QCA and functional skills

A colleague (thanks Sara) alerted me to this Diploma on Functional Skills from the QCA. It covers “practical skills in English, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Mathematics, that allow individuals to work confidently, effectively and independently in life.” Looking through the standards, they use a lot of info lit type terminology – things like “finding, selecting, developing, communicating information” and “use discrimination in selecting information that matches requirements from a variety of sources and evaluate fitness for purpose” It will be interesting to follow this up a little more.

Oystercatchers from Darryl in WA

http://www.qca.org.uk/qca_6062.aspx

Perceptions of Information Literacy in the transition to Higher Education

This is it! The outcome of my National Teaching Fellowship Research!
It is almost 3 years since I started my National Teaching Fellowship and by the end of this month I have to send a brief report to the HEA to justify how I have spent their money. I thought it was time, therefore, to make some of the results of my research public. A copy of my project report Perceptions of Information Literacy in the transition to Higher Education is now available in the Newcastle Institutional Repository. It’s very personal journey – a mixture of research results, practical suggestions for my own library and my own personal reflections and ideas. If you find any of it of interest, I’d love to hear from you.

I had a pic of me here but I think Pippin is prettier!

http://eprints.ncl.ac.uk/…deposit_id=6052

Learning habits and IL

Last week I gave a talk at Leeds Met University based around the topic of learning habits and information literacy. One of the case studies I mentioned generated a bit of interest so I thought it was worth mentioning here. I’ve been working with a couple of academic staff on ways to measure the impact of IL interventions and we have come up with an IL assessment criteria sheet. We’re using it to “score” evidence of IL in student work at the start and end of the first year. We used it with a group of students this week – alongside the feedback from the lecturer about the content of their work, they received a feedback sheet from me about various IL elements. I was pleased with how well this went, the students took it quite seriously and asked a lot of questions about how to improve their score. Time will tell whether future assessments demonstrate a difference, but giving feedback in this way certainly seemed to raise awareness amongst the students.


Another view of Hadrian’s Wall