Through my BiblioSkill blog, I explore issues related to artificial intelligence, libraries, and information literacy. I see metaliteracy as a dynamic framework that combines critical thinking, digital literacy, and metacognition. This approach is increasingly important in an information environment shaped by artificial intelligence, where librarians, educators, and researchers must help users evaluate, interpret, and responsibly create information. Librarians can organize discussions about AI’s social consequences, including job displacement, algorithmic bias, privacy, and copyright. They can also guide users in selecting responsible AI tools and promote institutional policies for ethical and transparent AI use.
The Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives support the metaliteracy framework and are adaptable to many different educational settings. I recently edited the Italian translation of the updated 2025 Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives. This translation broadens access to the framework, supporting inclusive, multilingual information literacy across the diverse communities connected through our blogs.
For me, an important aspect of metaliteracy is developing metacognitive awareness: learners should reflect on how they acquire knowledge and critically question AI-generated content. Librarians can support this process by helping users compare AI outputs with reliable traditional sources, identify hallucinations and outdated information, and understand the limitations of automated systems.
Metaliteracy also strengthens critical evaluation skills and encourages learners to consider how information is produced and shared. AI-generated misinformation, deepfakes, synthetic media, biased algorithms, and unethical prompt practices require users to assess both the reliability of information and the processes through which it is produced. Teaching with metaliteracy should also address AI’s growing role in academic publishing, including AI-assisted peer review and the risks of predatory or deceptive practices.
Overall, integrating metaliteracy with AI literacy can support more critical, reflective, and responsible engagement with information. By combining reflection, evaluation, collaboration, and ethical awareness, librarians and users can engage with AI as informed and responsible participants.
Damiano Orrù
Damiano Orrù is a librarian and the Head of the Vilfredo Pareto Library, Faculty of Economics, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy. He is a member of the AIB’s (Italian Library Association) Information Literacy Observatory and teaches in professional and postgraduate programmes on generative AI, customer experience, machine learning, sustainability, and research data management. He is also the creator and blogger behind BiblioSkill, a professional platform dedicated to exploring the impact of artificial intelligence on libraries, education, and information services. Through BiblioSkill, he publishes articles, reflections, and practical resources on generative AI, metaliteracy, information evaluation, ethical technology use, digital transformation, and the development of responsible AI literacy among librarians, educators, researchers, and library users.
His work aims to promote critical thinking, professional development, and informed discussion about the opportunities, risks, and ethical challenges of AI in contemporary information environments. His professional interests include AI literacy, critical thinking, fact-checking, FAIR research data management, sustainability reporting, and the indexing of print, multimedia, and digital resources.
My journey to metaliteracy has not been expected or exactly straightforward; I am an adjunct lecturer at a community college in Maryland and started out as a fierce advocate of media literacy and critical consumption in the age of social media. It was at the Maryland Consortium for Adjunct Faculty Professional Development in 2024 that I ran into the idea—and the woman—who lit the spark. Dr. Rhianna Rodgers was the keynote speaker that day, and she had a great deal to say about AI and its potential applications for the classroom. I was something of an AI skeptic—not closed, but definitely wary. At the Q&A, I asked her how I could integrate AI into the media literacy that I was teaching—less ‘how to use AI’ and more ‘how to identify AI-generated content’ and ‘how to defend yourself against doctored reality.’ Her response was immediate—she put me in touch with a colleague, Dr. Thomas Mackey, and told me to ask him about metaliteracy. She explained that metaliteracy asks learners to consume more critically but also to reflect on what they consume and to use that knowledge to make something new. I reached out and Dr. Mackey and I connected, and I have never looked back.
This summer, I learned that Dr. Mackey was giving a presentation with some colleagues about Metaliteracy and AI up at SUNY Stony Brook, so I figured what the heck, and I went up to attend the conference for a day. I came away practically vibrating with ideas and enthusiasm, and with a burning need to share metaliteracy with other faculty, not just with my students. There is so much that metaliterate class construction can do to facilitate deep learning, and metaliterate learning elegantly addresses student use of AI, which seems to be the digital elephant in the room these days.
Bringing Metaliteracy to Fellow Faculty
So, there I was: an adjunct instructor at the front of a room filled with part-time, full-time, and tenured faculty, thinking that I had something ground-breaking to share. To say that I was nervous would be an understatement. However, I have often referred to myself, somewhat jokingly, as a shameless evangelist for metaliteracy, and now I had my chance!
First, I wanted to illustrate the benefits to students of teaching from a metaliteracy framework—namely, that students become more reflective and engaged learners. They work in collaboration with others to synthesize and produce new knowledge and contribute that knowledge responsibly as civically minded people engaged in building the world they want to live in. Second, I had taken great pains to construct my presentation as one that was discipline-agnostic; I had no idea who would be in the room, either in terms of their department or discipline or how they might feel about integrating technology such as AI or podcasts into their classes. It was critical that the presentation feel relevant to everyone so that no one felt it was a waste of time or a poor fit. As it turns out, I had a handful of librarians and faculty from the departments of English, accelerated learning, math, philosophy, and academic development, among others. I seized the opportunity given to show everyone that metaliteracy unites strands of thought and learning from across disciplines.
Figure 1: This is one of the early slides in the presentation, giving examples of how students can use interdisciplinary approaches to enrich and enhance understanding of the world around us.
I took the opportunity to explain how metaliteracy benefits their students by better preparing them for a world that is inundated with information and leaves them on their own to sort it out. I showed them what metaliteracy could do for their students—like history students analyzing historical misinformation about pandemics like the 1918 Influenza, building digital exhibits using primary sources, then collaborating with health science students on how to improve public health communication for future pandemics. Then, I showed my colleagues how to do it themselves: I provided basic guidelines for how to build metaliteracy into classroom assignments, from lab reports to literature reviews, using verbs like Find, Synthesize, and Reflect that map onto Bloom’s Taxonomy to keep it familiar.
Figure 1: A slide from my presentation on how to integrate metaliteracy goals into assignment types that educators already use.
Okay, But… Why Metaliteracy?
Metaliteracy requires you to take the knowledge you have found and evaluated and do something with it.Share it, remix it, collaborate with others and turn it into something new. It is not enough to have the information; use it to the benefit of your fellow humans. It feels naïve to say this, but I see the benefits of metaliteracy so clearly that it honestly never occurred to me that others might not. So, I was surprised when one of the participants challenged me to really differentiate metaliteracy from information literacy. The answer was, to me, so simple that I struggled for several minutes to articulate it. However, this was the moment when I found that my presentation truly landed with some of the faculty, as one of them turned around to the questioner and gave his version of what the difference between them was—he homed in on the metacognitive domain and suggested that was where the difference lies.
Advice for Presenters
For those who have read the articles, or the books, or have read this website from start to finish, and are thinking about bringing metaliteracy to their institutions, I offer the following advice: first, keep it broad and interdisciplinary. On the first slide after my title, I offered a reassurance that if you’re not sure where or whether metaliteracy fits your discipline, there would be examples from many fields of academia. Building a coalition of faculty across disciplines leads by example and gets people out of their ‘silos.’ Second, make it low effort: giving educators a broad overview of how to incorporate metaliteracy into the assignments they already use lessens the barrier to entry. Finally, if there are specific concerns that the community has, such as AI, address them directly.
Metaliteracy has so much potential to help not just students but all of us to integrate our hard-won knowledge and wisdom that we gain across situations and subjects, and to shape the world we want to live in together. Come and be my neighbor!
Misha Robinson (she/they) holds a Masters in Liberal Studies from Indiana University. She teaches in the English department at The Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC). Their teaching and research foci are English composition, metaliteracy, and neurodiversity and accessibility in education. She presently serves on the CCBC School of World Languages and Literature’s AI Committee, the Neurodiversity Unbound Committee, and on the Textbook Affordability Committee. When they are not teaching, Misha is an Emotional Support Human for a very spoiled Snowshoe cat named Selkie, collects fabric, and enjoys puzzles.
This post was written in its entirety by Misha Robinson, and utilized generative AI to check accessibility and provide editing feedback.
We are excited to introduce the AI & Metaliteracy OER Toolkit for Teaching and Learning, an openly licensed and adaptable resource that supports teaching and learning with generative AI through the framework of metaliteracy. The toolkit was developed by Empire State University professors Nicola Marae Allain, Tom Mackey, and Eugenio Solis de Ovando, in collaboration with Alena Rodick, Director of Learning Design and Solutions. This project was funded through a SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant (IITG).
As generative AI redefines how we engage with and produce information, metaliteracy provides an essential framework for thinking critically about these technologies and reflecting on how we use them. By emphasizing learner agency and responsible participation, metaliteracy encourages us to consider our roles and responsibilities in AI-mediated environments.
The toolkit can be accessed through OER Commons, downloaded as a PDF, or imported into a learning management system using either the Common Cartridge or Brightspace Cartridge. Visit our new Access the AI & Metaliteracy OER Toolkit page for the available options and instructions
Apply It, Adapt It, Share It
Designed as an open educational resource (OER), the toolkit can be applied, adapted, and shared to fit your needs. Apply the toolkit’s learning activities and modules, which are informed by the Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives; adapt the materials for your learners, teaching setting, or professional development needs; and share what you create.
Meet Our AI Avatars
To introduce the toolkit, Nicola Marae Allain, Tom Mackey, and Eugenio Solis de Ovando experimented with generative AI to create AI avatars of themselves. Eugenio led the AI production, while Nicola designed the environments in which the avatars appear. The videos reinforce the creative use of AI while raising questions about authorship, representation, and agency that are explored throughout the toolkit.
What’s in the Toolkit?
Five instructional modules explore metaliterate learner identity; ethical evaluation and production; collaborative and participatory engagement; development as a metaliterate learner; and next steps for continued learning. The modules include activities, assignments, reflections, rubrics, and supplemental resources, many adapted from our teaching in the Digital Media Arts program. Each module starts with a detailed description, suggestions for adapting the materials, and key takeaways informed by both the Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives and Bloom’s Taxonomy.
We hope you will use the toolkit, make it your own, and share how you are applying and adapting it with your students, colleagues, and learning communities. We look forward to hearing about your experiences at Metaliteracy.org.
We thank Empire State University colleagues Susan Oaks and Cindy Conaway for contributing course-based materials and SUNY Brockport colleagues Kathleen Olmstead and Logan Rath for their additional support of the IITG project.
When I set out to translate the Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives into Portuguese, I realized I had a unique opportunity: why not apply metaliterate thinking to the very tool reshaping our educational landscape? As part of my ongoing work on AI in education, I partnered with Gemini to generate the initial translation, not just to save time, but to test the boundaries of human-AI collaboration in academic localization. The goal was to evaluate the tool’s accuracy, identify where human critical thinking becomes indispensable, and explore how emerging technologies can support a framework as nuanced as Metaliteracy.
The workflow operated as a true collaboration: the initial translation was generated by the AI, followed by a process of critical review, linguistic refinement, and contextual adaptation led by me. At the end of the process, I asked the AI itself to generate an analytical report synthesizing the rationale behind the revisions I had made.
Below are two central examples that illustrate the dynamics of this human-in-the-loop revision:
1. Adapting “Metaliterate Mindset” and “Metaliterate Learner”
Initial AI Suggestion: “mentalidade de metaletramento” (a wordy nominal construction) and “aprendiz praticante do metaletramento” (a clunky phrasing).
Human Refinement: “mentalidade metaletrada” and “aprendiz metaletrado”.
Linguistic Rationale: Human intervention identified a more natural adjectival solution. In Portuguese, the noun letramento (literacy) derives into the adjective letrado (literate). Applying this same morphological rule to create metaletrada/o avoids heavy phrasing, significantly enhancing the document’s cohesion, fluency, and professional tone.
2. Transitioning from “O aprendizado metaliterativo abrange…” to “A aprendizagem metaletrada envolve/compreende…”
Initial AI Suggestion: “O aprendizado metaliterativo abrange quatro domínios…”
Human Refinement: “A aprendizagem metaletrada envolve, ou compreende, quatro domínios…”
Linguistic Rationale: This intervention ensured crucial pedagogical and semantic precision based on two factors:
Pedagogical Precision (Aprendizagem vs. Aprendizado): In Portuguese educational theory and academic literature, aprendizagem is the established technical term for describing the active cognitive process of knowledge construction. In contrast, aprendizado sounds more colloquial and focused strictly on an outcome.
Semantic Clarity: The AI’s initial choice of the word metaliterativo introduced semantic noise, as readers might mistakenly associate it with literature (literatura) or literary studies. The human selection of metaletrada firmly anchors the concept in its true root: letramento (literacy).
Conclusion: Ultimately, this project served as a practical demonstration of metaliteracy in action. While Artificial Intelligence provided a swift structural baseline, human critical thinking was indispensable for translating context, culture, and pedagogical intent. The refinement went beyond proofreading; it was an exercise in metacognition, critically evaluating machine-generated content to preserve academic rigor. As AI continues to reshape how we learn and communicate, this experience reinforces a fundamental truth of metaliteracy: technology is a powerful co-pilot, but the human mind remains the ultimate navigator. We are excited to share this framework adapted into Portuguese with the Lusophone community, empowering educators and learners to navigate our evolving information ecosystem together.
Helda Pinheiro holds a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of Brasília (UnB), Brazil. She currently conducts research focusing on AI in education, human-AI collaboration, and academic localization. Her doctoral research, defended in 2022, pioneered the study of the Metaliteracy framework in Brazil. She and two colleagues participated in the evaluation and updating of the Metaliteracy framework in 2025. Helda also translated the 2018 and 2025 versions of the Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives into Portuguese, aiming to empower educators and students throughout the Portuguese-speaking world.
The manuscript for the new edited book by Drs. Nicola Marae Allain and Tom Mackey, AI and Metaliteracy: Empowering Learners for the Generative Revolution, has officially moved into the production phase at Bloomsbury Publishing. Scheduled for publication in early 2027, the volume features a Foreword by Distinguished Librarian Emerita Trudi E. Jacobson and appears in Bloomsbury’s Innovations in Information Literacy series, for which she serves as series editor. As generative AI continues to transform teaching and learning, the collection offers timely perspectives on empowering learners to engage critically and ethically with these technologies.
The new book includes a framing chapter by Allain and Mackey entitled, The Aura of the Image: Embedding AI and Metaliteracy in the Digital Media Arts. The chapter integrates media theory and metaliteracy with adaptable case studies, including examples from Empire State University’s Digital Media Arts program, to explore how metaliteracy can support creative inquiry, reflective learning, and ethical engagement with artificial intelligence.
Bringing together an international community of scholars and practitioners, the collection demonstrates how AI and metaliteracy can foster learner agency, strengthen visual and digital literacy, promote digital citizenship and social justice, and advance ethical engagement across educational and information contexts. Additional chapters examine applications in STEM education, financial literacy, digital workspaces, the metaverse, and library and information settings, while also addressing issues of accessibility and inclusive participation. Collectively, these contributions illustrate the broad applicability of AI and metaliteracy across disciplines and professional environments. The case studies offer innovative approaches that can be adapted and transferred across disciplines, institutions, and learning environments.
In addition, Mackey contributes a chapter co-authored with colleagues from the Intercultural Perspectives on Information Literacy and Metaliteracy (IPILM) virtual exchange team. The chapter examines how information literacy and metaliteracy can be combined with AI education to foster intercultural understanding and global engagement in team-based learning environments.
As publication approaches, we look forward to sharing additional details about the volume and to continuing the conversation about the evolving relationship between artificial intelligence, metaliteracy, and learner empowerment in digital environments.
The first book introducing the metaliteracy framework, Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners (2014) by Thomas P. Mackey and Trudi E. Jacobson, has now been translated and published in Chinese, making the metaliteracy framework more accessible to students and educators across higher education and library communities in China. The translation was initiated and completed by Changhong Wu (Bella Wu), Information Literacy & AI Literacy Librarian, Subject Librarian for History, and Instructor at Northeast Normal University. This is the first of a series that will also include the Chinese translation of Metaliteracy in Practice (2016) and Metaliterate Learning for the Post-Truth World (2018).
Changhong Wu launched the project in 2023 and coordinated the collaboration among the authors, Northeast Normal University Press, and American Library Association Editions to secure publication permissions and guide the translation process.
The publication was highlighted in an IFLA news announcement that noted:
This project reflects Northeast Normal University Library’s ongoing efforts to align with international standards and foster a culture of critical, reflective, and participatory learning among students. We believe that the metaliteracy framework will empower Chinese learners to become not only discerning consumers but also responsible creators of information.
As noted in the IFLA newsletter, the Chinese edition has also been included in the New Education Library Series of Northeast Normal University and will serve as a course text for the credit-bearing class Social Media Literacyand Metaliteracy Capabilities.
This translation represents a significant milestone in the continued international development of metaliteracy as an established framework. It reflects the growing global interest in learner-centered approaches to metacognitive reflection, collaborative learning, and ethical participation in digital environments.
We are deeply appreciative of Bella Wu’s leadership, commitment, and scholarly work in making this translation possible and helping extend the reach of metaliteracy to new academic and professional communities.
Generative AI is reshaping how we design assignments, support student learning, and think about authorship and participation. The question is no longer whether to engage with AI in our teaching—but how to do so in ways that are ethical, reflective, and effective.
At the Conference on Instruction & Technology 2026, we invite you to register for a hands-on preconference workshop focused on applying the AI & Metaliteracy OER Toolkit in your own teaching.
Learn to Apply Ethical, Effective Learning with AI Using Metaliteracy 🗓 Tuesday, May 26, 2026 🕒 2:30–5:30 PM ET 📍 SAC 304, Stony Brook University
This interactive session will also mark the official launch of the AI & Metaliteracy OER Toolkit, developed through a SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant by a collaborative team at Empire State University. The project is led by Principal Investigators Nicola Marae Allain and Thomas P. Mackey, with Alena Rodick serving as Project Manager and Eugenio Solis de Ovando leading digital video and AI avatar development. It also includes collaboration with Kathleen Olmstead and Logan Roth, Ph.D., both at SUNY Brockport.
This is a working session designed for direct application. Participants will explore the AI & Metaliteracy OER Toolkit, identify sample assignments and rubrics to adapt for their own courses, and revise those materials for their specific teaching context. Participants will also have the option to use AI as part of this process, modeling reflective and ethical engagement in their design choices. We encourage you to bring a learning activity you would like to develop or revise for your instructional setting.
Participants will leave with practical strategies for integrating AI through the metaliteracy framework, along with adapted assignments they have developed for their own course. They will also gain access to a wide range of resources from the AI & Metaliteracy OER Toolkit, including customizable assignment templates, guidelines, rubrics, learning modules, and implementation strategies. The workshop will also provide opportunities to connect with colleagues engaged in this work, with the potential to continue sharing ideas beyond the session.
AI is not just a new tool—it is reshaping how learners engage with information, create content, and participate in knowledge production. This workshop focuses on how metaliteracy can guide that work in practice, supporting learners as reflective, responsible, and active contributors in AI-mediated environments.
This work also reflects a broader commitment to open and collaborative dialogue about teaching and learning with AI, and we look forward to sharing additional updates as the toolkit becomes more widely available.
The session will be led by Dr. Nicola Marae Allain, Dr. Thomas P. Mackey, and Dr. Eugenio Solis de Ovando.
Please bring your own device and come ready to work with your own course materials.
The interactive workshop Advancing OER Through Metaliteracy and AI Integration, presented by Prof. Tom Mackey of Empire State University, explored the application of metaliteracy and artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the design of Open Educational Resources (OER). This online session was organized by Prof. Dorothy Laubscher, UNESCO Chair at North-West University (NWU) in South Africa, and was featured as part of the NWU OER Fellows and the SADiLaR Digital Humanities OER Champions Project.
The workshop introduced key concepts from metaliteracy and emphasized the updated Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives to address the challenges and opportunities of AI for teaching and learning. Participants engaged in several interactive surveys and two workshop activities that emphasized ethical, creative, and collaborative applications of AI in open learning environments. The session illustrated how careful planning and inclusive engagement reinforce the learning experience through the development of sustainable OER.
Real-world examples from the Digital Media Arts program at Empire State University illustrated how metaliteracy supports self-directed and multimodal learning in AI-driven environments.
The video recording from the session is now available:
Video recording of OER + Metaliteracy + AI Workshop
Watch the video to learn how to integrate AI and metaliteracy to support effective OER development. Try the workshop activities or adapt them to your OER projects. We invite you to share the outcome of your work via this blog, and we’ll gladly support you in doing so. If you have any questions, let us know!
At the Faculty360.org 2025 Summit, hosted virtually by Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates, Tom Mackey delivered a presentation titled “Developing Metaliterate Learners for Generative AI.” The summit theme, Beyond the AI Hype: Faculty Futures in a Changing World, provided the context for a session that introduced metaliteracy as a holistic pedagogical framework for teaching and learning with generative AI. The presentation examined how the model supports critical thinking, knowledge production, and collaborative learning in AI environments.
The talk outlined the key elements of the metaliteracy framework and illustrated how its learner domains, roles, and characteristics guide effective engagement with generative AI. The 2025 revision of the Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives was discussed as a transferable resource for educators seeking to support ethical, reflective, and empowered engagement with AI across disciplines.
Several examples of learning activities from the Digital Media Arts program at Empire State University illustrated how the integration of AI and metaliteracy can foster creativity, critical reflection, and informed decision-making. The session also introduced new versions of the metaliteracy diagrams, offering updated visualizations that show how the framework enhances multiple modality learning in a wide range of educational settings.
The slide deck from this presentation is now available and can be accessed below.
If you would like to contribute your own take on these ideas, particularly as they relate to the metaliteracy framework and the updated Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives, we would be glad to work with you on a guest blog post.
As part of the SDL (Self-Directed Learning) Collaborative Corner on Multimodal Learning and Open Educational Resources (OER) at North-West University, Prof. Tom Mackey, Empire State University, presented an interactive session on Reimagining Course Design with AI: Practical Strategies for Global Learning. The virtual event brought together educators and researchers to explore innovative ways of redesigning courses with artificial intelligence (AI) to support OER and multimodal learning.
The presentation drew on examples from the Digital Media Arts program at Empire State University, highlighting practical strategies from courses such as Digital Storytelling, Information Design, and Ethics of Digital Art & Design. In doing so, it connected the application of AI in course design with a metaliteracy perspective, underscoring the importance of reflective, ethical, and collaborative learning.
Explore the Session
The full session recording is now available, offering an in-depth look at the key themes and interactive discussions (click on the image):
Key Takeaways
Revise course content and learning activities with AI to expand opportunities for reflection, collaboration, and creativity.
Create original images with AI to enhance open resources and support multimodal learning experiences.
Develop transparent and ethical AI use policies to ensure responsible student engagement with emerging tools.
Design rubrics for AI-assisted and multimodal projects to provide clear, equitable assessment frameworks.
These approaches demonstrate how AI can be integrated as an effective tool across disciplines and learning environments. Educators are encouraged to consider how such strategies can be adapted to their own teaching practices, fostering inclusive, innovative, and globally connected learning opportunities.
For a closer view of the concepts and examples shared, the slide deck provides a visual overview of the session. Respond to the workshop prompt on slide 26 to reimagine your own learning activity with AI:
This presentation contributes to the ongoing dialogue about the role of AI in education and its potential to empower learners and educators in designing flexible, reflective, and future-ready courses. It offers a metaliteracy perspective to further emphasize the importance of ethical engagement, critical reflection, and collaborative learning in applying AI to course design.
If you have ideas or case studies about integrating AI and metaliteracy into your own course design, we invite you to reach out. We would be glad to feature your approaches as a guest post on the Metaliteracy blog and share your insights with our global community.
Metaliteracy.org 