User Education and Information Literacy Programs: the Experience of Bologna University UN staff training week - Reykiavjk, october 2011

Transcription

1 User Education and Information Literacy Programs: the Experience of Bologna University UN staff training week - Reykiavjk, october 2011

2 A few notes about the history of the University of Bologna The Alma Mater - University of Bologna is the oldest university in the western world! Conventionally recognized founding year 11 th century - Scholars of grammar, rhetoric and logic started to hold law studies. Among them were Pepo and Irnerius Costitutio Habita: the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I recognized the autonomy of university research and studies from any other power. 12 th century The university was organized into societates of pupils and scholars, remunerated through the tuition fees paid by students. 13 th century The students grouped together into nationes 14 th century The Schools of Jurists were flanked by those of the so-called "liberal arts" 18 th century Foundation of the Institute of Sciences, devoted to studying experimental, medical and physical-mathematical sciences 1988 Signing of the Magna Charta Universitatum Europaeum 1999 Declaration of Bologna and setting up of a European Higher Education Area

3 And some data about the University of Bologna today 5 Campuses based in Bologna, Forlì, Cesena, Ravenna, Rimini and one decentralized location in Buenos Aires About 85 thousand students enrolled, making this university one of the largest in Italy (A.Y. 2008/09) 23 Faculties, 70 Departments, 21 Research Centres, 224 degree programmes activated (A.Y. 2009/10) 78 PhD/Doctoral degree programmes, 64 Master's degree programmes, 69 higher training courses 3,193 permanent teachers and researchers, 3,103 TA units, some 1,800 contract teachers and over 2,000 contract collaborators involved to a varying extent in research and teaching activities 934 thousand sqm surface area assigned to teaching, scientific and cultural activities distributed among the 5 Campuses 231 institutional websites, 126 web services and about 90,000 online contents are an integral part of the University Web Portal

4 ALMA MATER THE STRUCTURES 5 Campuses in Bologna, Forlì, Cesena, Ravenna, Rimini and a decentralized base in Buenos Aires. Other teaching structures are based in Cesenatico, Faenza, Imola, and Ozzano. 23 Faculties, 70 Departments and 1 Research Institute, 21 Research Centres, 11 Service Centres, 8 Special Structures, 63 Libraries and 17 Museum Structures.

5 FOR FURTHER DETAILS Web Portal of the University of Bologna Annual Report Facts&Figures Research Learning Opportunities Internationalization Student-Oriented Services Alma Mater Support

6 SERVICE STRUCTURES: LIBRARIES The University of Bologna incorporates a huge and complex bibliographic heritage, which is integrated in the SBA - the University Library System. The University Library System (SBA) is composed of: 63 libraries 5 thousand seats for reading and investigations 3.7 million monographs 23 thousand online periodicals 236 databases 137 thousand electronic books

7 Information literacy project at the library system In 2001 the University of Bologna started a large Digital Library Project ( AlmaDL ); in the second phase of the Project, (2003) a proposal was made to use part of the budget to develop two related sub-projects: one aimed at developing a digital reference service and the other was on information literacy teaching The information literacy teaching sub-project funded two important initiatives: a Course Training for trainers the production of learning objects (tutorials) for basic information literacy

8 Information literacy project at the library system The information literacy teaching project was promoted by the library system (SBA), with the following goals: to create a better and more structured offer for students training to increase the visibility of the training actions and to give more stability and continuity to this service

9 Information literacy project at the library system to standardize the user education and information literacy cousers and to improve their quality in order to get credits as with other curriculum subjets to centrally supervise the user education courses and to facilitate the negotiation with the Academic Staff in order to obtain the necessary institutional rewards (credits)

10 Information literacy project at the library system The course Training for trainers, conducted by a Consultant (who was an expert trainer, with qualifications in pedagogy and psychology) involved 64 librarians (out of 307 employed at the University of Bologna in 2003), for 40 hours (the course was repeated five times) The training also included as project work a simulation of a real course taught by participants to the Teacher/Consultant A follow-up, after one year, reviewed the results in practice

11 Information literacy project at the library system The content of the course Training for trainers included: Basics of the communication theory Listening and communication techniques Learning styles and strategies Basics of teaching: course planning and management Learning and the group: learning agreement; expectation and motivation; question management; dealing with conflicts; group dynamics.

12 Information literacy project at the library system The report based on the feed-back questionnaire at the end of the course shows the following results: 59,52% of participants agree on the high coherence of course content and objectives 52,38% of participants consider the course useful 38,10% of participants consider the content difficult to implement at University level.

13 Information literacy project at the library system This training was very important and crucial for the development of the user education activities in our university, because after this course, the librarians felt much more confident, skilled and motivated for promoting educational actions among the students

14 CIL: Information Literacy course The second sub-project was the production of the e- learning objects for basic information literacy: The learning objects for basic information literacy, Corso d Information Literacy, CIL modules, was the first tutorial produced in Italy on this subject. CIL was made following the International Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education of the Association College Research Libraries CIL is included in the International UNESCO-IFLA Resource Directory on Information Literacy:

15 CIL: Information Literacy course CIL can be attended by users in two forms: 1) in self-instruction mode 2) on the Moodle e-learning platform These two modes allow librarians to use the tutorials inside their information literacy programs or to recommend students to read and follow the modules before starting their research. CIL has also an English version of the tutorial for the foreign students

16 CIL: Information Literacy course After the success of the first tutorial CIL we developed two more tutorials: one about how to use the Italian union catalogue of serials (ACNP) and the second one about the Online Public Access Catalogue of Bologna s Libraries Network of the National Library Service (SBN): Periodicals opac Books opac

17 Statistics on accessing Tutorials (2010) Cil Accessible ita Cil Accessible old Multimedial old/eng 933 Multimedial old/ita 2502 Periodicals opac Tutorial Books opac Tutorial Total

18 CIL: Information Literacy course Presently, the University of Bologna Libraries Information Literacy website lists in the archive section more than eighty courses and seminars for students and special user groups. ( ve/archivio-delle-iniziative-di-formazione) In many cases a professor sponsors the courses/seminars (that are held by the librarians), and assigns credits to the successful students.

19 Information literacy project at the library system Some data about the developpment of the service over the years year Number of Libraries offering the service Number of Libraries that not offering the service Total of participants Total of training hours

20 Information literacy project at the library system But we still have some problems.. The follow-up seminar reviewed the initiatives developed after the course and most librarians reported frustration, because the University Governance did not award credits to the students as was expected As matter of fact the top management of the library system unfortunately wasn t politically strong enough during negotiations to succeed in including library courses in the curriculum Nearly all participants agreed on the fact that students are not attracted to attend a course without credit rewards ; but the only persons entitled to assign credits in the current regulations of the Italian University is the Professor or Teacher of an official course.

21 Information literacy project at the library system Therefore an agreement with a Professor to assign credits to the attending students had to be made. This path has been followed in recent years and obtains good results. But in the areas where it is not possible to obtain such an agreement, the training activities have been subjected to a consistent slowdown

22 Challanges and open problems The main models in the relationship between the information literacy training actions and the curriculum are the following: extra-curriculum (e.g. workshops not attached to any particular programme) inter-curriculum (contributing at some point) intra-curriculum (embedding) stand-alone (a separate module in the course curriculum).

23 Challanges and open problems Unfortunately in Italy there is a law forbidding administrative and technical staff of the universities to teach; this is a strong obstacle to the development of this service As a consequence of this regulation, librarians must each time adapt their training initiatives following one of the 4 available models, depending on the context;so there is not only one way In this context it is very important to develop the negotiation with the Academic Body and with the top management of the university

24 Alina Renditiso Library System Skype: alina.renditiso