1. Mary Antonesa
Senior Librarian for Learning and Research Information Services
NUI Maynooth

2.  Background to the study
 Purpose of Survey
 Method
 Demographics
 Findings
 Analysis
 Further studies

3. For senior managers:
 increased retention;
 lower unit cost per graduate
For students:
 Enhanced grades;
 Higher completion rates

4. For academics, information literate students
are likely to require:
 Less time to mark assignments;
 Higher grades for students
For librarians,
 Better resourced information centres;
 Higher status from enhanced role in design
and delivery of HE curriculum.

5.  Big challenge
 Well documented
 “ Situated competencies”
 How do you measure any learning?

6.  Nature, value and impact of IL intervention as
seen by our academic colleagues nationally
 Focused on UG teaching in one Semester in
2011/2012
 Not measuring IL for:
◦ Postgraduates
◦ Second Semester
◦ One shot courses/non timetabled IL activities

7.  Took place in March 2012
 Surveymonkey software
 Co-ordinated approach to questions by
CONUL ACIL and then created at DCU
 Link was emailed by Subject Librarians to
relevant academics with a deadline for
completion
 CONUL ACIL came together for analysis of
findings
 Reported findings back to CONUL and within
our institutions

8. The survey was completed by 180 academic
staff from across a wide range of disciplines
and specifically targeted key academics
actively working with the library on semester
one undergraduate programmes

9. CONUL Institutions Response Percent Response Count
Dublin City University 15.6%
28
Dublin Institute of Technology 20.6% 37
National University of Ireland,
Galway
10.6% 19
National University of Ireland ,
Maynooth
8.3% 15
Royal College of Surgeons In
Ireland
4.4% 8
Trinity College Dublin 9.4% 17
University College Cork 4.4% 8
University College Dublin 10.0% 18
University of Limerick 16.7% 30
Total: 180

10. Discipline Response Percent Response Count (180)
Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine
3.3% 6
Architecture 3.9% 7
Arts/Humanities 12.8% 23
Biological/Medical/Health Sciences 27.2% 49
Built Environment 5.0% 9
Business/Commerce 7.2% 13
Computer Sciences 2.2% 4
Earth, Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences 1.7% 3
Engineering 14.4% 26
Law 6.7% 12
Physical Sciences and Mathematics 2.2% 4
Social Sciences 13.3% 24

11.  IL concept impacts on certain aspects of
learning e.g.
◦ Quality of bibliography and reference list
◦ Breadth of students’ sources for reading
◦ Understanding of key concepts/theories
◦ Student engagement with content and material

12.  “Makes a huge contribution to the module; brings students into the
library (our sessions are in the library seminar room), they meet
library staff whom they can later approach; the students get a real
appreciation of the rich resources which our university library holds
(including electronic resources) and are enthused, resulting in many
cases in postgraduate study plans”
 Lots of positive feedback like this!

13.  Academic colleagues really value librarian
partnerships eg:
◦ We bring sources of expertise outside of lecturer’s
expertise
◦ Great partnerships already exist (For 85% of
respondents this was not first intervention)
◦ In some cases academics said that library staff
input leads to improved grades

14.  Discipline matters:
◦ Arts/Humanities and Architecture reported more lecture
formats while the Sciences reported more advice formats
◦ Problem based learning interventions were rare in all
disciplines except in Physical Sciences where 25%
reported this input
◦ Business/Commerce and Physical Sciences (66.7% and
75% respectively) reported that they worked with library
to help students understand citing and referencing
◦ 80% Agriculture Science and Veterinary Medicine and
75% in Computer Science reported working with library
staff because of poor quality of information sources
used by students and poor referencing skills

15.  More online information resources to harness
IL in teaching and learning
 Sample IL tasks for academic’s own teaching
 Track the impact of IL interventions over a
timeframe

16.  “Makes a huge contribution to the module; brings students into the
library (our sessions are in the library seminar room), they meet
library staff whom they can later approach; the students get a real
appreciation of the rich resources which our university library holds
(including electronic resources) and are enthused, resulting in many
cases in postgraduate study plans”
 Lots of positive feedback like this!

17.  98% surveyed worked with library staff because they wanted their
students to be able to find, evaluate and use good quality sources in
their assignments.
 60% indicated that their module had explicit learning outcomes relating
to information seeking and evaluation skills
 88.6% felt that the intervention resulted in improvement in the quality of
sources used by students in projects
 80.6% would like to be able to draw on a range of information literacy
resources (tutorials, videos, etc) that they can use in their own teaching
 Impact on grades is difficult to identify but 50% indicated an active
interest in working with libraries to track and measure impact over time.

18.  With thanks to all the CONUL ACIL group
 Ellen Breen DCU (Chair)
 Peter Hickey UCD
Monica Crump (NUIG)
 Isolde Harpur (TCD)
 Grainne McCabe (RCSI)
 Brian Gillespie (DIT)
 Ronan Madden (UCC)
 Mary Antonesa (NUIM)
 Donna O Doibhlin (UL)