ACRL-Virtual Worlds Interest Group Program, November 17, 2013

 

 

"European Conference on Information Literacy, Oct 22-25, 2013"

Conference Report

 

presented by:

Esther Grassian, Adjunct Lecturer, UCLA Information Studies Department

&

Sheila Webber, Senior Lecturer, School of Information, Sheffield University, UK.

 For this program, Esther and Sheila presented their reports on the ECIL conference which they attended in Istanbul, Turkey at the end of October.

 

 Esther began began by providing information on the conference. There were over 350 participants from 59 countries.  Keynotes were given by Paul Zurkowski (the man who coined the phrase "information literacy") and Christine Bruce from Queensland University of Technology.

 

  

 

 Shiela provided details of the programs she attended.  She pointed out that participation from so many parts of th world, the variety of perspectives and the participation of people key to the development of IL showed the fields energy, maturity and relevance.

 

 

Esther finished by presenting more indepth info about several of the programs she had attended. These included the Keynote by Paul Zurkowski on Universal Information Literacy.

  

 

Andrew Walsh's presentation on "Game-Based learning for information literacy offered some suggestions and examples of how instructors can utilize games and play in IL instruction.

 

 

 

Esther also provided an overview of the workshop she did at the conference.  We hope to get her to provide more detailed information about this at a future ACRL-VWIG program.

 

 

Thanks to everyone who attended.  Both Esther and Sheila made their information available either via notecard or online.  Here's the link for Esther's slides: 

https://sites.google.com/site/esthergrassian/home/ecil-2013

 

 

 

ACRL-Virtual Worlds Interest Group Program, October 27, 2013

 

"MOOCS and Constructivist Information Literacy"

Valerie Hill, Texas Womens University; Michelle Keba, Nova Southeastern University;

Ilene Frank, University of the People

Val, Michelle, and Ilene gave a fantastic presentation on MOOCS and Information Literacy and librarianship.

Michelle Keba (left),  Ilene Pratt (center), Valerie Hill (right)

Michelle provided a brief definition of MOOCS and outlined their development and history.  She went over the different types of MOOCs and talked about a couple of the providers such as Coursera, and edX.

Ilene went over the in's and out's of Copyright and MOOCS. Included was information on who has access to the materials and the course as well as what kinds of resources and uses are permitted.

Valerie explored what MOOCS have to offer and why libraries should be interested in them.  She presented examples of MOOCs that had virtual world components, such as the Anne Frank MOOC from Fall 2012.  In this MOOC, educators meetings were held, and assignments for participants, were presented inside Second Life.  Participants felt that this virtual worlds component made the MOOC experience a more powerful, immersive experience and a better tool for learning.

Finally, she provided examples and details of how librarians are exploring and participating in MOOCs.  These include bringing their expertise on doing content curation and selecting appropriate, scholarly resources for use in MOOCs.   The program was very well attended and a lively discussion followed.