Working together – integration of information literacy in educational programs at Blekinge Institute of Technology

Abstract

Previous experience, literature reviews, as well as continuous contacts with the Schools of Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) have led us to assume the following statements for the Information literacy (IL) education at BTH:

• Information literacy is a generic skill which should be taught as a compulsory part of the educational programs
• The integration of the teaching of IL in the educational programs is necessary to achieve qualitatively good results concerning IL
• The Schools of BTH are responsible for the IL education of students
• The library can, together with the Schools, create and offer IL modules adapted to the educational programs

Today IL education at BTH is quite extensive, but also irregular and highly dependent on contacts with individual teachers, which makes IL education vulnerable. In order to bring this problem to light, and inspired by the Borås model (presented at Creating knowledge VI), as well as Sydostmodellen, the library at BTH contacted the Board of Education during the winter of 2012, and presented a plan on how the library and Schools at BTH could cooperate in order to integrate IL education within all educational programs. Suggestions regarding content, extent, progression, timing, assessment and learning outcomes of the IL education are the focal point of the presented plan. As the first result of the proposal, the library has been commissioned by the BTH Quality Assurance Council to review the situation regarding IL education at BTH together with the educational program directors. In cooperation with the programs, the library should also make a plan for each program on how to integrate IL education as a part of generic skills.

At the conference, the following themes were addressed and discussed during our presentation: sustainability of IL education, collaboration within the academy regarding IL education and how integration of IL education at university educational programs is reflected in research on IL in general.