Building Blackboard Innovation Practice Platform Based on Multimedia Literacy

“Considering some deficiency of college students’ innovative project construction and general lack of innovation incubation platform, this paper puts forward a framework of Blackboard-based multimedia innovation practice platform. Logically, the platform contains three correlated layers: the multimedia literacy layer (foundation), incubation layer (core) and innovation practice layer (goal). From the perspective of multimedia literacy, the function of the platform is designed. Several years of practices have proved that the building of the platform is helping and motivating more and more college students to step on the way of innovation practice.”

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Archival Literacy for History Students: Identifying Faculty Expectations of Archival Research Skills

“Although finding, interpreting, and using archives is inherent in the study of history, no standard identifies the archival research competencies college history students should possess. The purpose of this study is to identify history faculty expectations of undergraduates regarding their archival research skills and, based on those expectations, to create a list of archival research competencies that could be incorporated into the history classroom or introduced by the archivist in archival literacy sessions.”

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An Investigation into the Impact of Visual Aids in Post-Compulsory Education

“This study seeks insight into the use of visual aids in contemporary post-compulsory teaching. This thesis comprises a two-part study and employs a mixed methods approach. The first part inquires into teachers’ and lecturers’ practice with regard to their visual aids, and the second compares the effectiveness of text, images and imagery displayed in support of a lecture.The findings of the thesis are combined to propose a principle of Visual Working Memory Utilisation (VWMU), upon which future research into visual aid design and use in post compulsory education might be based.”

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Visual Literacy Standards in Higher Education: New Opportunities for Libraries and Student Learning

“Visual literacy is essential for 21st century learners. Across the higher education curriculum, students are being asked to use and produce images and visual media in their academic work, and they must be prepared to do so. The Association of College and Research Libraries has published the Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, which, for the first time, outline specific visual literacy learning outcomes. These Standards present new opportunities for libraries to expand their role in student learning through standards-based teaching and assessment, and to contribute to campus-wide collaborative efforts to develop students’ skills and critical thinking with regard to visual materials.”

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Visual Literacy and the Digital Native: Another Look

“A conceptualization of visual proficiency is offered. A survey is described which asked college students (N=358) to identify five photographs, five symbols, and five paintings that are generally recognized to be “famous”. About 27% of all respondents claimed to recognize all the photographs, 23% recognized all the symbols, and 3% recognized all the paintings. About 14% correctly identified all the photographs, 4% correctly identified all the symbols and only 1% correctly identified all the paintings. The findings suggest that today’s college students may be adrift in a sea of images with little ability to see beyond their own generation.”

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Transforming Information Literacy in the Sciences Through the Lens of e-Science

“In 2011, the ACRL Science & Technology Section (STS) completed its five-year review of the Information Literacy Standards for Science and Engineering/Technology. Predicated by the evolving nature of scholarship and research in the sciences, the reviewing task force strongly recommended that the standards be revised. This paper considers the broad recommendations of the task force, using the framework of e-Science – team-based, data-driven science – to address areas of necessary transformation in information literacy: an advanced team-based model that crosses disciplinary boundaries; a recognition that individuals and groups not only consume information, but also produce it; and stronger interplay between information literacy and complementary literacies. This paper also extrapolates beyond the sciences, referencing broader trends within higher education.”

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The Poster Session as a Vehicle for Teaching the Scholarly Communication Process

“This chapter will examine the role of the librarian in teaching the scholarly communication process, outline the relationship between a library and a formal undergraduate research program, detail how the poster session operates, and look ahead to how libraries can support expanding undergraduate research programs.”

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Proposing a Metaliteracy Model to Redefine Information Literacy

“Metaliteracy is envisioned as a comprehensive model for information literacy to advance critical thinking and reflection in social media, open learning settings, and online communities. At this critical time in higher education, an expansion of the original definition of information literacy is required to include the interactive production and sharing of original and repurposed digital materials. Metaliteracy provides an overarching and unifying framework that builds on the core information literacy competencies while addressing the revolutionary changes in how learners communicate, create, and distribute information in participatory environments. Central to the metaliteracy model is a metacognitive component that encourages learners to continuously reflect on their own thinking and literacy development in these fluid and networked spaces. This approach leads to expanded competencies for adapting to the ongoing changes in emerging technologies and for advancing critical thinking and empowerment for producing, connecting, and distributing information as independent and collaborative learners.”

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The Neoliberal Library

“Information literacy, from its emergence to its recent formulation, has and continues to uncritically adopt and reproduce neoliberalism within a closed discursive system that works to deny alternative conceptions of library pedagogy and instruction. The knowledge produced by librarianship and information literacy discursive practices is an enactment of power that naturalizes and authorizes neoliberalism and constrains the questioning of inequalities. Library instruction and pedagogy specifically and librarianship more generally need to begin promoting an awareness of the fields’ embeddedness within a neoliberal political and economic context, and engaging critically with that context.”

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Navigating the Information-Scape: Information Visualization and Student Search

“The purpose of this paper is to investigate three tools based on principles of information visualization and measure their impact on undergraduates’ abilities to generate keywords for database research.”

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Measuring Visual Literacy Ability in Grade Level Pre-Service Teachers

“This descriptive study is preliminary study to investigate the measurement of VL ability across the United States in order to establish a baseline VL ability measure from which to make vital decisions in the purposeful training of visual literacy within teacher preparatory programs and professional development within school districts. This study describes the mean performance levels of 125 participants collected from a randomly stratified national population within five of the six regional accrediting agencies for public higher education. The measures of central tendency and variance for the individual skills within the Avgerinou (2001) VL Index indicate a need for growth, in particular, in the intellectual skills of concrete concepts, defined concepts, and higher order rules. The implications of these findings emphasize the need for more development in critical engagement with visuals especially as it applies to Common Core State Standards assessments, consumer-driven marketing and power roles, and new modes of digital authorship in a media-saturated society.”

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Iterative Approach to Implicit Student-Generated Mobile Learning to Promote Visual Literacy and Peer Mediated Learning

“This paper aims to report early findings of the second iteration of an implicit student-generated mobile learning project that promotes visual literacy and peer mediated learning. The first iteration was conducted with first year health science students at the University of Queensland, Australia, in 2013. We found that while the video assessment task may have aided learning for each student around their specific chosen topic, overall course learning outcomes did not improve. This was perhaps due to a failure of the peer mediated learning aspect of the learning activity. Furthermore, the labour intensive nature of the task may have attenuated overall performance in the course. Acting on these findings, we adjusted the visually based, peer-to-peer mobile learning activity accordingly.”

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Information Literacy Training in Higher Education as an Introduction to Lifelong Learning. The Needs of the Curriculum Reform

“The article discusses the need to modify the curricula of ICT in higher education. Contemporary university students seem to function well in the world of new technology, however, they have problems when working with information, including the identification of information needs, the selection of search tools adequate to the task and evaluating information found on the Internet. The curriculum of ICT at universities very often focuses only on narrow technical aspects. There is a necessity to introduce a broad perspective covering the organization, planning and implementation of individual learning in a digital information environment. It is a very important part of the development of the information culture of the young generation and lifelong learning process.”

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Digital Literacy: A Demand for Nonlinear Thinking Styles

“This paper makes a case for a direct relationship between digital literacy and nonlinear thinking styles, articulates a demand for nonlinear thinking styles in education and the workplace, and states implications for a connection between nonlinear thinking styles visual literacy, and intuitive artistic practice.”

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Cognitive Visual Literacy: From Theories and Competencies to Pedagogy

“Visual literacy is an important part of being literate in the twenty-first century because people are interacting with visual materials with increasing frequency and immediacy as a result of the digital age. By understanding cognitive theories associated with visual literacy and combining them with the ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, librarians can help students become visually literate. In addition to describing these cognitive theories and ACRL standards, the author provides practical suggestions as to how they may be utilized in visual literacy instruction.”

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Beyond the Physical Archive: Imagining Primary Source Literacies in the Digital Age

“In this paper, we propose strategies for outreach and collaboration with faculty and archivists that are centered on digitized primary sources. These strategies are based on our experiences and informed by a review of the literature of teaching faculty in several disciplines, as well as the archival literature, to identify current methods of teaching and supporting undergraduates’ research with primary sources.4 Next, we present examples of activities, assignments, and approaches to digitized primary source pedagogy that are linked to relevant information literacy and visual literacy standards. Finally, we offer concluding thoughts on the development of primary source literacies, not just in an era of digital abundance, but at a time in which the rapidly expanding field of digital humanities has the potential to complicate and alter students’ relation to sources even more dramatically.”

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Beyond Persepolis: A Bibliographic Essay on Graphic Novels and Comics by Women

“This paper provides a brief history of women and independent comics, tracing the medium’s development from the 1970s underground comix movement to the present day. Individual creators and their works are discussed. Guides to collecting graphic novels exist; however, the vast majority of the artists included in these guides are men. This paper fills a gap by introducing librarians to several women graphic novelists who have been overlooked thus far.”

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Art and Art History

“Because of the iterative nature of art history between observation and investigation, the library becomes part of the research process as a matter of course. The value of the library collections may not be as obvious to the studio art student, especially given that the web provides an abundance of opportunities to find visual materials for inspiration and social networks to gather information. Through effective library instruction that responds to their unique needs, we can help both populations become successful researchers and benefit from all the library can offer.”

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An Integrated Approach to Developing Visual Literacy

“Developing instructional approaches and learning activities on applicable visual literacy training for K-12 teachers can be a challenge to teacher preparation programs and courses. This study illustrated how an integrated approach, which incorporated learning activities/projects and blended learning process, was adapted and implemented into one graduate education course for increasing pre-service and in-service teachers’ visual literacy skills. The effectiveness of such an instruction approach on participants’ visual literacy competences was examined. Most participants indicated that they met all of Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.”

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Academic Libraries and Writing Programs: Partnering for Success

“This study was designed to examine the information seeking strategies of community college students as they worked to compose their first-semester freshman composition research paper. Through comparing pre- and post-course surveys and content analysis looking for key terms and phrases found in the students’ Information Literacy Narrative writing assignment, the researcher sought to determine the effectiveness of course integrated information literacy modules strategically provided throughout various times of the semester.”

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