman! The book features seven chapters that range from theory to practice, expanding the concept of metaliteracy with an emphasis on metacognition, exploring current trends in social media, describing the learning objectives required to support metaliterate learners, and analyzing global trends in emerging literacies. We also present the results of a preliminary survey about metaliteracy and related issues, and then close with two case studies from our own teaching in the classroom and online. The book includes visual models of the metaliteracy framework and the metaliterate learner and several figures in support of our survey chapter. Sheila A. Webber, Director of the Centre for Information Literacy Research at the Information School, Sheffield University wrote the Foreword to the book. ALA is currently providing a sample of the book and Facet Publishing is distributing the book internationally. The new publication is also available via Amazon and other online booksellers. The official press release from ALA Publishing is available as well: Using Metaliteracy to Empower Learners. We are excited about the new book and appreciate all of the interest that has been expressed in the metaliteracy model. We look forward to continuing the conversation now that the book is officially available! Feel free to post comments about the book via this blog or Twitter using #metaliteracy. We will be discussing the book as part of our upcoming keynote presentations and can’t wait for the dialogue about these ideas! -Tom and Trudi
As part of our SUNY wide Conversations in the Disciplines event hosted at Empire State College, we recorded the keynote presentations and panels. These videos are now available via ESC-TV and include the morning keynote presentation by Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson, entitled Developing Metaliterate Learners: Transforming Literacy Across Disciplines. We also feature the morning Reaction Panel with Richard Fogarty, Carleen Huxley, and Michael Youngs. The afternoon sessions are also available, including the keynote presentation by Randy B. Hensley and Reaction Panel: Brian Morgan, Paige Jaeger, Tor Loney, Karen Mahar, Dave Brown, and Ashley Smolinski. All of the videos are available at Metaliteracy Conference 2013.
Cover image of CIL 7.2
The new thematic issue of Communications in Information Literacy is out! It is called Reflecting on the Standards, and the 15 articles that it contains reflect a range of viewpoints and focused interests. The image of Janus on the cover is particularly apt, as the pieces look back to the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards published in 2000, noting both the good and the not so good about those standards, and forward to the new model currently under development. The authors express hopes and potential concerns about the new framework. And some offer sage advice: the two introductory paragraphs in Benjamin Harris’s The New ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards: Revising Reception are particularly thoughtful in this regard.
This issue contains articles by a number of well known individuals in the field. These include Carol Kuhlthau, Stanley Wilder, and Patricia Iannuzzi (who chaired the group that developed the 2000 Standards). Some of the 15 articles use the Prospectus for Revision that was issued by the current Task Force to try to determine what might or might not be included in the new version. This was an early document, and does not fully capture current discussions. The draft will be available for review in mid February.
We were delighted to find that our contribution, Proposing a Metaliteracy Model to Redefine Information Literacy, was selected as the lead article. We encourage you to read it, and all the articles in the issue. Speaking of which, let me get back to the few I’ve not yet read…
Last week we participated in a SUNY-wide “Conversations in the Disciplines” focused on metaliteracy. This is a competitive program that provides funding for a one-day conference to promote interactivity and dialogue. We experienced a full-day of activity that examined many dimensions of metaliteracy and covered a range of issues from K-12 to higher education to open learning. This is the PowerPoint presentation from our morning keynote “Developing Metaliterate Learners: Transforming Literacy across Disciplines.”
We launched Metaliteracy MOOC on September 4 at the University at Albany with colleagues from SUNY Empire State College and the University Libraries. Our opening plenary was facilitated through Blackboard Collaborate and included Tom Mackey, Trudi Jacobson, Tor Loney, Jenna Hecker, Nicola Marae Allain, and our colleagues from the Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative Michele Forte, Kathleen Stone, Mike Daly, and Mark McBride. We were joined in person by three UAlbany students and online by one of our graduate students from Empire State College. The first MOOC Talk was developed in Prezi and provided an overview of key metaliteracy terms, updates on recent metaliteracy activity, and two figures from the Metaliteracy manuscript recently completed by Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson for ALA Books. A recording of our first interactive session via Blackboard Collaborate is available at our Topic 1 page at Metaliteracy MOOC. In the spirit of Open SUNY we coordinated shared press releases that have been published at the Empire State College web site and the UAlbany Web site. The live MOOC Talk session was fascinating for us as we facilitated the talk with several presenters, allowing us to look at metaliteracy from multiple perspectives. We were also inspired by the post-MOOC Talk (that we did not record) because it allowed us to talk through the MOOC format itself and it felt very much like a spontaneous seminar about MOOCs. We have also seen an asynchronous conversation unfold via Twitter at #metaliteracy in response to the talk. We look forward to our upcoming MOOC Talks. On September 18 Char Booth will examine “The Metacognitive Dimension of Metaliteracy,” a key aspect of the metaliteracy model.
Michele Forte, Trudi Jacobson, and Emer O’Keefe were successful in applying for a State University of New York (SUNY) Conversations in the Disciplines about metaliteracy. This intercampus one-day conference entitled “Developing Metaliterate Learners: Transforming Literacy Across Disciplines” will take place at the Center for Distance Learning (CDL) at Empire State College on Friday, December 13, 2013.
Learners – students and educators alike – are no longer simply information consumers but information producers in a participatory social media environment. Learners increasingly work collaboratively, creating and sharing digital information. We need to be adaptable within an information landscape that is complex and ever-changing. The metaliteracy model emphasizes these evolving literacy concepts, as well as the critical role played by metacognitive components, but many disciplines still view information creation as something done solely through traditional means, and solely by scholars in the field. How might disciplines benefit from new and collaborative modes of information creation? Can traditional models resist the changes wrought by Web 2.0? How might a conversation about expanding these conceptions bring new and fruitful ideas to these fields of study?
Librarians have ample opportunities to learn new theories and methods connected to information literacy in all its guises, but rarely have the chance to engage in macro discussion with disciplinary faculty members about the changes to the intersections of their fields. Usually conversations center around a specific class period, and what the librarian will teach to the professor’s students.
This day of conversation will allow members of both groups to engage together in learning and discussion about cutting-edge topics surrounding metaliteracy, the information literacy of today’s information and technology environment.
Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson will provide the keynote presentation to launch the event. Randy Hensley, Head of Information Services at Newman Library, Baruch College, CUNY, will be the afternoon keynote speaker, focusing on the student perspective. There will also be morning and afternoon reactions panels, with librarians and faculty members from community colleges, 4-year schools, a university, and a BOCES participating.
Registration will open shortly, and preference will be given to pairs made up of a librarian and a faculty member in a discipline who plan to attend together.
Metaliteracy has been featured recently in two new publications. A new UNESCO document entitled Media and Information Literacy for Knowledge Societies (2013) provides a brief definition of metaliteracy and makes it central to the conclusion. According to this new publication:
As an umbrella term, it covers many of the other literacies. It also seems to overlap with new literacies such as multiliteracies and global literacy. It is a metaliteracy. It is transversal in its nature and can be seen as an iceberg concept which is much bigger than what it is seen at first sight. Information literacy can be easily called a megaliteracy which is composed of many other skills and literacies (p. 85).
As a comprehensive and unifying metaliteracy, the idea of a megaliteracy is not needed, since the the meta already encompasses this idea. But this is an intriguing way to look at it and certainly addresses the interconnected nature of emerging literacies. Great to see metaliteracy brought into the conversation.
We also note another new publication from Betty Hurley-Dasgupta, Carol Yeager, and Catherine Bliss from SUNY Empire State College about the first MOOC they offered in the SUNY System entitled Creativity and Multicultural Communication. The authors make several references to metaliteracy in their article cMOOC and Global Learning: An Authentic Alternative in The Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN). According to the authors,
Clearly, we need to scaffold the development of metaliteracy skills for learning through cMOOCs. Some scaffolding could be accomplished by incorporating more self-assessment into the MOOC. For future MOOCs, we plan to incorporate shared rubrics to help participants assess their own metaliteracy skills, (Yeager, et.al, 2013, p. 144).
This is an important point that demonstrates the potential impact of a metaliteracy perspective on the cMOOC learning experience, and how learners could gain new insights and knowledge in these open and collaborative spaces. We definitely need metaliteracy rubrics for MOOCs to enhance the experience for independent and collaborative learners.
As part of Tom Mackey’s workshop at NELIG 2013, this short :30 video was created on the fly using the Animoto app on a smartphone. This was a quick and easy demo that showed the possibility of producing and sharing information in creative ways, either in the classroom or online. It is based on one of the tools used in the course Digital Storytelling at Empire State College. Workshop participants explored several questions in teams related to the challenges applying technology in Designing Learning Activities to Promote Metaliteracy.
Metaliteracy.org 