The biggest barriers I encounter to teaching information literacy to students is time and access. I have a flexible timetable, which is great, but also means I can’t guarantee access to students to teach them the information literacy skills that form my curriculum and that they need to navigate an information-rich world. Over my eleven-plus years teaching in the school library setting, I’ve approached teaching information literacy through many different methods, depending on what time and access and programming was available to me. They all have benefits and challenges.
Here are the approaches I’ve used in the past
Lessons across all subjects
1 lesson per year per subject per term, allowing me to make information literacy skills specific and context relevant. Requires all subjects and all teachers to allow this one lesson per term. The lessons are timely and relevant to the subject assessment and skills required. This is a time consuming model, but provides a really effective spread across subjects. I think this is my preferred method for consistency, but requires great collaboration and time.
Whole cohort sessions
This was enabled through a program called Flex where I was able to access the whole cohort at once, in fortnightly sessions. This enabled consistency and made it far more time effective and doable in my busy schedule. While the whole cohort environment was great for explicit teaching, it was harder to make the sessions practical and embedded within subject context.
On demand sessions
These happen when I approach subject teachers or they approach me, asking for an on-demand, just-in-time session on skills relevant to their subject and task. This model is responsive but really inconsistent as some teachers will work with you, while other classes miss out. It’s also time consuming and often means I’m in demand at peak times and can’t always accommodate all requests.
Flipped learning and micro courses
In an effort to duplicate myself, I’ve also build online courses and how-to videos on the skills students need. I’ve created a short course in referencing that students can access or teachers can use or assign to students. I’ve also created step-by-step videos and linked resource guides for teachers to use for on-demand sessions when my schedules can’t accommodate all the requests. This is a great model for access but relies on engagement and can lose the human touch that face-to-face teaching and learning brings.
How do you gain access to students to teach information literacy? What’s your preferred method?
For this year I’ve been accessing classes in their health line, with each health class in year 7 having 1 library lesson on their health line a fortnight. This has been successful, and I’m hoping to expand it next year.