engleski

Information Literacy Online: An Erasmus+ Project to Improve Students’ Competencies

Motivation and Background: Information Literacy (IL) is “the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning” (American Library Association [ALA], 2016). IL as a social key competence is particularly essential in post-secondary education and research. According to many studies (e.g. Rubinić, Stričević, & Juric, 2013 ; Maurer, Schlögl, & Dreisiebner, 2016), student’s information literacy levels are generally low. Accordingly, in November 2016 the EU project ILO was started with the aim to develop, evaluate and disseminate a multilingual Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for developing information literacy focusing on higher education students. Expected Outcome: MOOCs are online courses with no entry barriers aiming at unlimited participation. The ILO project will at first concentrate on information literacy elements which are relevant for all subjects/disciplines. Examples for such general information literacy elements are Boolean operators, basic principles in knowledge organization, or basic knowledge of copyright law. IL also covers subject-specific elements, so the project will demonstrate the applicability of the generic information literacy MOOC to two exemplary disciplines: Business Administration and Psychology. A major shortcoming of current IL courses is the lack of self-assessment components. Therefore, a central innovative approach of our MOOC will be the implementation of technology based assessment components which allow students to get feedback on their learning success. The MOOC content will be developed for six European cultural and language groups: English, German, Spanish, Catalan, Slovenian and Croatian. The multilingual approach will not only consider formal translation but also cultural-specific differences. The project will strongly endeavor to evaluate the MOOC in several phases and with different methods. Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank the project team members Christian Schlögl (Graz), Thomas Mandl (Hildesheim), Maja Žumer and Tanja Merčun Kariž (Ljubljana), Franjo Pehar and Ivanka Stričević (Zadar), Lyn Robinson (London) and Ángel Borrego (Barcelona) for preparing the presented project concept. The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

information literacy, MOOC, education projects

Poster istog naslova predstavljen je i na skupu LIBER 2017: http://bib.irb.hr/901149