From secondary school to the world of work:
the experience of evaluating Information
Literacy skills development at Glasgow
Caledonian University (GCU)
John Crawford
Library Research Officer
Glasgow Caledonian University
Four Projects based on GCU
• Usage of electronic information services
• Drumchapel Project
• LIRG/SCONUL Value and Impact Project
• Information literacy work - ongoing
Usage of Electronic Information
Services (EIS)
• Preliminary focus groups November 2001 –
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March 2002
Surveys - Spring 2002 and Oct 2002 – Feb 2003
Hierarchy of usage by subject
Link between EIS usage and student progression
and retention
Link between EIS usage and an innovative
learning and teaching agenda
Growth in off campus use – home and work
Drumchapel Project
 An exploratory project – initially ICT skills orientated
 Community ICT facilities little used - Library and
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Cybercafés
School and School Library are main focus for IT use in
deprived areas
Little integration of information literacy into the
curriculum
Levels of ICT ‘deprivation’ did not seem to be high
Basic IT skills exist- WP, email, Internet
Pupil evaluation of websites poor
School disproportionately important in deprived areas
LIRG/SCONUL Value and Impact
Project 1
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Electronic questionnaire to current students Feb 2004
Confirms EIS usage view of steady if uneven progress
Link between IL and the employability agenda
IT so pervasive in the tertiary sector it can be difficult to
disentangle the role of the library
• Attendance at University has greatly improved
information literacy skills
• Students using a very wide range of websites
• First year students slightly more IL aware than other
levels
LIRG/SCONUL Value and Impact
Project 2
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Questionnaire to alumni – administered by post Spring 2004
Respondents included middle/senior management
Considerable change in attitude/usage between university and work
Strong link between IL and employability
Scholarly methods spreading in the workplace
Work greatly sharpens perceptions about value of IL
Good match between databases introduced at University and used
at work
• Information literacy linked with the exercise of initiative in the
workplace and ‘getting on’
• Varied attitude to IL among employers
• Sparse replies from the unemployed
A few quotes
• ‘[information] literacy skills [are] of about 20•
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30% importance in my job’
‘I have been dragged, if not kicking and
screaming, at least wincing, into EIS’
‘Young people should be leaving school with
the basic skills to find employment or further
their studies, whilst universities should not
have to make up for this failure’
‘If you can’t do this you can’t do anything’
‘because for a start you need to be information
literate to find a job in the first place’.
Where do we go from here?
• From all three studies an information
literacy agenda emerged
• Need for a strategy which links the
secondary and the tertiary sectors
• The tertiary sector is not an independent
unit but a stage along the way – avoid
fixating on the undergraduate
• Need to focus on employability
Information Literacy – the link between
secondary and tertiary education
• innovative one year national pilot project which
will develop curriculum based IL frameworks
with secondary and tertiary partners which, at
the end of the project, can be rolled out to other
participants.
• to produce secondary school leavers with a skill
set which further and higher education can
recognise and develop or which can be applied
to the world of work directly.
Project objectives
• Identify student information literacy skills they bring to university
• IL skills mapping exercise 5 -14, 14 -17, HE
• Convert identified IL skills into an IL framework extending from secondary
into higher education
• pilot and test developed framework
• Identify barriers to and constraints on the development of a national IL
framework
• Test the link between IL, progression, and retention and the employability
agenda
Identification of information literacy skills
Focus group findings - 2nd year surveyors (24 students)
• Information sources – have access to lecture material and reading list,
plus pointed in direction of websites and other sources but tend to use the
Internet / search engine with little or no use of databases.
(One group showed more of a knowledge of specialised websites and that
independent use produced better results. Other group seemed to pick
things up haphazardly and tended to stick to what they know.)
• Sources used at work (part time students) - different to those used at
university.
• Evaluation techniques – e.g. matching / skimming for key words, ‘sort of
know what you are looking for’
• New university skills – ethics i.e. the need to reference everything,
copyright
What information literacy skills if any
do 1st years bring to university
Summary findings to date from
Subject/Academic Librarian interviews:
• Varies depending on the student, the course and the
school they come from plus home life
• Poor or limited skills are generally in the following areas:
– Knowing the different types of information; where
information comes from; how it is generated;
published etc. and how to use it
– Search strategies, searching in depth or beyond
what’s available
– Evaluating information found plus critical thinking
A few points
• In Scotland there a number of initiatives in the
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secondary sector but they are uncoordinated
Contacts between schools and universities are
limited
There is very little perception in HE about what
skills new students bring with them
Partners recruited from both the secondary and
tertiary sectors but…..
And so
• There should be a seamless progression from school to
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work (via HE)
The employability agenda is the only show in town – or
is it instrumentalism?
We need to know more about how the skills we impart
extend to the workplace
We need to know more about the workplace and
attitudes of employers
Does IL have a direct value which can be calculated?
Where is the dosh coming from?
Making the case
Some references
• Crawford, John et al (2004) Use and awareness of electronic
information services by students at Glasgow Caledonian University:
a longitudinal study, Journal of librarianship and information science,
vol. 36, no.3, pp. 101-117.
• McLelland, Dorothy and Crawford, John (2004) The Drumchapel
Project: a study of ICT usage by school pupils and teachers in a
secondary school in a deprived area of Glasgow, Journal of
librarianship and information science, 36, (2), pp. 55-67.
• Crawford, John & Irving, Christine (2005) The research agenda.
Library + Information Update, 4(1-2), pp. 48-49
Contact details
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Dr. John Crawford,
Library Research Officer,
Glasgow Caledonian University,
Room 302, (3rd floor)
6 Rose Street,
Glasgow,
G3 6RB
Tel: 0141-273-1248
Email jcr@gcal. ac.uk