Nicola Semple

Here we are, after two days of mind opening talks and workshops, and a lively (to say the least) conference dinner, the final day of LILAC 2022 is upon us. And that means this will be my third and last live blog post (for now). If you missed the others, you can read about my first day and second day at LILAC at your leisure. But now, for today’s activities:

Session 1: Exploring how university lecturers construct their knowledge of information and digital literacy and what that means for teaching in universities moving forward

Presenter: Paul Cannon

This session covered Paul Cannon’s professional doctorate – Contextual Constructionism: a Relativist Stance, Seeking to Understand the Experiences of Lecturers in Relation to Their Social and Cultural Practices.

6 themes were found during thematic analysis of the final phase of the research. The overarching theme found throughout was that lecturer construction of digital competence is still at an embryonic stage. Lecturers simply do not understand the language of information literacy and there is no nuance there for lecturers to use frameworks (such as JISC) in a useful way.

Theme one – the reasons for gaps in lecturer digital competence is many and varied. They believed there wasn’t the capacity to learn digital competencies. Some couldn’t comprehend what digital competence means, so they don’t know where to start.

Theme two – pedagogy and ILOs are the central construct from which digital technology is adopted and digital competence formed. Some lecturers backwards-engineered the process of adopting technology, thinking about what technology they could use, rather than instantly using something they’ve been told to use without question.

Theme three – the university digital environment determines whether technology adoption will be successful.

Theme four – lecturers require guidance and support to increase their digital competence and technology utilisation. There was a “that’ll do” approach – they don’t have the time to scope out alternatives, so they use what they have.

Theme five – peers and students are crucial to the acquisition of new knowledge. Lecturers’ prime mode of learning was through their peers.

Theme six – digital and information literacy frameworks lack meaning and contextual information.

Moving forward:
Where are we with information and digital literacy? Why is it that our lecturers don’t understand?
Do we have the pedagogical knowledge to support lecturers?
What support measures can we put in place? (as librarians)

Keynote: Emily Drabinski

For our final keynote, Rosie Jones posed pre-submitted questions to Emily Drabinski, Interim Chief Librarian at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Emily has been an academic librarian for over 20 years and is currently running for ALA president.

Ahead of LILAC, Emily recorded a talk on the topic of Structure and Power: Information Literacy for Liberation. Questions posed in the keynote session stemmed from this topic. When asked if there can be structure without power (in terms of the classification system), Emily explained that to avoid chaos there is always going to be hierarchy. It can be a paradox, but it is a condition of life.

Questions also covered other areas such as the library space and how schools may or may not encourage critical thinking in children. I found both of these topics incredibly thought-provoking, and I’ll be thinking about the answers for months, maybe even years to come. Should users have a say about the space? As Emily mentioned, students are transient but in a way the space itself is their space. I’d like to ask students where I work what they actually think of the physical space in general, because I believe it’s something we don’t consider enough.

As for school age kids – many are fed information, that they have to regurgitate in exams to get the qualifications to move onto the next academic phase of their life. In this kind of teaching environment, to what extent are they taught or expected to think critically, and what affect does this have on these students’ criticality when they reach the HE stage. Emily did suggest that each school is different, and some do open up space for critical thinking. But those that don’t – how do we create space for these children to ask critical questions. Surely it should start young? And if it did, would this happen in the library?

Session 2: MILA Framework workshop

Presenters: Stéphane Goldstein, Anne-Lise Harding and Jane Secker

In 2018, CILIP released their definition of information literacy, and since then have been working on a framework, focusing on 5 main areas where information literacy sits: 

• Health
• Education
• Workplace
• Democracy
• Everyday life

The purpose of the MILA framework is to take the work being done on information literacy beyond the library world; to promote media and information literacy in the UK as a fundamental building block of our society. In 2021, the UK Government developed a media literacy guide, which for the first time acknowledged media literacy as a legitimate concept. Librarians play a key role in this, and there is a section on information literacy in this strategy. There is no better time than now to think about IL in the broader context of society.

As part of the MILA framework, they developed 5 key aspirations for people living in an information society:

• Be informed
• Be empowered
• Be healthy
• Be socially conscious
• Be connected

In this session, we were divided into 5 groups, and each given a specific aspiration to focus on. Across the 2 activities we were given, we discussed real life situational examples of where our aspiration could be linked to IL, and developed “I can” statements for some of these situations.

I was in the ‘Be connected’ group, and to be connected means that you are able to evaluate, choose and use the right online services and information effectively and responsibly. We discussed the idea of sharing information online, pulling knowledge forward from a previous session on day 2 of LILAC, about genre blurring/confusion, and how pausing and reflecting is shown to be one of the only ways to really combat the fast paced nature of social media and online information sharing. For this we created the statement “I can pause and reflect about information I have seen online, before acting upon it”.

I look forward to seeing where the MILA framework goes, and the ways in which it may help to create a more informed society.

Session 3: Information in Isolation: The arrival of high-speed internet in a very remote community

Presenter: Andrew Whitworth

St Helena is a British Overseas Territory, which lies 2000km from the nearest mainland (West Africa). It got its airport 5 years ago, so was difficult to get to before this. It does have a library, which is actually the oldest in the South Hemisphere, so it isn’t entirely isolated where information is concerned. It is also not an underdeveloped place, but its communications are a little behind, as television arrived in 1995, and the internet in the early 2000s.

Currently, 4,500 inhabitants depend on a single satellite uplink for all external communications. The island is about to be connected to the Equiano undersea cable – potentially in early 2023. This is being supported by a 21 million euro grant from the European Development Fund (approved prior to Jan 2020).

The business case for this grant stressed the cable’s desired positive impacts on:

• Health
• Education – would develop their online learning
• Business and economic development

Gareth Drabble is the ICT teacher at the island’s secondary school, he studied on the MA: DTCE at Manchester in 2020-21. Gareth and Andrew collaborated on a bid for funding for the “Bridging the digital divide” study. They succeeded and are undertaking a longitudinal study of the impact of this technological change on the island, with pre-cable and post-cable (immediately after, and a year after) phases.

Limitations of the present situation:

• The internet is slow and expensive – £100 a month (and you can’t watch Netflix with that!) Downloads strictly controlled, even for St Helena Government.
• Online video conferencing is limited. Therefore there are limits to collaboration and remote job opportunities.
• No ATMs, you have to queue up and get cash from the bank on a Monday morning.
• Huge disparity in wages between government (brought in from the UK on UK wages) and everyday people.
• The ISP have a monopoly over all communications, and this is owned by the Bahraini family

Risks and concerns of introducing high-speed internet (the IL angle):

• Naivety of population puts them at risk of scams
• They haven’t had to deal with digital issues for the past 20-25 years, and suddenly they will have to
• They haven’t had the level of digital literacy or competency learning needed to address risks

The aim of Andrew Whitworth and Gareth Drabble’s work is to help the community develop educational programmes to help with this. This is a study to watch over the coming years, and an incredibly interesting one at that!

Wrap Up of LILAC 2022

What a fantastic three days it has been. I’d be lying if I said I could do it all again right now. That being said, I was excited to hear that next year’s LILAC conference will be taking place at University of Cambridge, so I hope to make it there, and see some familiar faces again. But until then…