Keywords

academic libraries, courses, digital learning, information literacy, university teachers, Finland

Description

In Finland, digitalization is taken as the basis for the development of education: for creating new kinds of learning resources, learning environments, and pedagogy. From primary schools to universities, digital learning is essential. In digital learning, libraries play an important role. University libraries spend most of their acquisition budget on digital information resources and actively promote high-quality open access resources. In digital learning, the libraries and librarians' expertise in digital information resources, in information and digital literacies, and in open research and open science, are vital. Information literacy education for students, even information literacy courses included in the curricula, is an established task of university libraries. However, information literacy courses for university teachers have seldom been arranged or researched. Pioneeringly, information literacy is now included in university pedagogy in a research-based teaching development project called HELLA – Higher Education Learning Lab. In HELLA, a new study module (60 ECTS) in university pedagogy is developed and piloted in order to strengthen the pedagogic and digital competencies of university teachers. The Tritonia Academic Library is responsible for planning and piloting the course "Digital information resources and information literacy in teaching" (5 ETCS). This course aims to develop university teachers' pedagogic competence to use digital information resources and practices of open science in their teaching and research. The vision of the course is to integrate information literacy into teaching so that the teachers with their own behavior can give a model for students' information skills. The course is based on digital learning, utilizing for example the methods of hybrid learning and flipped classroom. This paper analyses special characteristics, challenges, and possibilities of information literacy courses for university teachers based on digital learning.

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A digital information literacy course for university teachers: Challenges and possibilities

In Finland, digitalization is taken as the basis for the development of education: for creating new kinds of learning resources, learning environments, and pedagogy. From primary schools to universities, digital learning is essential. In digital learning, libraries play an important role. University libraries spend most of their acquisition budget on digital information resources and actively promote high-quality open access resources. In digital learning, the libraries and librarians' expertise in digital information resources, in information and digital literacies, and in open research and open science, are vital. Information literacy education for students, even information literacy courses included in the curricula, is an established task of university libraries. However, information literacy courses for university teachers have seldom been arranged or researched. Pioneeringly, information literacy is now included in university pedagogy in a research-based teaching development project called HELLA – Higher Education Learning Lab. In HELLA, a new study module (60 ECTS) in university pedagogy is developed and piloted in order to strengthen the pedagogic and digital competencies of university teachers. The Tritonia Academic Library is responsible for planning and piloting the course "Digital information resources and information literacy in teaching" (5 ETCS). This course aims to develop university teachers' pedagogic competence to use digital information resources and practices of open science in their teaching and research. The vision of the course is to integrate information literacy into teaching so that the teachers with their own behavior can give a model for students' information skills. The course is based on digital learning, utilizing for example the methods of hybrid learning and flipped classroom. This paper analyses special characteristics, challenges, and possibilities of information literacy courses for university teachers based on digital learning.