From Information Literacy to Academic Literacy
Martin Scarrott
St Mary's College,
UK
Paper: 1/2 hour
Empowerment, Enhancement, Enrichment
This paper will describe how a credit bearing information literacy module was implemented at St Mary's College Strawberry Hill. The module integrates information literacy with other study skills for level one students on an English degree programme. This conflation of information literacy with the traditional study skills has been called academic literacy. We haven't agreed upon a definition of this concept and there is some debate between librarians and academics about it. However, our academic literacy is more than just an integrated set of skills, it is a way of learning that will enable students to construct there own knowledge in a reflective way.
A model of the different stages of IL provision will be presented. The paper will then describe how at St Mary's we went from a situation (in summer 2001) where the only information literacy provision was basic induction to having a credit bearing module validated. It will outline some of the problems faced with reference to some of the literature and offer guidance to and experience sharing with other practitioners. A pilot programme was delivered in 2002 using volunteers. The evaluation of this informed the design of the Academic Literacy module which will be delivered in semester 2 2003. The experience of delivering the module will be described with particular emphasis on the assessment methods. During the discussion, it is hoped that there will be a debate about the validity of the approach used and about the term "academic literacy". How should we define this and is it an appropriate term to use? Is academic literacy a skill?
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