The number of courses currently using the CourseInfo system is 51 - another large increase in a month. I'm very happy to see how well CourseInfo has blended into the way faculty and students interact with each other through this technology. Every day as I walk through the library, I see students using it to access course documents and to study. Just as the World Wide Web turned the Internet into a new world that everyone knew something about, CourseInfo is becoming a daily part of our culture at Jefferson.
In the November/December issue of Educause Review, Andy Carvin discusses important issues in technology. His article, "More than just Access: Fitting Literacy and Content into the Digital Divide Equation" touched on several points I would like to share with you. The Scott Memorial Library and Education Services has always worked with individual instructors and many departments teaching what we used to call "informatics" or "information literacy." Though these were "buzzwords," their meaning was relatively obscure and not really linked to the way people actually access and use information resources.
Carvin (p. 40) presents six categories of literacy that I think are much easier to understand.
- Basic Literacy: Can I read and write?
- Functional Literacy: Can I put my reading and writing skills to daily use?
- Occupational Literacy: Do I know the basics of working in a business (editor: healthcare) environment?
- Technological Literacy: Can I use common IT tools effectively?
- Information Literacy: Can I discern the quality of content?
- Adaptive Literacy: Can I develop new skills along the way?
Breaking down the individual "literacies" that make up what we called informatics make these skills easier to understand and easier to teach to as well. Our increasing need to have quality information well organized is something librarians have always been trained for. But on our campus, librarians rarely teach entire courses, and are only involved in the few courses faculty invite them to be a part of. How can we ensure our students are acquiring these skills to be successful in their careers?
CourseInfo allows you as faculty to make materials you find worthy of student attention easily available. Helping them identify what you consider "quality" material and recognizing sources that distribute quality materials addresses information literacy. Accessing the material online addresses another literacy, technological literacy. By including exercises in your courses that require students to critically evaluate journal articles, and having them reflect on how that knowledge can be incorporated into real-world practice touches on the remaining literacies. It encourages students to get into the habit of:
- reviewing the literature
- identifying documents and distribution sources that provide quality information
- evaluating how that information can be put into practice leading to new knowledge and skills.
The Library staff and Education Services invite you to contact us to discuss these issues, and we would like to work with you to include them in your courses. Together we can create learning activities that help students master these skills and help foster both the desire and the ability to be life-long learners. If you would like to read the entire article by Carvin, a link to it is below. I look forward to hearing your comments on how to work these literacy skills into your course.
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