Category Archives: Information Literacy

Metaliteracy at the Course Level: A look at “Revising for Metaliteracy” from the forthcoming Metaliteracy in Practice book

Posted on by
Reply

Donna Witek and Teresa Grettano of The University of Scranton offer the following preview of their chapter, “Revising for Metaliteracy: Flexible Course Design to Support Social Media Pedagogy,” appearing in the forthcoming book Metaliteracy in Practice.

What does a course designed intentionally for metaliteracy—as both a pedagogical method as well as a learning outcome—look like? How can a course’s goals, assignments, and schedule be deliberately composed and structured to develop metaliteracy in both students and instructors? And why might instructors choose to use social media in their courses, not despite but because of the complexities that accompany these technologies when they are invited into the learning community of the classroom?

This chapter offers answers to these questions by describing, analyzing, and reflecting on a 200-level Writing course called Rhetoric & Social Media, in which students “investigate rhetoric through and the rhetoric of social media.” This course was co-designed and co-taught by the authors—an information literacy librarian and a rhetoric/composition professor—for the first time at their institution in spring 2011. At its inception the course focused on the social media platform Facebook as both the primary object of analysis and vehicle for learning in the course. By 2013, it became clear to the authors that a course intentionally designed to develop both information literacy and rhetorical and critical practice in students on social media needed to address more platforms than Facebook, and needed to be flexible in how it did so. To this end, the authors significantly revised the course in time for the spring 2013 semester to include Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, in addition to Facebook, with a restructured course schedule and new learning exercises (i.e., assignments) developed to take advantage of this expansion in scope.

This chapter shares with readers this revision process: what the revisions were, the authors’ pedagogical rationale for the revisions made, the outcomes of the revisions (i.e., how they played out in practice in the classroom), and the relationship between this revision process and the development of metaliteracy in all involved—students and instructors/authors alike. Like a companion chapter in this collection, this chapter models a metaliterate approach to course design through its method of analyzing elements of the syllabus over time, in order to build an argument for what metaliteracy at the course-level looks like. It also makes connections between the goals of rhetorical theory and the goals of metaliteracy, connections that can be leveraged by information literacy educators to further integrate these domains within and across the curriculum.

Metaliteracy Keynote at Cedar Crest College

Posted on by
Reply

We were thrilled to present on the topic Expanding Metaliteracy Across the Curriculum to Advance Lifelong Civic Engagement at Cedar Crest College last week! The Cedar Crest Curriculum Committee invited us to present a summer workshop to build on the great work they are doing to map information literacy/metaliteracy across the curriculum.  We were very impressed with the work they are doing and enjoyed our time with the faculty, librarians, and administrators very much.  This is the slide deck for the facilitated presentation and it includes the world premiere of our new book cover for the forthcoming Metaliteracy in Practice! Be sure to check it out!

Metaliteracy featured at Cedar Crest College Summer Workshop

Posted on by
Reply

We are looking forward to presenting at Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pennsylvania on Wednesday August 19.  The topic of our collaborative workshop will be: Expanding Metaliteracy Across the Curriculum to Advance Lifelong Civic Engagement.  Here’s the description for what we plan to do:

Metaliteracy is a reinvention of information literacy to promote reflective learning, active and critical participation in social settings, including social media, and the ability to adapt to emerging technologies. This is a dynamic reframing of information literacy with an expanded set of learning goals and objectives that could be applied across the curriculum to support metacognitive reflection, and learners as informed consumers and collaborative producers of information. Metaliteracy has influenced the development of the new Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, signaling wider support for this model and increasing adoption in diverse educational settings. Metaliteracy has sparked the development of several collaborative projects initiated by Mackey and Jacobson and their colleagues in the Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative, including a digital badging system and three Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

Metaliterate learners, who apply integrated competencies related to evaluating, consuming, and producing information in participatory environments, will be better prepared for college level learning and lifelong civic engagement. This workshop will define metaliteracy, discuss the four domains of metaliteracy and related learning goals and objectives, and examine how this approach has been applied in the curricular design of several innovative projects such as competency based digital badging and three MOOCs. Participants will have a chance during the workshop to envisage opportunities to enhance students’ metaliteracy abilities, and to share these ideas with other attendees.

One of the presenters for this workshop, Trudi E. Jacobson, was co-chair of the ACRL Task Force with Craig Gibson (The Ohio State University). She will describe the new metaliteracy-informed ACRL Framework and its definition of information literacy. This interactive portion of the workshop will be an opportunity to engage with the Framework and consider how it might inform collaborations between disciplinary faculty members and librarians. We will provide an opportunity for participants to grapple with more easily implemented changes and the metaliteracy underpinnings of the frame content to really build upon the content examined throughout the day.

Sneak Peak #2 into Metaliteracy in Practice

Posted on by
Reply

As promised, we are posting chapter previews, written by the authors, for the forthcoming book Metaliteracy in Practice, due out in late 2015 or early 2016 from ALA Neal-Schuman.

Chapter 2:

The Politics of Information: Students as Creators in a Metaliteracy Context

Lauren Wallis, Christopher Newport University

Andrew Battista, New York University

The recent revision of the Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education opens a space for students to reflect on their position within an inherently political imbroglio of information, both in traditional scholarly formats and in open online spaces. When students visit the library, it is often at the behest of their professors, who expect that librarians will tell them how to find peer-reviewed journals. Meanwhile, the Framework, with its grounding in metaliteracy, encourages knowledge practices and dispositions in which students see their own encounters with information as opportunities to question authority, challenge expertise, and recognize the merit of nontraditional forms of evidence.

As the Framework was being revised, and as discussions of metaliteracy as a guiding principle for information literacy pedagogy emerged, we taught a one-credit class called The Politics of Information. In this class, we asked several questions: Who creates information? What information gets produced and circulated, and what information does not?  Who has access to information, and how can the dissemination of information be an instrument of social control, inside and outside of the academy? As we taught, we realized that our core teaching moves—to destabilize authority and to encourage students to create digital products and reflect metacognitively on their learning experience—dovetail with the goals of metaliteracy.

We are excited that our chapter, “The Politics of Information: Students as Creators in a Metaliteracy Context,” is included in the forthcoming Metaliteracy in Practice volume. Our chapter makes the connections between the learning outcomes in The Politics of Information course and metaliteracy explicit. We began with the idea that information is a social construct, not a static, amorphous entity that reifies academic authority. We hope that this chapter, along with the others in the volume, offers concrete ways to adopt the goals of metaliteracy into the information literacy classroom.

Metaliteracy Presentation Videos from CIT2014

Posted on by
Reply

The SUNY wide Conference on Instruction and Technology (CIT 2014) recently published the presentation videos from this year’s event at Cornell University. We developed a presentation with colleagues from the University at Albany and Empire State College based on last year’s Metaliteracy MOOC. This video features Michele Forte, Nicola Allain, Jenna Pitera and Tom Mackey (Trudi Jacobson was presenting a keynote at the Cornell University Library the same week).  Here’s the link to the video now available via the CIT2014 site: Metaliteracy in Practice: Strengthening Learning Through a Connectivist MOOC.  Tom Mackey was also part of a featured panel presentation about MOOCs with SUNY colleagues from Stony Brook who developed a Coursera MOOC.  This was an excellent chance to discuss our connectivist MOOC in comparison with a Coursera MOOC.  The video for this panel presentation is also available:  Beyond the Front Row Experience: Blending a University Course with a MOOC.  The keynote speaker for the conference was Daphe Koller from Coursera: The Online Revolution: Learning without Limits.  Toward the end of Daphne Koller’s keynote, look for questions from Betty Hurley and Nicola Allain from Empire State College and Jenna Pitera from the University at Albany.

Metaliteracy Webinar for ALA eLearning Series

Posted on by
Reply

In June we presented a webinar on metaliteracy for the ALA Editions eLearning series.  The slides are now available on Slideshare.  This presentation features several new pieces in support of our new book Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners.

Video of 2014 CT IL Conference Keynote

Posted on by
Reply

This is the YouTube video of our metaliteracy keynote at the 2014 Connecticut Information Literacy Conference. All of the presentation videos are available via the conference web site. The metaliteracy keynote slides are also available on slideshare.

Photo Gallery from Recent Metaliteracy Keynote

Posted on by
Reply

In June we presented the keynote address at the Connecticut Information Literacy Conference sponsored by the Connecticut Library Association.  Thanks to the conference organizers for sending us several pictures from that event!  We really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with everyone at the conference.  Click on any image to see the full gallery.

Metaliteracy Keynote at Connecticut Information Literacy Conference

Posted on by
Reply

We enjoyed presenting this year’s keynote at the Connecticut Information Literacy Conference sponsored by the Connecticut Library Association. This year’s conference explored Our New Frontier: Metaliteracy, Threshold Concepts, New Standards, and Other Wild Ideas and our keynote addressed Crossing the Threshold: Envisioning Information Literacy through the Lens of Metaliteracy.  We were thrilled that metaliteracy was a key part of this year’s theme and we appreciated all of the great conversations! Trudi Jacobson also presented an afternoon breakout session “Threshold Concepts: Exploring the Potential and the Challenges for Information Literacy Instruction” based on her work as co-chair of the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education Task Force.

Metaliteracy MOOC Presented at SUNY CIT2014

Posted on by
Reply

Last week, we discussed our connectivist Metaliteracy MOOC at SUNY’s CIT2014 at Cornell University.  The presentation entitled Metaliteracy in Practice: Strengthening Learning Through a Connectivist MOOC featured Tom Mackey, Michele Forte, Jenna Pitera, and Nicola Allain.  Trudi Jacobson presented a keynote about her work with the ACRL Task Force during the same week at the Cornell University Library and contributed previously.  This was a great opportunity to reflect on our Metaliteracy MOOC based on the unique features of the connectivist format, including our collaborative and participatory news feeds (powered by the gRSShopper programming developed by Stephen Downes) and interactive MOOC Talks using Blackboard Collaborate.