B. IL Products for users The UK’s Open University (OU) has an advanced information literacy programme, with its Information Literacy unit (http://library.open.ac.uk/help/infolitunit.html) coordinating its programmes. There is encouragement for course leaders to embed information literacy into their modules and the OU library has been developing an assessment tool. Additionally, Information Literacy is identified one of the key skills for students (http://www.open.ac.uk/keyskills/assessment-literacy.htm), there is an online tutorial which anyone can access (SAFARI) and also a credit-bearing one-semester module (MOSAIC) which can be taken by Open University students as part of their degree (Parker, 2003). MOSAIC is, like all the OU’s modules, distance-learning, and it is based around the SCONUL 7 Pillar model, with a portfolio assessment. Over a thousand people have taken and passed the module. The MOSAIC module has also been run on a smaller scale in some other universities, as part of further development with SCONUL.
In Scotland, students may study for a Scottish Qualification Authority unit qualification at Intermediate Level 2 called “Information Handling Skills” (http://www.sqa.org.uk/files/nu/DF9J_11.pdf), which involves 40 hours of learning.
Looking at material with no qualification or credit attached, many resources and tutorials have been developed for people learning about information literacy, in particular tertiary level students. Some are freely available on the web. Some examples are listed below. In particular there are:
The RDN Virtual Training Suite of tutorials in many different subject areas, developed for use in further and higher education. Note that the RDN is being renamed “Intute” in 2006, and the website address may also change, but the Training Suite will be maintained.
The detailed Netskills tutorial, TONIC, that has been developed in several versions over a number of years. It covers a number of aspects of information literacy, including a quiz element.
The new material developed for Learning and Teaching Scotland by CTAD, which has material aimed at three different age groups: 9-11 years; 12-14; 15-19. There is a series of mini-tutorials for each age group, and information for teachers and parents. This is freely available. There is also another Scottish resource, Information Handling Skills material that can be bought.
A number of universities and colleges have used the INFORMS software to develop tutorials (see http://informs.hud.ac.uk/cgi-bin/informs.pl). Obviously, some of these tutorials (and other material) will be used within institutions as part of credit-bearing courses in other subjects.
There are some tutorials developed by agencies for specific purposes e.g. the Judge: web sites for health tutorial.
Details
CTAD for Learning and Teaching Scotland. Information Literacy. http://staging.ltscotland.org.uk/lts/external/ctad/informationliteracy/index.asp
Contact a Family and Information Society Research and Consultancy Group. Judge: web sites for health. http://www.judgehealth.org.uk/index.htm
Open University: SAFARI: Skills in Accessing, Finding, and Reviewing Information. http://ltssolweb1.open.ac.uk/safari/signpostframe.htm
Open University: MOSAIC: Making Sense of Information in the Connected Age http://www.open.ac.uk/mosaic/index.cfm
RDN Virtual Training Suite (tutorials in many subject areas) http://www.vts.rdn.ac.uk/
South Bank University, England. Information Quest. http://www.lisa.lsbu.ac.uk/quest/index.html
University of Aberdeen, Scotland. E-Resources.(Tutorial) http://www.abdn.ac.uk/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/lib262/e-resources/start
University of Leeds, England. Workbooks and tutorials in different subject areas (not all are available outside the university). http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/training/index.htm
University of Limerick, Ireland. Library Resources Guide: Quickstart. (Click on Finding information on a subject; Finding information on the web.) http://www.ul.ie/libraryquickstart/
Waterford Institute of Technology Libraries, Ireland. OLAS – Information Literacy Online. http://library.wit.ie/library/olas/index.html
