An architect’s education requires a broad mastery of visual skills. Particularly in design courses, students must demonstrate the skills necessary for the use and production of images to achieve a competitive academic performance. However, the development of these skills in students and the evaluation of their work by faculty members are based mostly on subjective criteria supported by the faculty’s experience. The research used digital photography as an object of research to understand the processes of learning in architectural design. The results help to establish new educational strategies for the development of visual skills to be used during the design process. The collaboration between faculty members and librarians of the School of Architecture at the University of Puerto Rico presented new partnerships that have enriched the planning process of different pedagogical activities for the advancement of knowledge with the development of visual literacy skills in students.
When faculty were asked to use online assignments to make up the class time lost due to Hurricane Sandy, librarians at Lehman College’s Leonard Lief Library spotted a new opportunity for the Library’s Web comics. This article describes the partnership between the Library and the College’s Art Department that led to the development of the Web comics, provides readers with a model for responding to circumstances creatively, and puts forward an approach for combining digital learning objects with writing assignments to meet faculty needs.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“As images become ubiquitous and more accessible in digital culture, their role in the creation and dissemination of knowledge across academic disciplines is growing. Academic institutions need to adapt to this change by introducing new skill sets into the undergraduate curriculum. The term visual literacy encompasses the competencies necessary to critically use, produce, and analyze images. This article surveys the current methods academic librarians are using to introduce visual literacy instruction within their institutions.”
“… the creation of separate standards for IL and visual literacy (VL) suggests a disconnect between these constructs, despite the fact that words and images often function together as information carriers. IL standards seem to address verbal literacy, while visual or media literacy addresses the information associated with visual media. Given the increase in visual content carriers, a logical step for IL instruction would be the integration of VL and IL into a seamless literacy program (Harris, 2010). The presenters will suggest ways to combine VL and IL into a rhetorically based, critical-thinking approach to information. This approach can enrich IL and critical-thinking instruction, as learners are taught to apply rigorous criteria to texts regardless of their media form.”
“The importance of images and visual media in contemporary culture is changing what it means to be literate in the 21st century. Today’s society is highly visual, and visual imagery is no longer supplemental to other forms of information. New digital technologies have made it possible for almost anyone to create and share visual media. Yet the pervasiveness of images and visual media does not necessarily mean that individuals are able to critically view, use, and produce visual content. Individuals must develop these essential skills in order to engage capably in a visually oriented society.”
“Many libraries and librarians have embraced graphic novels. A number of books, articles, and presentations have focused on the history of the medium and offered advice on building and maintaining collections, but very little attention has been given the question of how integrate graphic novels into a library’s instructional efforts. This paper will explore the characteristics of graphic novels that make them a valuable resource for librarians who focus on research and information literacy instruction, identify skills and competencies that can be taught by the study of graphic novels, and will provide specific examples of how to incorporate graphic novels into instruction.”
“It is critical for college students to know about intellectual property and copyright and the proper use of images, text, audio and graphics in the digital world, but most undergraduate students have little understanding of what copyright involves and why we want them to learn about it. We will share our experience working with teaching faculty to plan and implement a program focused on teaching IT undergraduates about digital responsibilities and rights using library 2.0 instruction tools, including Clicker, Prezi, LibGuide, SlideShare, and BlackBoard.”
“Critic John Berger’s ideas about seeing are still relevant. Many are certainly enveloped in the contemporary academic librarian’s definition of visual literacy. As one might expect, visual literacy has particular necessity for the librarian, like me, who works in a Visual Resources Center (VRC). I am very concerned with the habits of seeing among students and instructors… There are several challenges to visual literacy on campus. When these challenges are not met, there is reliance on convention and old habits. These challenges include resource unawareness, discomfort with technology, and information overload. As our VRC evolved from a slide library to a fully equipped digital media center, our ability to answer such challenges transformed.”