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In "The Library of Babel," Jorge Luis Borges described a vast library with no circumference and no center, a library exhilarating in its infinite scope but where knowledge is always frustratingly out of reach. He seemed to be describing the information landscape as today’s students experience it. How can we help students learn how to navigate their way through the Library of Babel? What role does finding, evaluating, and using sources play in the major? How do skills and dispositions students acquire by engaging in inquiry contribute to lifelong learning and engaged citizenship? In this workshop [at Illinois Wesleyan University in January 2012] faculty will be invited to consider what students need to become information literate and will work on embedding critical information literacy into courses and programs.
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Write down a topic or a research questionthat one of your students might write about in
one of your courses.
Jennie Nelson, 1994Interviewed 238 students
• 75% - compile information approach
• 10% - premature thesis• 10% - scrabble game• 5% - recursive approach
Project Information Literacy (8,000+ students, 25 institutions)• Students have trouble getting started and choosing among options; tend to
use strategies learned early (HS or 1st year); work at narrowing the range of choices because they face too many.
Citation Project (160 first year students, 18 institutions)• students do not understand their sources; instead of summary use
patchwriting; tend to assemble papers from quotes; most quotes are lifted from the first page.
Stanford Study of Writing (longitudinal study of Stanford undergrads)• Students are deeply engaged in writing in everyday life and have a strong
sense of audience; write far more than they did in 1980. When “writing to do something” they are better writers.
search is embedded in social processes and relationships
“[we] should highlight, in addition to the tools and skills metaphor, the importance of learning about context and content in understanding how information ‘works’ . . . we need to recognize that information ‘access’ is not just about information consumerism, but also about individuals and groups of people actively shaping the world.
Christine Pawley
Liberal learning
Learning a discipline
Learning within a course
What are your goals? Will you scaffold assignments? Will you provide opportunities to practice?Are there ways to foster a sense of community?
How can you encourage writing goals:• Cognitive sophistication • Students’ ownership of their own voice • Intellectual presence
How will this learning experience contribute to the major? To life-long learning?
Photo credits Biblioteca Jose Vasconcelos by CINKerTurn page by andy.brandon50Book stack by ginnerobotNew York Times on the New Art of Flickr by Thomas HawkEvidence based change by Bernardo GuzmanRubik’s cube redux by M.Christian Cenote from waterlevel by Mike MileyLab bench by Spencer9Ideas (desk) by Alfred Hermida Texture by Friendbrook Medows
Works citedLiving Simply Teaching Inquiry Zotero group
Barbara Fister – fister @ gustavus dot edu
