How to Plan and Develop Information
Literacy Programmes in Schools
Prof. Dr. Serap Kurbanoglu
Hacettepe University
Department of Information Management
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim.
When a man does not know what harbour he is making for,
no wind is the right wind
Seneca
Getting started
• Don’t reinvent the wheel:
– Identify the IL model that works best for your institution
– Adapt information literacy standards and practices
• Design a programme based on the standards and experiences
• Work on a strategic plan
• Identify and focus on library responsibilities toward IL and develop
library instruction programs accordingly
• Ensure to teach the research process and its concepts, and do
more than introducing electronic tools and technology
• Be prepared for challenges & be aware of planning pitfalls
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Key planning issues
• Plan your Information literacy program in concert with overall
strategic library planning
• Make sure that your plan is tied to library and institutional
development plans
• Review past performance and try to understand reasons for past
failures
• Identify opportunities
• Determine learners’ needs and preferences
• Understand the impact of IL training on existing operations and staff
function
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Potential challenges &
planning pitfalls
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Obstacles such as limited facilities, financial and human resources
Inability to get management and/or teachers involved
Lack of clear objectives
Assumptions
The status problems
Resistance towards change
Obstacles in communication (different vocabularies)
Student motivation (students don’t want to do anything extra)
Perfectionism
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Planning
• Statement of purpose
• Action
• Environmental scan
• Opportunities and challenges
• Resources
• Budget
• Administrative and instutional support
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Planning
• Integration with the curriculum
• Collaboration and partnership
• Pedagogy
• Outreach and promotion
• Evaluation
• Characteristics of the learner
• Mode of instruction
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Mission statement
• Mission statement describes the overall purpose of the program and
may reflect the values and priorities
• Write a mission statement for your IL program
• Make sure that the mission statement
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includes a definition of information literacy
is consistent with the “Information Literacy Standards”
corresponds with the mission statements of the institution
clearly reflects the contributions of and expected benefits to
institutional community
– appears in appropriate institutional documents
– is reviewed periodically and, if necessary, revised
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Goals & Actions
• Goals are the qualitative and quantitative statements of what the
organization wishes to achieve over a measurable future
• State the goal(s) to achieve and make them specific
• Make sure that goals for your information literacy program:
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are consistent with the mission and goals of the institution
are consistent with the mission statement of the IL program
apply to all learners, regardless of delivery system or location
reflect the desired outcomes of preparing students for lifelong learning
are evaluated and reviewed periodically
• List all actions required to achieve each goal
• Write actions in the order they need to be completed
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Enviromental scan
• Scan both internal and external environment
– SWOT/TOWS analysis can be used
• Environmental scan
– Detecs social, economic, and political trends that may affect
organization’s future
– Detects trends and events important to your plan
– Detecs institutional factors that can help or limit the program
– Provides early warning of changing external conditions
– Defines potential threats and opportunities implied by external factors
– Promotes a future orientation in the thinking of management and staff
– Enables to understand current and potential changes to determine
organizational strategies
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Internal & external factors
• Internal = Strengths and Weaknesses
– Evaluate the weaknesses and strenghts in terms of human,
economic and physical resources available in the library for the
IL program
• External = Opportunities and Threats
– Anticipate and address current and future opportunities and
challenges
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SWOT Analysis
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
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TOWS Analysis
External
Opportunities
External Threats
Internal
Strengths
Strategies that use
strengths to
maximize
opportunities
Strategies that use
strengths to
minimize threats
Internal
Weaknesses
Strategies that
minimize
weaknesses by
taking advantage of
opportunities
Strategies that
minimize
weaknesses and
avoid threats
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Resources
• Identify what is required to implement the program
• Describe the human resources required for each action
• Describe the physical requirements for each action (e.g.
classroom, office space, furniture, equipment, etc.)
• Address, with clear priorities, human, technological and financial
resources, current and projected
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Human Resources
• Build up your team
• Employ, develop, or have access to sufficient personnel with
appropriate education, experience, and expertise
• Identify and assign leadership and responsibilities within the team
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Human Resources
Make sure that the staff
• develop experience in teaching, assessment of student learning, and
curriculum development
• develop expertise to develop, coordinate, implement, maintain, and
evaluate IL programs
• use instructional design processes
• promote, market, manage, and coordinate diverse instruction activities
• collect and interpret data to evaluate and update instruction programs
• integrate and apply instructional technologies into learning activities
• produce instructional materials
• employ a collaborative approach to working with others
• actively engaged in continual professional development and training
• respond to changing technologies, environments, and communities
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Budget
• Tie your plan to library and institutional budgeting cycles
• Estimate your budget. Determine how much funding the program
needs
• Be flexible in estimating costs
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Administrative and institutional support
• No information literacy program can be developed and sustained
unless it has a strong base of support
• Support for a successful instruction program has many
interdependent facets
• The level of support necessary will depend on
– the scope of the program
– the size of the program
– its connection with other institutional units
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Administrative and institutional support
Convince the administration within your institution:
• that IL is a learning issue not a library issue and that teachers must
also be responsible for students acquiring IL abilities
• to assign information literacy leadership and responsibilities
• to plant IL in the institution’s mission, strategic plan, and policies
• to provide funding to establish and ensure ongoing support for
teaching facilities and resources, staffing, professional development
opportunities for librarians, faculty, staff, and administrators
• to recognize and encourage collaboration among instutional
community (teachers, librarians, and other staff)
• to communicate support for the program
• to reward achievement and participation in the information literacy
program within the institution’s system.
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Integration into the curriculum
• Ensure that IL is incorporated into the curriculum
• Use institutional decision making mechanisms to ensure institutionwide integration into programmes
• Identify the scope (i.e., depth and complexity) of competencies to be
acquired on a disciplinary level as well as at the course level
• Sequence and integrate competencies throughout a student’s
school career, progressing in sophistication
• Specify programs and courses charged with implementation
• Merge the IL concepts with the course contents
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Collaboration & partnership
• Collaborate with teachers, librarians, other program staff and
administrators
• Establish formal and informal mechanisms for communication and
ongoing dialogue across the institutional community
• Collaborate at all stages (planning, implementation, assessment of
student learning, and evaluation and refinement of the program)
• Center your collaboration efforts around enhanced student learning
and the development of lifelong learning skills
• Work with teachers to develop curriculum, syllabi, and assignments
that focus on the research
• Collaborate with teachers to incorporate information literacy
concepts and disciplinary content
• Collaborate with teachers to identify opportunities for achieving
information literacy outcomes through course content and other
learning experiences
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Developing partnership
• Focusing teachers’ attention on information literacy and creating a
partnership can present challenges
– Teachers have many competing interests
– Most teachers feel that they have established a partnership
with librarians
– It is not at the top of their agenda
• Strategies in Developing Partnership
– Identifying the partners
– Creating awareness of the issue of information literacy
– Avoiding partnership pitfalls
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Creating awareness
• Support can only come when teachers are aware of what IL is, why it
is important, and what problem it is solving
• Creating awareness in the minds of teachers is not a one-time event
• Teachers’ awareness of IL can be raised in the following ways
– Make a powerful link between critical thinking and IL
– Talk about IL as a lifelong learning skill
– Talk about how IL helps students with their current academic
endeavors
– Talk about IL as one of the essential skills of student academic life
– Provide data about the current level of student IL skills
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Avoiding partnership pitfalls
• It is imperative that librarians respect teachers’ authority over the
curriculum
• IL program should be introduced as an enterprise-wide solution to
an enterprise-wide problem
• IL program should have goals that are agreed on by the teachers
and the librarians
• Avoid giving the message of exclusiveness to teachers
• Be mindful of the compactness of the curriculum
• Do not exhaust teachers by inundating them with a full array of IL
standards
• When introducing an IL program choose the time wisely
• Be prepared to define IL
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Pedagogy
Make effective use of instructional pedagogies
– support diverse approaches to teaching
– make effective use of instructional technologies and media
resources
– foster critical thinking and reflection
– support multiple learning styles
– support student-centered learning
– determine learning outcomes
– assess progress against learning outcomes
– build the program on students’ existing knowledge
– link information literacy to ongoing coursework and real-life
experiences appropriate to program and course level
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Outreach & promotion
Outreach / promotional activities for an IL program are the responsibility
of all members of the institution, not simply the librarians
• Emphasize the importance of IL and communicate a clear message
defining and describing the program and its value to targeted
audiences;
• Gauge the method most appropriate to the institution;
• Timing is crucial for successful promotion. Be well informed and
involved with the work of the instution;
• Provide targeted marketing and publicity to stakeholders;
• Target a wide variety of groups;
• Use a variety of outreach channels and media, both formal and
informal;
• Offer IL workshops and programs for teachers and staff
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Promoting strategies
• Make contact with key members of the staff
• Take advantage of available opportunities. Make links, where
appropriate, to information literacy when attending meetings
• Try to integrate an IL session into existing staff training programme
• Offer to train teachers in an aspect of IL, e.g. the use of a particular
database and its new features, and then use this as a selling point
• Offer to deliver a session in partnership with a teacher, e.g. in a session
on plagiarism and referencing
• Invite staff to IL events
• Tie-in discussions on IL with other school priorities such as combating
plagiarism
• Prepare a formal paper for the management
• Bring appropriate sections of official reports by educational and library
bodies to the attention of the institutional community
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Promoting to students
• When IL sessions are embedded in curricula, students have a
strong impetus to attend
• Otherwise, some well targeted publicity will be needed
• In order to maximise attendance:
– Get involved in starting the academic year events and highlight
the importance of the IL sessions students will be attending
– Ensure that the library orientation session is included in the
starting the academic year events
– Advertise training sessions on Blackboard or the school
intranet
– Create a promotional flyer to distribute students and display on
school notice boards
– Use the orientation session as a promotion opportunity to
advertise further events tailored to the particular needs of the
student group
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Evaluation
• Systematic ongoing process that should gather data regarding the
progress of instruction program toward meeting its goals and
objectives
• Influences decisions, guides allocation of resources, helps to
decide what to emphasize in the classroom
• It is not an end in itself; it is a way to get answers to important
questions that have to do with educating students effectively
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Evaluation
• Prepare an evaluation plan which addresses multiple measures
(needs assessment, participant reaction, learning outcomes, teaching
effectiveness, and overall effectiveness of instruction program)
• Articulate the evaluation criteria in planning documents
• Use multiple methods for assessment/evaluation
• Address specific learning outcomes
• Focuse on student performance, knowledge acquisition, and attitude
appraisal
• Assess both process and product
• Develop assessment instruments
• Coordinate with faculty to explore and implement performance-based
assesment methods
• Use assessment data in the revision and improvement of the program
• Periodicaly review the assessment/evaluation methods
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Characteristics of the learners
• Keeping the prospective users in mind is essential in the
development of instructional programs
• Characteristics of next generation learners:
– They were born during the computer age and grew up in a
technological world
– They are a much more technically sophisticated generation than
previous generations
– The visual image is the primary means of communication
– Multimedia – music, graphics, and video – is the preferred learning
and entertainment experience for many of them
– They have native ability to multitask
– They can handle the nonlinear approach (they are interactive and
experiential, and learning occurs through trial and error)
– They are computer literate, but are not information literate.
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Modes of instruction
Instruction takes place in many ways, these may include, but are not
limited to, providing:
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Course-integrated instruction
Drop-in workshops
Handouts and guides (print & electronic)
Web based instruction
Stand alone courses
– Credit / non-credit
– Requested / elective
• Subject specific instruction
• Tours
• Video presentations
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Identification of modes of instruction
• The modes selected should be consistent with the content and goals
of IL instruction
• Where appropriate, more than one mode of instruction should be
used based on knowledge of the wide variety of learning styles of
individuals and groups
• When possible, instruction should employ active learning strategies
and techniques that require learners to develop critical thinking skills
in concert with IL skills
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An example of best practice
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http://old.oslis.org/index.php
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OSLIS – Elementary
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OSLIS – Elementary
http://old.oslis.org/elementary/tutorials/elementaryGeneral.htm
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OSLIS – Middle & High School
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OSLIS – Middle & High School
http://old.oslis.org/secondary/tutorials/MidHighGeneral.htm
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OSLIS – Teachers & Librarians
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Public domain
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References
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ACRL. (2000). Information literacy competency standards for higher education.
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/informationliteracycompetency.htm
ACRL. (2003). Characteristics of programs of information literacy that illustrate best
practices: a guideline. http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/characteristics.cfm
ACRL. (2003). Guidelines for instruction programs in academic libraries.
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/ALA_print_layout_1_192693_192693.cfm
Gaunt, J & et al. (2007). Handbook for information literacy teaching. Cardiff: Cardiff
University.
Iannuzzi, P. (1997). Assessing libraries in support of campus missions: the
information literacy imperative. American Association of Higher Education
Conference on Assessment and Quality.
Keiser, B. E. (2008). Designing information literacy training programmes and action
plans. UNESCO IFAP Workshop, May 30-June 1. Montego Bay, Jamaica.
Lau, J. (2004). International guidelines on information literacy. IFLA.
Rockman, I. F. (2004). Integrating information literacy into the higher education
curriculum: practical models for transformation. San Francisco: John Wiley.
Snavely, L. (2001). Information literacy standards for higher education: an
international perspective. 67th IFLA Council and General Conference, August 16-25.
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Thanks
Prof. Dr. Serap Kurbanoglu
serap@hacettepe.edu.tr
Hacettepe University
Department of Information Management