NATIONAL FORUM ON INFORMATION LITERACY

Summary of the September 25, 2000 Meeting

Meeting Host:
National Education Association
Washington, D.C.

Present:

Patricia Breivik, Chair, National Forum on Information Literacy
Amy Aidman, Center for Media Education
Louis Albert, International Partnership for Service-Learning
Jaleh Behroozi, National Institute for Literacy
Howard Besser, UCLA/Pacific Bell Initiative for 21st Century Literacies
Barbara Cambridge, American Association for Higher Education
Rose-Kathryn Young Chaisson, Young Chaisson Consulting/The American Promise
Martha Crawley, Institute for Museum and Library Services
Prudence Dalrymple, Association for Library and Information Science Education
Elisabeth Edwards, American Association of School Librarians
Craig Gibson, Association of College and Research Libraries
Cheryl Graeve, League of Women Voters
Don Hausrath, University of Maryland
Renee Hobbs, Partnership for Media Education
Althea Jenkins, Association of College and Research Libraries
Judith M. Kelly, National Council of Teachers of English
Nancy Kranich, American Library Association
Keith Krueger, Consortium for School Networking/Friends of the National Library of Medicine
Anthony McDonald, George Washington University
John O'Connor, American Association for Higher Education
Judy Russell, National Commission on Libraries and Information Science
Sylvia Seidel, National Education Association
Emily Sheketoff, American Library Association
Drucille Stafford, National Alliance for Black School Educators
Bob Willard, National Commission on Libraries and Information Science

1. Dialogue-Information Literacy: Making Democracy Work Resource Expert: Cheryl Graeve, League of Women Voters

Cheryl Graeve, Director of Field Support for the League of Women Voters, led the Forum in a discussion of the mission, goals, and operations of the League of Women Voters and the relationship of information literacy in making democracy work.

The League of Women Voters, founded in 1920, grew out of the women's suffrage movement and has traditionally been concerned with increasing voter participation and informing the population of policy issues involved in elections; with "good government" issues; and with civic participation in general. Other issues with which the League has been involved are environmentalism and senior citizens' concerns.

The League is a grassroots operation that sets priorities through state chapters and councils. The League has worked with the National Education Association and other groups; strategies for increasing voter participation include increasing voter rolls through "motor/voter" registration and expanding electoral process through the Internet.

Two important web sites Forum members should be aware of are the League's own web site (www.lwv.org) and the site for the Democracy Network (www.dnet.org).

The Democracy Network is especially important in the 2000 elections because all fifty states are participating, because local as well as national elections are involved, and because the Network offers an online "candidate debate."

The online debates involve a tremendous amount of work beforehand: collecting information about candidates and issues initially to place on web sites, then working with local public libraries and local community organizations to promote the use of the web sites effectively. Background research is extremely important; the League works with local boards of elections and Secretaries of State in various states to determine which candidates can appear on ballots. The League's goal is to investigate all points of view on certain local issues, and offer accurate information on all local candidates represented in the online debates.

The League sponsors a "How to Pick a Candidate" feature on its web site, applying critical analysis to candidates' public information, political ads, identifying appeals to prejudice, bias, or misleading or incomplete information.

Questions/Discussion:

--How is the League concerned with the disengagement of young people from politics?

The League works with the Youth Vote Coalition, which has 100 college-age groups involved in encouraging political participation; and the Presidential Debate Commission has been encouraged to address the need for young people to be heard.

One type of youth engagement that should be noted is community service; through community service, young people see results from their efforts.

Two pieces of research show that people in their 20s haven't seen government as being successful; the League web sites attempt to address the questions of whether government works or whether it matters for all populations, including young people.

The American Library Association has "information literacy and its role in a democratic society" as a focus and an important initiative.

--How to engage people who don't have access to Internet, and inform them about public policy issues?

The League works with the Housing and Urban Development Department, Volunteers of America, and community colleges to encourage access to information about politics and policy issues. In Massachusetts, the League has encouraged people to use public access computers in public libraries and local YMCAs to gain needed information about political participation and policy choices. Communities in New Jersey have developed the "connected "communities" model concerned with creating local infrastructure to support political participation and dissemination of information about policy.

--Does the League track the number of hits on the League's web site?

Tracking is done nationally (by source of domain--.edu, .com, etc). D-Net, however, has more sophisticated tracking in place, and follow up with local surveys. State and local web sites sponsored by the League vary in their tracking sophistication.

Feedback received on the uses of League web sites: priority uses include to gather information on candidates; to register to vote and to deal with registration requirements in localities; and to get information on absentee ballots.

One possible "negative" perception about the web sites is that they allow more diverse candidates to be included. The League is well aware of disinformation that candidates may distribute about themselves and their political opponents, even if inadvertently. An example of a biased web site was the San Jose Observer, which although seemingly a neutral site actually was a platform for one candidate to slant issues to his perspective; it took two weeks to unearth the bias of this site.

There is a great need to empower and motivate citizens to exercise critical judgment about political web sites. We need to develop a culture of civic participation, getting people to understand why they should vote, what they should vote for, and not just the mechanics of voting.

With students, it is possible to use classroom experiences such a mock elections and campaign exercises to engage them in critical thinking.

--How does the League use good practice in encouraging participation in its internal affairs?

The League encourages volunteer opportunities that maximize people's time; promotes shared space with other organizations; promotes the use of the Internet for rapid communication; encourages a focus on local issues; provides several levels of templates for web sites adaptable to local needs; and finds ways to lift administrative burdens at the local level. The age profile of League volunteers is a major issue; young people appear to be disengaged. The League believes that immigrants' political participation in citizenship issues is worthy of attention because new citizens are very likely to vote.

--Is the debate format the most suitable medium for disseminating information on candidates?

Debates are one important way of making that information available, but certainly not the only way.

Forums with citizens are perhaps more valuable because they are more spontaneous and even popular culture forums such as television talk shows may reach people who wouldn't vote otherwise.

2. Approval of May meeting summary

The meeting summary was approved as read.

3. New Members

International Partnership for Service Learning (Lou Albert)

The International Partnership for Service Learning places students in service learning at twelve sites around the world. Begun in 1982, the International Partnerships counts 4,000 students who have participated since that date.

The service learning model has an analogy with the learning community movement, with particular focus on intercultural learning and skills.

Service learning in the U.S. is but a small part of the larger worldwide service learning movement.

International Association of Technical University Libraries

IATUL is an international academic librarian association. Its most recent meeting was held in Australia in July and was attended by people from 17 countries including Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, UK, Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand. One key note presentation was on information literacy and most of the other papers touched on its importance.

Forum representatives agreed in principle to the value of allowing business members to join the Forum and then accepted two new corporate members:

RMC Research Corporation

Knowledge Management Section (Dow Chemical)

4. Reports from Member Organizations

Young Chaisson Consulting/Farmers Insurance-Rose-Kathryn Young Chaisson

Formerly with the National Council on Social Studies, Rose-Kathryn now consults and works with Farmers Insurance to promote the "American Promise", a teacher's guide used in social studies. (See item 6 in summary.)

Institute for Museum and Library Services-Martha Crawley

The Institute's year 2000 grants were distributed to recipients; a list of recipients was made available at this meeting of the Forum.

ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) won a grant to support evaluation of information literacy training; the University of Rhode Island wont a grant to support fellowships for students of diverse backgrounds working in libraries.

All grantees are expected to provide web sites; there are links to these sites on the IMLS web site.

Association of Library and Information Science Education-Prudence Dalrymple

ALISE is concerned with programmatic issues related to information literacy training; these issues will be emphasized in upcoming conference on library science education.

American Association of School Librarians-Elisabeth Edwards

AASL continues to work with standards of learning in public schools, particularly those standards relating to information literacy and teaching the research process in the classroom.

National Education Association-Sylvia Seidel

Professional development schools and colleges of education are concerned with teacher quality, and information literacy is part of this concern. The NEA is promoting nine principles for systemic change in public schools; a special issue is student teaching, the role of in-service teaching, and the impact of student teachers on learning.

The NEA has issued an RFP to collect data on student achievement, teacher quality, and recruitment and retention of quality teachers.

Among other initiatives, the NEA is studying underserved schools in northern Virginia.

George Washington University-Anthony McDonald

Anthony is a graduate student at George Washington University whose dissertation topic deals with information literacy and lifelong learning.

California Community College system-Don Hausrath

Don previously reported on the grant focused on information literacy among the campuses of the California community colleges. He has since discovered, in working with librarians at these institutions, that many of them are interested in preserving separate, stand-alone library skills courses rather than integrating information literacy into the curriculum.

The grant has allowed for a pilot program focused on curriculum-integrated information literacy; one example of successful integration has been in the Allied Health program of the community colleges.

Middle States Commission on Higher Education [activities reported by Patricia Breivik]

The Middle States Commission has been a leader in promoting information literacy in accrediting standards and is currently developing a model for faculty-librarian collaboration through a series of workshops and conferences showing successful partnerships in curriculum-integrated information literacy. These workshops and conferences will move through progressive stages in the Middle States region over the next two years.

National Institute for Literacy-Jaleh Behroozi

The National Institute is working with the Department of Labor in developing "pre-IT literacy" skills for adults, with emphasis on content standards for adult literacy. Fourteen organizations have been funded to teach information technology skills to adults.

National Alliance for Black School Educators-Drucille Stafford

The National Alliance works with teachers who work with the least served students, and is increasingly interested in including information literacy on the agenda for these students.

One example of a National Alliance initiative related to information literacy is the Lightspan Partnership, which allows parents and teachers to present pre-selected web sites to students and therefore facilitates controlled ways of learning to use the web rather than encouraging the more common browsing and searching that often doesn't result in learning.

Partnership for Media Education-Renee Hobbs

The Partnership is concerned with analysis of all forms of visual expression. Its board has 12 members and its most recent conference had about 500 attendees.

The Partnership is currently transforming itself into a membership-based organization with a goal of 5,000 members by 2005. The new name of the organization will be "Alliance for a Media Literate America."

National Commission on Libraries-Judy Russell

The National Commission held its most recent conference in February 2000.

The National Commission is involved with several UNESCO initiatives related to libraries and literary. Most recently, it has given $5,000 in seed money to help the Forum with the planning an international conference on information literacy.

The Commission will soon be holding a public hearing on information literacy in public schools.

A major study has been requested by Congress on authenticity of information; information on this study can be found on the Commission web site at: www.nclis.gov, under the heading "government information policy."

Center for Media Education-Amy Aidman

The Center focuses on children's education and the media and has conducted studies of web sites for teenagers, specifically commercial and civic web sites. The Center watches governmental actions regarding children and media issues, collects information about a wide range of media research topics they relate to education, and maintains contacts with leaders in academia, business, and nonprofit organizations.

The Center now has an electronic newsletter (eCME News); information on subscribing is available on the Center's web site at: www.cme.org/publications/ecme/index_ecme.html

American Association of Higher Education-John O'Connor

John is a visiting scholar at AAHE. His work there is concerned with collaborative democratic engagement among higher education organizations and is focused on connections between that engagement and service learning.

American Association of Higher Education-Barbara Cambridge

AAHE endorsed the ACRL Standards on Information Literacy for Higher Education in May 2000.

An article by Patricia Breivik will appear in the October 2000 issue of AAHE Bulletin. Information literacy will also be a conference theme at the AAHE national conference to be held in March 2001 in Washington, D.C. Information about the conference is available on the AAHE web site: www.aahe.org.

Association of College and Research Libraries-Althea Jenkins

The ACRL office has distributed over 7,000 copies of the recently published ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.

ACRL will hold its national conference in Denver in March 2001; at least half of the conference presentations deal with information literacy.

National Council of Teachers of English-Judy Kelly

Patricia Breivik will speak at the NCTE Conference in November 2000, and the NEA book which she co-authored on information literacy in elementary schools will be made available for purchase.

Australian Library and Information Association/Special Interest Group on Information Literacy-Prue Mercer

The Council of Australian University Librarians, in conjunction with the University of South Australia, will be holding a working on September 22-23 2000 on Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. The workshop's goal to review the U.S. Standards for adoption in Australia and to explore options for an Australasian Information Literacy Institute.

The ALIA InfoLit Annual Meeting and ALIA 2000 Conference: the InfoLit Group annual meeting will be held as part of the national libraries conference at ALIA 2000 on October 24. As convenor of the InfoLit Group, Prue Mercer will chair the conference session on information literacy. Papers will cover higher education, critical literacy, school libraries, and the Internet. These papers will be published on the Web after the conference. The full program is available on the conference website at: www.alia.org.au/conferences/alia2000/ Plans are also underway to hold a national Round Table on Information Literacy, intended to bring together library, education, and community groups involved in information skills and literacy. This forum will explore issues on advocacy and support for programs and will likely be held in Melbourne in early 2001. Plans are also underway for the biennial conference to be held in Adelaide in late 2001. The biennial conference will focus on community and social perspectives on information literacy.

5. Overseas report

Patricia Breivik discussed her recent visit to Australia, where she spoke at two conferences. It is obvious that other countries have different approaches to information literacy and in some cases (such as Australia) have more advanced research-based approaches than does the U.S. New Zealand is committed to developing a national policy on information literacy by 2002 in which information literacy will be one of three critical components. Australian researchers have focused on how information literacy is actually manifested in people's lives-in particular at work.

An important international, cross-national research agenda for information literacy is emerging. This agenda involves possible syntheses between the approaches to information literacy developed in the U.S. (the competency model, embodied in the standards movement from AASL, ACRL, and others), and in Australia (the relational or experience-based model, developed by Christine Bruce).

It is possible now to see a emergent "triangulation" of research resulting from these pairings:

-the ACRL Information Literacy Standards with Bruce's "Seven Faces" experience-based approach

-with the views of experts relating to information literacy determined by expert consensus, with studies of actual behavior relating to information literacy, in the workplace or elsewhere

The synthesis of these approaches may allow the creation of "teaching/learning templates" that facilitate faculty integration of research validated learning outcomes into the curriculum.

Important issues for faculty adoption of information literacy instruction center on questions such as: what is the value of such instruction to me? what is the value to my students? what is the cost (in time and effort) to me?

By combining the Standards approach with the experience-based, "Seven Faces" approach, we may have much better opportunities for formulating sound learning outcomes. We will also be able to develop curriculum templates that encourage curricular integration, instructional intervention, and sound assessment of information literacy.

Patricia distributed a "Proposal for International Collaborative Research" on information literacy focused on many of these issues, and asked for feedback from Forum members.

6. Special Initiatives

National Council for the Social Studies: American Promise

Rose-Kathryn Young Chaisson reported on the "American Promise," a teacher's guide and associated program in social studies focused on Nine Challenges of Democracy; one of those challenges is the wise use of information. The teacher's guide contains many practical examples of classroom activities supporting information literacy and identifies textbook readings to strengthen students' understanding of information literacy.

The "American Promise" is sponsored and funded by Farmers' Insurance under the auspices of the National Council for the Social Studies, and is a ten-year commitment.

Children's Partnership

The Children's Partnership is based on a major research study which found that the Internet does not meet the needs of low-income people, that there is an enormous dichotomy between high and low levels of literacy.

One of major finding is that the language on web sites needs to be written to research those with low literacy skills, and that web interfaces need to be designed more specifically for this population.

Information about the Children's Partnership can be found at: wwww.childrenspartnership.org/pub/low_income/index.html.

American Library Association Presidential Program on Information Literacy

ALA President Nancy Kranich reported on her theme for her presidential year, "Libraries as Cornerstones for Democracy." She is especially interested in community partnerships and promoting the concept of libraries as civic forums.

At the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, two of Nancy's presidential committees began work on Information Literacy Partnerships and Advocacy. The focus of these working groups is on building community partnerships-linking librarians with community organization to develop information-literate communities. A new toolkit for supporting these partnerships has been developed, and a workshop with accompanying training manuals, videotapes, and action packets, will be offered nationally during Nancy's presidential year. The goal is to develop a national group of advocates and resource experts who can assist those interested in information literacy and promote the cause of information literacy in local communities across the country.

Upcoming events: The Campaign for America's Libraries, a new public relations campaign with information literacy as a major focus; the President's program at ALA/Midwinter on "the Digital Divide"; and the ALA Information Literacy Advocacy and Community Partnerships training sessions, to be held at ALA/Midwinter as well.

[Note: there was some discussion of holding a joint meeting between the Advocacy training group and the Forum in January 2001, but eventually the group decided that the date would not work. Instead, selected Forum organizations based in the D.C. area will be invited to participate.

Maryland Initiative

Renee Hobbs of the Partnership for Media Education reported on a new curriculum resource, Assignment: Media Literacy, which grew out of a partnership between the Maryland State Board of Education and the Discovery Channel.

This resource designed to fit within the State of Maryland curriculum frameworks and integrates media literacy skills into the whole range of subject areas taught in the Maryland public schools. The resource is a totally integrated package of resources giving teachers the resources to explore with students the impact of media and technology throughout society; the focus is on critically analyzing all media messages in all formats.

Assignment: Media Literacy consists of 18 units of instruction and over 100 complete lesson plans for teachers.

The staff time involved in developing this resource: seven people over a period of fifteen months; curriculum specialists were much involved in its development.

The project will be evaluated by a researcher at Rutgers University. The Discovery Channel is now seeking other partnerships with such states as Illinois and Connecticut.

Pacific Bell/UCLA Initiative for 21st Century Literacies

Howard Besser reported on the Pacific Bell/UCLA Initiative, which is the outcome of a $1 million gift from Pacific Bell to UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. The gift underwrites a two-year project that will evaluate the meaning of literacy in an age characterized by rapidly changing technologies, an abundance of new and unfiltered information, and increasing diversity.

This initiative addresses three critical areas:

--Educating the user: the faculty in the Graduate School of Education/Information Studies at UCLA will evaluate current knowledge and practice in information, media, visual, cultural, and other relevant 21st century literacies. Best practices will be the focus of this investigation, and the faculty will develop guidelines for what constitutes an information literate student at appropriate milestones in K-12 and higher education.

--Improving the information system: as a complement to educating the user, the GSE&IS faculty at UCLA will examine all dimensions of designing optimal information delivery systems, and those factors that inhibit the design of such systems. Particular attention will be given to design of systems for users with varying literacy levels and technological abilities. Outcomes will include guidelines written to influence the work of design professions who develop information systems and materials.

--Addressing policy issues: toward the end of the two-year project, the GSE&IS faculty at UCLA will examine a broad range of policy issues related to information such as information literacy standards, the "digital divide," and privacy and ownership. The goal is to disseminate the results of policy research to policymakers and others.

The PacificBell/UCLA Project will hold a summit on the UCLA campus, October 21, 2000, to kick off the two year project. The goal of the summit is to raise awareness among key constituents of the need for an information literate citizenry, and to focus on the roles of schools, libraries, and other institutions to Speakers will include researchers and scholars, business and political leaders, and others with diverse viewpoints.

7. Profession Development Schools Standards

In mid-October 2000, NCATE Board will consider suggestions for revisions to the NCATE standards for professional development schools; Carol Smith of AACTE reports that her organization will watch the revision process to determine if there are possibilities for encouraging the incorporation of information literacy in these standards as they are developed. The creation of the professional development standards operates differently from the NCATE teacher education standards because the latter had a long open comment period, whereas the work on the professional development standards is done through grant funding with different governance set-up.

8. Other business

None.

9. Date, Agenda Items and Opening Dialogue Suggestions for Winter Meeting

Friday, January 26, 2001, will be the date for the next meeting of the Forum.

Topics suggested for the next meeting and future meetings:

--Service learning (tentatively planned for the next meeting) --E-books

"Service learning" will be the topic for the opening dialogue of the Winter meeting.

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