Information literacy and virtual learning: is virtual a virtue in scholarship?

Information literacy is close to Sheila Webber’s heart. Her position as senior lecturer in the Department of Information Studies at Sheffield University is the latest role she has nurtured in a career spanning 20 years.

Her professional progression has included working with an early online information system at the Health and Safety Executive as well as a position at the British Library. At one point she was head of the British Library’s automated information service (BLAISE). And she worked at Strathclyde University before eventually taking up the position at Sheffield. She has even written for IWR.

Webber’s zeal for emerging technology and its application to online learning is impressive. For example, her enthusiasm for the online virtual world of Second Life currently engages her in developing activities for her students to explore and develop their own inquiry-based learning tasks.

Her other passion is information literacy: what that means to scholarly research and how best to educate students to fluency.

In discussing the role that information literacy plays, or should play, among academics, the subject of Wikipedia usage inevitably crops up.

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that a US university ­ Middlebury College in Vermont ­ had banned scholars from citing Wikipedia as a reference. Several factual errors had begun appearing in papers when students started using the online encyclopaedia as a source.

Bin the ban
Webber has a practical take on the online encyclopaedia. “I think it’s a bit silly to say never use Wikipedia. I actually cite it as a resource in some of my classes. I think it’s more important for students to learn how to tell good from bad for their particular situation.”

The issue of students’ supposedly declining information literacy skills is a more complex one than can be dealt with by simply laying the blame at Wikipedia’s door. The situation highlights the notable gap between effective and reputable knowledge gathering and the convenience of online information.

Webber discusses how students may often not be well prepared by their earlier education experiences of being passively fed information and encouraged to engage in bad scholarly habits.

“Students need an incentive really to develop their information literacy and ability to cite. In any subject, if you have teachers who are challenging and forcing students to do their own research work, providing feedback on whether they have cited things correctly and synthesised the material, then the students are going to develop their skills better.”

Webber believes that alongside colleagues in Sheffield University library, the Department of Information Studies will be highlighting the problems that arise, as well as offering possible solutions. There is recognition that synthesising information continues to be a difficult task, especially when online sources can vary so widely.
“Better education in information literacy is the key,” says Webber, “Actually teaching students will help them understand why some behaviour is better, rather than giving them a set of rules to follow.”

Webber believes that teaching students how to understand information requires a holistic approach. Information literacy essentially entails people recognising their information needs, understanding when and what kind of information they need.
“It encompasses knowing what to do with information once you have got it,” Webber says. “A big challenge relates to people who aren’t already convinced of the value of information literacy and persuading them it needs more investment. When it comes to identifying information literacy as a separate area that needs to be developed, then there is sometimes a reluctance to do so.”

Citing the Finnish government as a shining example, she explains: “At a high level there has been an acknowledgement of the importance of information literacy.”
The UK experience, Webber feels, is different. She says the focus of government has been more on IT.

“Information issues are scattered throughout different branches of government, different ministries and so forth, and there isn’t really an information policy. It also makes it more difficult to lobby about the value of information literacy and the need to take it seriously.”

On a more positive note, 2007 saw staff and students at the Sheffield University witness the opening of their state-of-the-art Information Commons building. It has study space for 1,300 students as well as 500 PCs. “It is a great resource,” says Webber.

The Department of Information Studies has also received support from Eduserv, the not-for-profit IT service and support group. The organisation has been influential in determining the merits of using the virtual world of Second Life, and its potential as a learning tool in higher education. This summer it revealed preliminary results from a Second Life study by John Kirriemuir.

The study was commissioned to measure how academia was applying the technology. The initial results were interesting, suggesting that use of the virtual world as a learning tool still remained on the fringes. The pioneers were a niche in higher education in the UK.

First steps for second life

Eduserv head of development Andy Powell believes that Second Life has just begun to take tentative steps as a means of learning.

“The main finding is that current activity within Second Life is quite patchy across UK higher education. It is experimental and at the level of individuals or in some cases individual departments. Currently, it’s rarely at the level of the institution and rarely with a strategic view as to what the institution should be doing,” Powell says.
Kirriemuir’s study ascertained that there were 43 universities in the UK working with Second Life, although involvement was often limited to individuals or small teams. Of the bigger players, or more significant projects in the pipeline, the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London ran a pilot to evaluate the effectiveness of collaborative 3D environments in teaching and learning by constructing a virtual hospital. This allowed medical students to move around the virtual building reviewing cases of respiratory illnesses.

Kirriemuir’s recently updated study also revealed that Coventry University has been involved with the Serious Virtual World 2007 conference, while Strathclyde University has bought a Second Life island and begun to expand the scope of the virtual world at an institutional level. Oxford University has opened up a competition to staff and students to design a communal space for visitors with its Second Life offering.

Sizeable spend
Of the institutions that used Second Life in their learning activities, the study found that significant funds went into developing a virtual presence. Coventry University’s Learning Innovation Group spent £20,000 on an island, and the build and staff costs that accompany it.

Webber herself has been trail-blazing the Second Life platform for study. She has received support from an affiliated partner of Sheffield University, the Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences (CILASS). It supports her efforts by paying for a place to conduct learning in Second Life, also in this case an island, including its upkeep for a year. As Webber herself is a keen Second Life enthusiast, she has begun to run regular conferences and discussions in the digital world for her students and is developing plans to help them improve their information literacy skills there.

“The focus is going to be on inquiry-based learning and investigations,” she says. “The first-year BSc Information Management students will conduct interviews with a group of existing Second Life residents who are already conducting their own research. What I am hoping to do is get my students to research what kinds of information they needed and record what their information behaviour was. It’s exploring the nature of Second Life. It can also be compared to methods in the real world.”

One area that Eduserv’s Powell feels is not being examined enough is how effective Second Life is as a learning aid, “There is relatively little work being done on the impact of Second Life in learning. One of the things we want to do in subsequent studies is to get John [Kirriemuir] asking questions about what impact a university’s use of Second Life is having. Is it actually improving learning? There are big questions on how you actually measure that.”

Powell also thinks it’s a matter of time before individual efforts in Second Life are taken notice of by universities. “Presumably, one would gradually expect the institutions to start to take note of these isolated pockets of activity and want to know if it’s being effective or not.”

So does Powell feel positive for Second Life in higher education? Does it have a place? “My personal view is that it doesn’t matter too much whether Second Life is the long term ‘winner’ if there is going to be a winner that sticks around for the long term. What we are trying to do at this stage is just trying to understand the possibilities and we as a community are learning a lot about the way these tools can be used.”

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