Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

In case you are interested, I came across it whilst searching for articles from this other PhD study of IL integration in New Zealand higher education

Pam McKinney here live blogging the final keynote from the LILAC conference featuring Professor  Alison Littlejohn, Dean of learning and teaching in the faculty of social sciences at the University of Glasgow.  Allison began by outlining the neo-liberalisation of the higher education sector, positioning students as consumers and the rise in importance of the national student survey.  Allison was involved with a project called “learning literacies in the digital age” which outlined the need for learning to focus on processes and literacies, not content. Allison discussed the power of MOOCs to disrupt education, and to give people the opportunity to learn in a different way, using digital technologies. 

In  the most recent installment of our #ReferenceStrategy webinar series, four librarians shared strategies they've used to build successful faculty engagement programs on their campuses. Rebecca Donlan outlined a program Florida Gulf Coast University created to enhance their culture of inquiry "from composition to capstone." Horry Georgetown Technical College's Nicole Romyak and Chris Williams explained concrete examples of initiatives they've taken to reach out to faculty on their campus and the results such efforts have yielded. Jennifer Hill from Excelsior College outlined how her institution's course development teams have benefitted faculty, librarians, and students.

I’ve learned many things over my over 40 years as a librarian. That said, we don’t, as professionals, sufficiently embed learning at the core of our practice.

The Internet has changed contemporary workplace skills, resulting in a need for proficiency with specific digital, online and web-based technologies within the fields of medicine, dentistry and public health. Although younger students, generally under 30 years of age, may appear inherently comfortable with the use of technology-intensive environments and digital or online search methods, competence in information literacy among these students may be lacking.
METHODS:
This project involved the design and assessment of a research-based assignment to help first-year, graduate-level health science students to develop and integrate information literacy skills with clinical relevance.
RESULTS:
One cohort of dental students (n = 78) was evaluated for this project and the results demonstrate that although all students were able to provide the correct response from the content-specific, or technology-independent, portion of the assignment, more than half (54%) were unable to demonstrate competence with a web-based, technology-dependent section of this assignment. No correlation was found between any demographic variable measured (gender, age, or race).
CONCLUSION:
More evidence is emerging that demonstrates the need for developing curricula that integrates new knowledge and current evidence-based practices and technologies, traditionally isolated from graduate and health-care curricula, that can enhance biomedical and clinical training for students. This study provides evidence, critical for the evaluation of new practices, which can promote and facilitate the integration of information literacy into the curriculum.

There’s always been a gap between 

...those who know how to use information resources and those who don’t.  Students who knew the ways to leverage a library for research could consistently do better research than those who couldn’t.  That's not a surprise.  


But this gap is turning into a vast chasm of difference.  

Students who know how to use online resources efficiently and effectively will be able to massively outperform students who don’t.  

This is a qualitative change from the days of paper-based libraries and information resources.  Then, doing research was largely limited to what you could reach out and touch by hand.  Now, it’s possible for students to do research on information that scattered across the entire planet; and they’re not limited just to finding text in documents, but can find original archival images, movies, code fragments, transcripts of trials, books, magazines, and sounds.