In the 1960s, four scientific organizations from around the globe set up a charitable organization–a publisher–charged with serving that community’s discipline-specific information needs. This was primarily done through the creation of an A&I database, but serving those information needs also extended to enhancing the community’s understanding of information and the information ecosystem.
To do so, the publisher created a literacy and outreach manager role. Efforts to enhance information literacy amongst students and professionals in the field have included creating guidance about: good practice for literature searching; the publication process; predatory publishers; and, discipline-specific systematic review methodology.
The latest effort has been to design and build a lengthy SpringShare LibWizard quiz. This quiz is a training tutorial for the database (with one version per vendor platform), but it is also a vehicle for instilling principles of information literacy. Thanks to the publisher’s robust global networks with academic and industry-based librarians and researchers, this quiz can potentially have substantial reach and influence in the field. This PechaKucha presentation will capture the project’s challenges and solutions.
First, the motivation for building the quiz—to teach students to use the database, to understand that and how it differs from a search engine, and to have a basic understanding of controlled vocabulary. This, hopefully, can help solve the problem of poor student research skills and weak bibliographies.
Second, logistical issues. Why use LibWizard as the vehicle for the training tutorial? Why use the quiz function rather than the tutorial function? What are the challenges in building a thirty-page tutorial in a tool mostly designed for shorter objects?
Third, pedagogical issues. Where does the balance lie between showing where to click on the interface and dwelling on the quality of information and interpreting the results that a search returns? What might a person taking the quiz know already? How long can a quiz be that must be completed in one sitting? What are the most important points to emphasize and reinforce with the quiz questions? How can questions be structured so that learning is active?
Third, reception and roll out. Although the tutorial will be freely available for anyone to use who wants to—anyone who finds it online can take it—the vision of its success is for it to be integrated into library sessions and course modules at universities that subscribe to the database. One librarian at a US university has said that they will use it for a flipped learning exercise before students attend face-to-face library sessions. Another academic lecturer has asked to have a version branded with their course number and library webpage and they’ll embed it into a mandatory introductory course. Will the quiz be adopted more broadly? If so, how and where?
As this project of creating a web-based quiz to support database searching and information literacy skills is just being rolled out, a PechaKucha presentation has the potential to capture the most important lessons and challenges encountered in the earliest stages of its release.
Carol Hollier
IFIS Publishing, Winnersh, Wokingham, UK
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