New Information Literacy Definition

Information Literacy

Earlier this year, the CILIP Information Literacy Group updated the original 2004 definition of information literacy. Teaching and fostering information literacy is something information professionals (e.g. librarians) and teachers collaborate on.

To be information literate means having a range of skills involved in seeking, evaluating, using and presenting information and doing this ethically. More and more it involves digital literacy (e.g. using the internet and digital environments to find information) and is relevant not only to the academic world but also the workplace and in everyday life. It is key to lifelong and independent learning.

To see the definition (less than 4 sides of A4), see the document here.

Some of the skills involved in information literacy are:

• Critical thinking and problem solving.
• Questioning techniques
• Evaluating information including identifying fake news
• Using information/ images ethically (copyright).
• Understanding the limitation of online reviews and information
• Plagiarism and referencing
• Identidying and understanding bias.
• Identifying what information you need before you look and being able to express this in the right way for the tool you use to search for it.
• Understanding where the best place/source is to get the information you require.
• Identifying the best resources for the information required.
• Presenting information in the best way.

Staff in the LRC are keen to help students and staff develop the skills to help them handle information both in the academic setting and also as a life skill for everyday life and in their future employment.

Image used under Creative Commons Licence CC0
 http://www.tes.com.c.timeshigheredprod.ent.platform.sh/news/smart-glasses-teachers-help-pupils-learn

Chester's first year at the Learning Resource Centre

This week’s blog is an interview with everyone’s favourite LRC puffin…Chester!

So Chester, to start why not introduce yourself…

Hi all. I’m really glad to finally be able to talk to you all and introduce myself. My name’s Chester and you’ll usually find me somewhere in the LRC, generally with my beak in a book. If you haven’t met me yet you can ask to see me at the main desk! 

How do you like the LRC?

I love my home here! I’ve been learning to use the LRC all year and I love how many resources I can access. I’ve learnt how to use the catalogues so I can always find what I want and if not the staff are always really helpful.

What’s your favourite area of the LRC?

My favourite place is the fiction area, it’s really cosy and lots of people sit there to read their favourite books. I also like the silent study area though because nobody talks in there.

My Harry Potter "shelfie"

What are your interests?

I like the seaside, reading and most of all fish, especially herring!

What do you think of the rules in the LRC?

I sometimes wish I could eat my lunch in the LRC but I understand that the students don’t want the place to smell of fish whilst they’re studying.

Not everyone is as fond as
my tuna fish lattes as I am!

What has been your favourite event this year?

I liked Star Wars day. It was so much fun and everyone worked so hard. I also really enjoyed dressing up and I got to be a Jedi knight and Darth Chester! Also did you know that Porgs were based on puffins?

What side do you choose the light or the dark?

Tell us a fact about the LRC that you think many people might not know?

The LRC has a returns box just outside the main door, this way you don’t need to return items to the desk. I have even used it myself!

Me using the returns box!

What would your advice be to students coming back/starting next academic year?

Come and explore the LRC early. Find where your books are, look at the PC rooms and just enjoy the space. It’s one of the best resources available in the college.

I love all the different study areas that the LRC has to offer.

Learning Styles - do they matter?

Learning Styles

For a long time, it has been accepted thinking that everyone has a preferred learning style (as originally described by Kolb). According to the Skills you Need website, there are 8 styles (but different models have different numbers of learning styles):

The linguistic learner

The naturalist

The musical or rhythmic learner

The kinesthetic learner

The visual and spatial learner

The logical or mathematical learner

The interpersonal learner

The intrapersonal learner

You can do a simple quiz here to help you identify which style(s) you prefer and the Skills you Need website outlines definitions for the different learners.

Theory of Learning Styles challenged.

However, more recently this accepted theory has been challenged. It is now considered by many to be a "neuromyth". An article published on the BBC last week called Exams 2018: The 'myth' of the visual learner outlines the latest research that matching teaching to a student's preferred learning style doesn't necessarily help them learn any better. If you are taught in the way you prefer, then you may think you've learned better but in fact this may not have any affect on your ability or your resulting marks in an assessment. Research suggests that other factors have an influence on this such as what subject it is or whether we are new to a subject or not.

Carol Lethaby's article "Four reasons to avoid learning styles - and one alternative" on the British Council website summarises the research and recommends helping learners make connections with what they already know.

Photo: CC0 from https://pixabay.com/en/learn-word-scrabble-letters-wooden-1820039/

Learning styles and revision

Some references to the research which is summarised in these articles would be useful so that the argument for both sides could be followed up. There isn't the time to look further in to this here, but some advice from the BBC article for revision may be more useful to finish with:

• Test yourself
• Spread study over time
• Make you revision varied - mixing up problem types and topics. 

Just reading through notes is unlikely to be the most effective way to revise.

Presenting numerical information and misleading graphs

Presenting numerical information/ data.

Information can be presented in many ways and it is a skill to decide which is the best way to do this depending on its purpose. Directions may be best shown on a map, what someone looks like is best shown in a photo (than a written description) and the different parts of the heart, for example are probably best shown in a diagram. Numbers or statistical data are often best shown in graph format.

Numbers on their own can be difficult to interpret and so don't obviously mean something to the reader. See below for a table showing the number of visits we had in the LRC this year so far.

	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Totals
Totals	14666	16333	20823	11721	18611	13963	17732	10377	16719	140945

On their own the numbers mean little especially if you don't know the College. If you know the College, you may decide that from these figures we have a lot of visitors.

However, if I present this information as a graph like this, you can more obviously see the ups and downs throughout the year.

The information means even more if it is then compared with last year. It becomes more obvious to see that we have been busier in some months but quieter than last year in other months. This can be down to when holidays fall. It is then more useful to look at the total figures to see that this year we have been busier overall than last year. (140945 this year compared with 135101 last year for the months September to May only).

Misleading Graphs

Lots could be written about the usefulness of statistics and graphs and how they can be used to argue anything (that's a blog post for another day!), but have you thought about how the layout of a graph can be helpful or not so helpful. If I include the totals in the graph at the end, the scaling is less helpful and the difference in the bars for each year disappears.

Have a look at this quiz by the BBC on misleading graphs. Can you see what is wrong with how the information is presented and how this can skew how the information is read and understood.

The skill is to be aware of this, not only when presenting information, but also when looking at statistics and graphs as part of research. Check the facts and also check how this has been presented. Would it show a different picture if presented in a different way?

With our figures we have assumed that the people counter has been working properly and that the figures are as near as correct as they can be. Also the figures themselves are just quantitative data and just show numbers/ amounts. We have no information from this on what people do in the LRC, how long they stay, what they do and whether they like it. We have to collect that another way - usually through comments and interviews. This is known as qualitative data. Last week's blog post contained some of this from comments made in the UCP student survey, for example.