Learning styles and learning theories
People absorb information in different ways - for example you may prefer to read instructions, whilst other people may prefer to listen to a podcast and others would want to watch a visual demonstration. It's also important to consider different cultural backgrounds - for example students from some backgrounds may feel it is disrespectful to interrupt the trainer by asking questions. Other students may come from backgrounds where they are expected to quote large chunks of text verbatim, rather than to synthesize and analyze a range of different academic arguments. IL practitioners have to be aware of all these different variations of learning styles.
Different theories underpin teaching methods, and an IL practitioner needs to be aware of these and how they can help delivery of workshops and the practitioner's own understanding of student behaviours.
There are several models of Information Literacy (IL) some of the most well known are:
American Library Association (ALA) Information Literacy Standards
ACRL Competency standards ACRL is the Association of College and Research Libraries division of the ALA
Australian and New Zealand Information Literacy Framework (ANZILL)
Six Frames for Information Literacy Education
Why do we need definitions and frameworks?
They help us benchmark our services and future services against internationally recognized standards
SCONUL is the Society of College, National and University Libraries, and promotes excellence throught Libraries in the HE sector
ANCIL, A New Curriculm for Information Literacy is a research project with exciting outputs for librarians, teachers, and educationalists.
It demonstrates the importance of both information literacy and digital literacy, and how we can work together to embed these to enhance student and researcher exeperience and lifelong development.
"ANCIL is the product of a two-phase research fellowship funded by the Arcadia Programme at Cambridge University Library. The original project research by Jane Secker & Emma Coonan (May-July 2011) produced A New Curriculum for Information Literacy, a structured and holistic framework for meeting the information literacy needs of undergraduates entering higher education over the next five years. A second phase researched by Helen Webster and Katy Wrathall (October-December 2011) looked at Strategies for Implementing the New Curriculum at a number of UK higher education institutions, including Cambridge."
Text from the ANCIL site
