Some notes on a Fictional Information Literacy Program (IL) for a University

Educative Model: it should be constructivist, of course, and I think one must think always about it as a bended learning IL program, because it comprises:

• Physical activities in classrooms with IL instructors on the use of information resources.
• Virtual tutorials or digital resources with self assessment tests which could indicate advance in learning from students

Target groups: the Whole University Community, because Information Literacy is all about inclusion, not exclusion, every person on a educative institution get benefits from a Information Literacy Program, and at the same time the organization is enriched with this Information Literate community.

• Students:

– Contributions: they help us to improve the IL Program after testing it on the first groups, and every group of students after coursing it also help us on this because fill on the surveys or indirectly because of other measurement systems we use to evaluate and then improve the Program, this evaluation-improvement must be a continous process.
– Resistance: they could find it boring, as it is YET another lecture, AND too related with librarians, always the “stereotype problem”

• Teachers:

– Contributions: good allies, help identify gaps, relate IL material to their course content.
– Resistance: digital and/or information illiteracy, they could not recognize the importance of information literacy, and think there’s not time for this sort of activity in their courses, they could even see this initiative as an intrusion to their courses. Also, if they accept, we risk them to ask us to oversimplify it during time, so at the end we will be where we started.

• Other Staff:

– Contributions: management will provide resources, technical staff will provide technical support, and some low-management staff will feel like “finally included” in a course intended for their development, and their feedback could be motivating force.
– Resistance: technical support department could not be very supportive, other staff could be digital and/or information illiterate, or not recognize importance of information literacy.

• Information Specialists and/or traditional librarians:

– Contributions: knowledge on traditional information literacy instruction, updating on the resources available on the library, helping to improve the IL Program.
– Resistance: they could feel threatened by possible changes, or be digital illiterates.

Measurement of fulfillment of goals: try to use everything at your disposal to achieve an objective evaluation of the IL Program, keep in mind that evaluation can lead you always towards improvement.

• Surveys
• Pre and post assessments
• Assessment tests at the end of each module for the digital content
• Teacher and student feedback
• Interviews
• Collect data about students performance before and after the implementation of the Program