I’m on my way back from running an IL workshop (entitled Developing 21st century graduates: thinking critically through Information Literacy) at UWIC in Cardiff. I had a really enjoyable morning, working with a mixed group of ~32 academic, library and teaching support staff. We started off thinking about perceptions of IL and looking at some of the different theories and definitions, considering IL as an integral part of the learning process. I like the definition of learning in Learning Reconsidered as it chimes very closely with my definition of IL as a combination of attitudes and behaviours (education) as well as skills and competencies (training). We also talked about the kind of things which impact on an individual’s information literacy, individual experiences, environmental influences and IT aspects and considered how they relate to my IL Landscape map.
One of the debates was around whether IL should be integrated into the curriculum, delivered as a separate module or some combination of the two. I’ve always believed in integration, though it can be difficult to scale across a whole institution and maybe a mixed model might be more practical – with the skills element being more generic and linked to a context specific element.
You can find some of the slides from the workshop here (I’ve taken out the activities and workshop specific ones).

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