ACRL VWIG Program March 16, 2014

"Discussion of the ACRL Draft Framework for
Information Literacy Standards in Higher Education"

March 16, 2014

Esther Grassian  Information Literacy Consultant & Distinguished Librarian (UCLA)

 

Esther Grassian (Alexandria Knight in SL) moderated and presented at this program to get feedback on the newly proposed ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education Standards.  The goal was to see what librarians and educators thought of part 1 of the draft, and for the VWIG to provide feedback to ACRL based on the comments and feedback of attendees.

Esther provided a history and review of the existing Information Literacy standards which were issued by ACRL in 2000 as the Competency Standards for Higher Education.  She pointed out that there was a lot of initial resistance to using the Information literacy as opposed to Bibliographic instruction.  It's generally accepted that Information Literacy includes and expands on the activities that make up Bibliographic Instruction. These skills focus on cognitive skills, are generic and are

The new draft standards focus on 2 concepts:  "Metaliteracy"  & "Threshold Concepts".  It also attempts to include dispositions or an affective component to balance out the cognitive approach of the existing standards. The draft propose 4 generic Information Literacy Threshold concepts:

-Format as Process

-Authority is constructed & contextual

-Information as a commodity

-primary sources & disciplinarity

The consensus of the group was that they favored the inclusion of the "disposition" affective aspects of learning in the new standards.  There was however, much confusion over thresholds and we felt it needed further elaboration and discussion.  Also we felt the draft should provide more guidance on how to deal with subjects that cross disciplines.    In fact, there were questions raised about whether or not the proposed threshold concepts really affected what librarians have to do.  It was agreed that librarians are faced with teaching Information Literacy in a culture that focuses more on content production and disposable media.

 

The concensus of the group was that a complete revision of the existing Information Literacy Standards was a good idea.  It was hoped that new standards would include much of the old standards as a basic concepts section.  Suggestions to be forwarded to ACRL include; using simpler language with less jargon; removing the theoretical parts from the body of the draft and including it as a separate section; expanding the glossary; and offering examples of self-reflection and assessment.

Esther's slide show and bibliography are available here:

Slide show

Bibliography