Embedding information skills on student learning: providing the models

This article was first published in the Wolverhampton Intellectual Repository and E-Theses (WIRE). There is no printed version.This Phase 3 (evaluation and embedding) project has been developed from a highly successful earlier project: Embedding information skills on student learning: making the difference (2006). The earlier project produced a programme of information literacy skills, based on SCONUL���s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which was delivered to two modules of first year students from the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences (HLSS) in bite-sized presentations at the end of their lectures. Importantly, it found that: ���an effective Information Literacy programme delivered at the very beginning of Undergraduate life can contribute significantly to students��� ability to find, use and record information and increase their confidence regarding academic performance.��� Bastable and Morris (2006). Valued by students, it clearly had a part to play in the learning experience of first year undergraduates and potentially in Schools��� retention and employability strategies. This was the impetus for a Phase 3 project which would test the information literacy programme on a more diverse range of students and subjects within HLSS and provide models which would encourage further take-up within the School and other Schools in the University. Other important outcomes from the previous project also needed to be carried forward and tested in a wider context: ���We as librarians have been able to assess our approaches to the design and delivery of a structured Information Literacy programme. We have had the opportunity to work collaboratively as a team of librarians with academic staff and, crucial to the embedding process, earn important space on first semester, first year modules. We now know that the bite-sized sessions of information skills which are dove-tailed into existing lectures are a successful way to deliver the programme.��� Bastable and Morris (2006). It was this combination of the following three features in Phase 2 which distinguished it from any other work being conducted in the field of information literacy: the partnership between academics and librarians, a structured information literacy programme and delivery in bite-sized sessions. So, it was these three crucial areas which would be put to the test in this current project by the delivery to an extended range of students