Presented at LILAC 2010

1. Integrating Information Literacy
within the University Curriculum:
cooperation between University of Bergen Library
and the Centre for University Pedagogy
LILAC Conference 2010
Tove Rullestad
Therese S Skagen
Anne Sissel Vedvik Tonning

2. Outline
• Background
• Content
• Evaluation
• Further work

3. LibraryFaculty
Traditional
Don’t the
students know?
What about my
research?
Don’t the
students know?
What about my
research?
What about
information
literacy?
What about
information
literacy?

4. Bergen University Library – our resources
• Sources of information
• Information literacy (IL) competency
• Subject librarians
• IL programme catalogue
• Good facilities for teaching and learning in the learning
centres
Cooperation and IL
• In the library’s strategic plans close cooperation with
academic staff is considered an important factor in IL
course development.

5. Faculty
Library
Integration

6. Integrating Information Literacy within
the University Curriculum
Aim
Raising consciousness of the
relationship between students’ learning
activities in their subject programmes
and the development of IL

7. Pedagogical perspective
Biggs’ Constructive Alignment Model for higher education
Learning goals Activity Assessment
Making connections
between IL and
various learning
strategies and
approaches to
information seeking
and evaluation
Learning scenario
Group work
Discussion
Plan a course design
which includes IL to
be presented at day 3
Oral and written
presentation of IL
course integration
Reflection Note
Increasing awareness
of IL in connection to
research-based
education
Cooperation with
subject librarians

8. Day 1 – Information literacy
• Icebreaker about IL
• Different theories and models of IL
• Peter the university teacher – a scenario
• Examples from courses where IL has been integrated in
curriculum
• Summary and preparation for the next day

9. Peter – university teacher
• Peter is responsible for a BA subject. He’s
concerned about how students use
secondary literature in assignments. In the
last assignment he discovered some
papers that were very similar.
• Peter would prefer students to use recent
research, ideally based on individual
reading beyond the basic reading list. This
might make the papers more varied and
more interesting to read. A lot of time and
energy is used to give feedback to 40
students.
• Which advice would you give to Peter?

10. Day 2 – Academic integrity
• Media coverage about academic integrity
• 200 students at the Faculty of Law were accused of
copying each others’ papers
• Discussion, group work and lecture about:
– Which factors can decrease or increase academic
honesty among students?
– How can we prevent academic dishonesty?
• Practical work
– Collaboration with subject librarians

11. Day 3 – Presenting and reflection
• Presentation of 15 min.:
– How to integrate IL in your subject dicipline?
– Course decription
• Feedback from the other participants/colleagues
• Written note, reflections about:
– Challenges encountered when planning the course
– How you think these challenges can be meet

12. BA-course in nutrition: 5 ETCS
Curriculum
• Understanding of
methods used in nutrition
research
• Analyse lab results
• Perform experiments
• Write a research journal
and compare results with
published research
Library courses
4 x 45 min
• Referencing and ethics
• Information retrieval,
basic
• Information retrieval,
advanced
• Evaluating sources

13. BA-course in ancient history: 15 ETCS
Curriculum
• Improve students’
understanding of
materials taught in a
curriculum at an
advanced academic level
• Should be able to analyse
sources and draw their
own conclutions
Course alterations
• Students write 8 short
annotated bibliographies
as a test exam
• If fails exam, write an
Wikipedia-article to be
approved by the teacher.
A revised article to be
published in Wikipedia.

14. Evaluation from the participants
• Group activities and discussion
• Practice versus theory
• More knowledge about the
courses offered from the library
• Getting in touch with the subject
librarian

15. For improvement
• Some presentations of general theory about IL were
without clear relevance to the examples used and the
subsequent group work
• The role of the library and the subject librarian should be
more clearly defined
• Students’ information behaviour should be more
thoroughly mapped

16. Reflection notes
• ”It was surprisingly easy to
implement IL into my course”
• ”There is a great need amongst
students for training in information
retrieval, and there is certainly room
for a course that incorporates such
an element in teaching (…) Learning
IL cannot be done by reading the
syllabus, but requires attendance in
the library. This section of the course
should be mandatory”.

17. "A very good course, we will recommend it
to colleagues”
• Realizing that you have potential for development in an
educational context
• Time for reflection and discussion with peers
• Information about the library activities
• Some useful tips for their own teaching

18. The Centre for University Pedagogy
• Well-implemented course design
• Good balance between involving the
participants and our presentations
• Intense commitment and discussion
amongst participants
• Too much general theory was
presented
• Consider another structure of the
course content

19. Faculty
Library
How to reach out to more staff?

20. Further work
• Course development based on evaluations and our
experience
• Minor changes to be made: greater emphasis on active
participation and discussion; update of supporting
literature; include the web-tutorial Search & Write
• In house training for subject librarians.

21. References
Biggs, J. B. (2003). Teaching for quality learning at university: what the
student does. Philadelphia, Pa.: Society for Research into Higher
Education: Open University Press.
Bruce, C. (2001). Faculty-librarian partnerships in Australian higher
education: critical dimensions. Reference Services Review, 29(2),
106-115.
Carroll, J. (2007). A handbook for deterring plagiarism in higher
education. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning
Development
Johnston, B. & Webber, S. (2005). As we may think: Information
literacy as a discipline for the information age. Research Strategies,
20(3), p. 108-121.
Kuhlthau, C.C. (2004). Seeking meaning: a process approach to library
and information services. Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unltd.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning : legitimate peripheral
participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

22. Thank you for your
attention!