Information Literacy Demystified

Information literacy is specifically listed as one of the core graduate attibutes of students undertaking both access and undergraduate programs at CQUniversity: 

• Core Graduate Attributes 
• Access Attributes (Enabling Programs)

While information literacy is not specifically referred to as a postgraduate attribute, it is implied in some of the attributes listed:

• Postgraduate Coursework Graduate Attributes
• Postgraduate Research Graduate Attributes

The Library's support of learning and teaching across the University is achieved through collaboration and consultation with major stakeholders. Our librarians will:

• be recognised as information specialists in the area of learning and teaching through our collaborations with, and assistance to, the wider University community.
• become a recognised partner with academic colleagues in developing the information literacy understandings and abilities of students.
• deliver a positive information experience by providing relevant and timely learning and teaching support.
• focus on continuous improvement of our learning and teaching support.

Instruction aimed at developing students' information literacy knowledge and skills can be embedded within a course in various ways:

• adding relevant content in a Moodle course site
• integrating information literacy instruction as part of an assessment 'package'. As well as providing details about a task, assessment criteria etc, support could be included to clarify specific concepts or requirements e.g. identifying scholarly information.
• framing formative or summative assessment tasks so that students are required to utilise strategies and sources that will support the development of information literacy. Samples of this type of assessment task can be found in the document below:

Information literacy instruction can be delivered in a variety of formats:

• Moodle webpage 

• Library created video 

• Library created learning object (e.g. Boolean operators, phrase searching)
  
  

  Phrase searching involves placing double quotation marks ("__") around two or more words to create a search term.

  This technique narrows the search to retrieve only those results in which the exact phrase appears.

  Example: "behaviour management"

• YouTube video (e.g. Research Secrets Revealed: Types of Information Sources)

• Library Guide (e.g. Evaluating Books, Journals, Journal Articles and Websites)

          A complete listing of current Library Guides can be found here.

• Library Guide extract (e.g. Scholarly vs Non-scholarly resources)

In collaboration with academic staff, Librarians can create or source information literacy materials such as those listed above or design other materials directly related to assessment items.