Category Archives: Metaliteracy

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

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).

New Book about the ACRL Framework Includes Metaliteracy

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The new book edited by Heidi Julien, Melissa Gross, and Don Latham The Information Literacy Framework: Case Studies of Successful Implementation, features a Foreword written by Trudi E. Jacobson and a metaliteracy chapter authored by Tom Mackey. Trudi’s perspective as co-chair of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) task force that developed the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, informed her Foreword for the book. Trudi noted that: “The chapter authors and editors of this volume have done a great service for librarians and other educators who wold like to expand their understanding of the potential impact and use of the Framework and add to their repertoire of ways for integrating it into their work” (p. xi).

The ACRL Framework was influenced by aspects of metaliteracy and in his chapter entitled “Exploring Metaliterate Learning through the Frames of Information Literacy,” Tom Mackey investigates both models as complementary. In particular, he examines the final project assignment in the metaliteracy MOOC Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World as an example of metaliterate learning from the perspective of the six frames of the ACRL Framework. He also argues that “The metacognitive aspect of metaliteracy has been a driver for these projects and suggests the need for further development of this approach in information literacy as well” (p. 217).

This new book, published by Rowman & Littlefield, includes 18 different case studies from librarians and faculty members who have experience applying the ACRL Framework in practice. Take a look at the range of the chapters–you are certain to find some pertinent to your interests!