Category Archives: threshold concepts

The Roles of Metaliteracy and Wikipedia Editing in Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

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“Anyone could make edits, and anyone could challenge those edits…This helped me feel less like an outsider trying to fit into a conversation and more like one of a million voices that were working together towards a shared goal of information creation and consumption.”

It is not only illuminating, but also vital to hear from learners about the impact of their encounters with metaliteracy. Asking them to write reflective pieces is one way to find out how components of metaliteracy may have had an effect on their learning. A recent Wiki Edu blog post by Corrin Baker, a graduating senior at The University at Albany, provides such insight. Corrin expanded a wonderfully written course reflection for this post about a course taught by Prof. Trudi Jacobson.

In describing metaliteracy’s producer role, Ms. Baker wrote:

The shared roles of producer and consumer were present in every step of the course. I was fully engaged in locating and evaluating sources, and then finding ways to make that information both understandable and accessible. I felt a great sense of responsibility to the audience and to the authors whose work I was using. I was also far more aware of diversity in a global audience, especially as I found myself struggling to find non-male authors to cite. 

The course, which lasts just seven weeks, is challenging for students, but aims to have a lasting effect on their understanding of information and their roles in producing and sharing it. Corrin’s reflection testifies to the incredible impact that the blend of metaliteracy, information literacy, and the wonderful Wiki Education program can have.

Read the full post here: Overcoming imposter syndrome by editing Wikipedia

Wiki. edu logo by David Peters of EXBROOK for Wiki Education Foundation – Wiki Education Foundation, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33179189

Metaliteracy/Information Literacy Workshop at North-West University, South Africa

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Trudi Jacobson at NWU

Trudi Jacobson and Tom Mackey presented a second workshop (see October 3 post for details about and slides for the first, on metaliteracy and open educational practices). This workshop entitled Integrating Metaliteracy and Information Literacy into Teaching and Learning, also held at the Potchefstroom campus of North-West University (NWU), South Africa, occurred on Friday, September 20. Trudi and Tom conducted the workshop at the invitation of Dr. Jako Olivier, UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and OER and Professor in Multimodal Learning at NWU.

The workshop, Integrating Metaliteracy and Information Literacy into Teaching and Learning, was designed to introduce metaliteracy and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education to participants. Of particular note was the unveiling of a new comparison of the metaliteracy learner characteristics and aligning dispositions from the ACRL Framework (slide 22). This figure and the accompanying investigation is the focus of a chapter by Trudi Jacobson, Tom Mackey, and Kelsey O’Brien, “Visualizing the Convergence of Metaliteracy and the Information Literacy Framework,” which will be included in a forthcoming book edited by Jannette Finch, Envisioning the Framework.

After a brief overview of the two frameworks, it was time for the participants to start applying concepts and ideas to their own teaching. Working in small groups, attendees identified an information literacy goal they have for their students, and determined how metaliteracy and existing metaliteracy OER might help to achieve this goal.

Metaliteracy Keynotes Featured at ICIL in South Africa

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North-West University, South Africa, host of the 2019 ICIL

Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson have been invited to South Africa as keynote speakers at the International Conference on Information Literacy (ICIL), being held this year at North-West University in Vanderbijlpark. The conference theme is Information Literacy in All Spheres of Life, and will take place September 23-26. 

Tom’s keynote, to take place on September 24, is titled Building Communities of Trust: Metaliterate Learning for a Post-Truth Society. Trudi is presenting on September 26 on Creating Shareable Knowledge: Exploring the Synergy between Metaliteracy and Open Pedagogy. The other international and national keynote speakers at the conference include Serap Kurbanoglu of the Department of Information Management at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, Irina Zhilavskaya, Chair of Media Education, Moscow Pedagogical State University, Bosire Onyancha of the Department of Information Science at the University of South Africa, Karin de Jager, University of Cape Town, Ina Fourie, Department of Information Science at the University of Pretoria, and Jako Olivier, professor of Multimodal Learning in the School of Professional Studies in Education at North-West University.

Trudi and Tom have also been invited by Dr. Olivier to give a prestige lecture and two workshops at the Potchefstroom campus of North-West University the week prior to the conference. The collaborative lecture is Exploring the Foundation of Metaliteracy in Theory and Practice, and the workshops are Applying Open Educational Practices to Develop Active Metaliterate Learners and Integrating Metaliteracy and Information Literacy into Teaching and Learning.

Look to Metaliteracy.org for future posts that feature slides from both keynotes, the collaborative prestige lecture, and the shared workshops.

Metaliteracy Presentation at LSU

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Trudi Jacobson, Carol Barry and Tom Mackey

Trudi Jacobson and Tom Mackey presented Teaching Metaliteracy To Empower Learners in a Post-Truth World at Louisiana State University (LSU) on April 13. The School of Library and Information Science in association with the College of Human Sciences & Education at LSU sponsored the talk as part of the Quality of Life Lecture Series. Dr. Carol Barry, Director of the School of Library and Information Science at LSU, invited Trudi and Tom to discuss metaliteracy as a pedagogical response to fake news and the post-truth world. Trudi and Tom included research from their forthcoming book Metaliterate Learning in the Post-Truth World for ALA Publishing (to be published in fall 2018) and introduced the draft revision of the updated Metaliteracy Learning Goals and Objectives.

 

Call for Chapters: Metaliterate Learning for the Post-Truth World

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We are soliciting chapter proposals for a book entitled Metaliterate Learning for the Post-Truth World that we will publish in fall 2018 by the American Library Association. We would like to include both theoretical and applied chapters written by academic librarians, disciplinary faculty from a variety of fields, administrators, and instructional designers that describe and reflect upon the importance of advancing metaliteracy in a post-truth world. We see a particular urgency in editing this book at this time when truth itself is questioned for political purposes, journalism and the free press are constantly under attack, science and climate change are doubted as factual, online hacking is prevalent, online privacy is a concern, and the ability to proliferate false information through circuitous social media networks has become a serious issue. It is profoundly clear that the competencies, knowledge, and personal attributes that define metaliteracy and inform the role of the metaliterate learner are critical in today’s connected and divided world: digital literacy and traditional conceptions of information literacy are insufficient for the extreme challenges we currently face.

We would like to like to build on the success of our previous books, Metaliteracy in Practice and Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners, while leveraging the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education in relation to teaching and learning in the post-truth world. As one example of this approach, our most recent article for The Conversation, entitled “How can we learn to reject fake news in the digital world?,” applied metaliteracy to the destructive emergence of fake news in the 2016 Presidential Election. We made the argument that we need to read online information with a critical eye, apply metacognitive thinking to the consumption of all information, and make purposeful and meaningful contributions to the social media ecosystem as active participants. Given the interest in metaliteracy as a model for preparing metaliterate learners as responsible participants in today’s divisive information environment, we are especially interested in expanding the conversation to educators who have developed successful metaliteracy teaching and learning theories and practices to resist these challenges. Overall, how do we best prepare our students for being active and engaged metaliterate learners in today’s environment?

The editors are interested in ideas that are easily transferable, and that include strong components of student metacognition and empowerment. The book will include both theoretical arguments for metaliteracy in a post-truth world and innovative case studies that respond to these complex issues, all from different disciplinary perspectives, and academic institutions in the U.S. and internationally. The Metaliteracy Learning Objectives featured in our books and available via Metaliteracy.org: https://metaliteracy.org/learning-objectives/ will be core to the chapters as well.

Tom Mackey, Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Professor at SUNY Empire State College and Trudi E. Jacobson, Distinguished Librarian and Head of the Information Literacy Department at the University at Albany will write the framing chapter and edit this new book.

Please send 1-2 page proposals to Tom at Tom.Mackey@esc.edu no later than September 29, 2017. We will make our decisions by mid October. First drafts of the completed chapters (20-25 pages) will be due on January 12, 2018. Final drafts will be due by April 13, 2018.

If you have any questions about proposal ideas or about the book, please contact Tom at Tom.Mackey@esc.edu or Trudi at tjacobson@albany.edu.

Metaliteracy Featured at the University of Puerto Rico’s Mobile Learning Week Event

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Metaliteracy 2Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson have been invited to present a collaborative keynote on metaliteracy at The University of Puerto Rico’s Mobile Learning Week event on Monday, March 20 at 10am eastern time. In a presentation entitled “Metaliteracy as an Empowering Model for Teaching Mobile and Social Learners,” Tom and Trudi will explore the theory of metaliteracy while illustrating practical applications that can be applied in a variety of teaching and learning situations. In today’s mobile media environments our learners are continuously engaged with information in a variety of forms using a range of technologies. Learners from around the world are texting, posting, and sharing documents they find online through a multitude of social media spaces and mobile devices. But how much of this information can be trusted? Do learners know how to differentiate between what is real and what is fake in these environments? And do learners fully appreciate the importance of critical thinking and contributing as active and original producers of information, beyond posting selfies via mobile phones? How do learners bridge their free-flowing access to information via social media and mobile devices with the academic resources available in the library? How do learners make meaning from these different sources of information to advance their participatory roles as researchers and scholars? Metaliteracy is a model for understanding how information is produced and shared collaboratively in networked social spaces. The metaliterate learner is metacognitive, a critical consumer of information and an informed producer of digital media. The metaliterate learner adapts to changing technologies and always brings a critical and reflective sensibility to these experiences, asking good questions and being open to multiple perspectives.

Our approach to metaliteracy in practice is informed by several projects developed by the Metaliteracy Learning Collaborative, including a competency-based digital badging system and three Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). This presentation will examine the Metaliteracy Learning Goals and Objectives that inform these projects as a flexible, adaptable, and evolving resource. In addition, the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education will be introduced and explained. The information environment that compels us to move beyond the Standards is the one that spurred our development of metaliteracy. Indeed, one of the underpinning elements of the Framework is metaliteracy. This connection, as well as the threshold concept structure, will be explored in detail.

We appreciate the invitation to present from Ana I. Medina Hernández, MIS, Coordinadora Red Graduada, Decanato de Estudios Graduados e Investigación and Rossana I. Barrios Llorens, MIS, CLA, Head Librarian Serials and e-Access Department, Conrado F. Asenjo Library, University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus.

Metaliteracy featured at Cedar Crest College Summer Workshop

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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.

Video of 2014 CT IL Conference Keynote

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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

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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.

Video Recording of 2014 IL Summit Keynote

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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.