Multi-literacy instruction

Librarians were always the group of professionals that took responsibility for the reliability of information and protected their participants from the bad epistemic consequences caused by inaccurate information. This is no longer true. This was before current technology gave participants unlimited access to information on the Internet. The proportion of the world’s population accessing online information continues to increase. According to Nielsen Rating, over 30 percent of the world’s population used the Internet in 2010, up in the world by over 44 percent over the past ten years (Neilsen, 2010). A Pew Internet survey reports that 45 percent of U.S. Internet users make major life decisions based on information they acquire from the Internet (Horrigan, 2006). Library participants are using the Internet to acquire their information and making important decisions with it. They are acquiring knowledge from a media where anyone can write anything they want, true or false, anonymously and without consequences. This method of acquisition is threatening the epistemological protection librarians have provided. The problem is one of verifiability: the participants do not have a way to verify whether information is accurate or inaccurate. Inaccurate information is any misleading information. It can occur when information is incomplete or incorrect and happens through human error or outright lying. Inaccurate information can be unintentional or intentional and that is the difference between the subsets. Disinformation and misinformation are two different forms of inaccurate information (Fallis, 2009). Misinformation is inaccurate information created through honest mistakes and has no intention of misleading the user. The creation of disinformation is intentional and deliberately meant to mislead the user (Fallis, 2009).

The verification is even more difficult with disinformation. This type of inaccurate information is harder to identify because the creator wants to hide the fact that it is inaccurate (Fallis, 2009). Floridi claimed newspapers and television have already become ‘instruments of disinformation’ and believed the Internet would become a ‘superhighway of disinformation’ (Floridi, 1995). The Internet provides a perfect environment for disinformation. There are no quality control mechanisms to evaluate the content, no group of information and knowledge professionals to verify what sources are reliable and which ones are not. Brooks Jackson, the director of FactCheck.com and author of Unspun, Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation, calls the Internet ‘a conduit of new gushers of toxic information sludge.’ He claims disinformation is prevalent on the Internet and difficult to distinguish from the good stuff (Jackson, 2007). The recommended solutions for controlling disinformation by librarians fit into two categories, regulation and education.

There is a belief that library participants come to librarians to acquire knowledge and that knowledge is defined as true beliefs. Epistemology is the study of acquiring knowledge and epistemologists believe the generation of false beliefs from inaccurate information makes people worse off than they were before receiving the information. Therefore, this is considered one of the worst epistemic consequences (Fallis, 2008). Librarians have long been concerned with the epistemic consequences that library participants experience and protected them to make the consequences positive. Accurate and inaccurate information sit side by side and participants have no way to verify the accuracy. How can librarians help the participants verify information? Regulating the information on the Internet is not a plausible solution for librarians. In 2008 engineers at Google determined there were over a trillion unique URLs on the Internet, and the number of individual web pages out there grows by several billion pages per day (Alpert and Hajaj, 2008). Regulating information on the Internet is just not possible. As Rowan Pelling, a journalist for the Telegraph UK, wrote recently, ‘Regulating the Internet is beyond mere mortals’ (Pelling, 2008). Experts could not monitor existing sites nor keep up with the generation of new information and put their stamp of approval on all the accurate information.

Classification and organization are another solution mentioned, and warrant some investigation (Goldman in Fallis, 2004). Fallis claims it would be an effective way to help users verify inaccurate information (Fallis, 2006). Assuming it would also work on verifying disinformation, it could be a solution. This is something librarians have trusted experience in doing and it would not contradict our ethical principles. Before taking on this challenging task, many questions need answers. Is it something all would agree librarians should do? Is it a job for us? Who would be in charge? Where does the money come from to fund the project? What classification system do we use? These and many more decisions need to be made before classification can be considered. It qualifies ethically, but the ship may have sailed on this solution. If librarians had been in control of the net from the beginning we could have put users to work classifying each item they posted (Zhao, Plaisant and Shneiderman, 2001). Now, classification would be problematic; classifying what already exists would be a monumental challenge and questions the feasibility of this solution.

Mark Pendergrast, a librarian from Trinity College, reluctantly over 20 years ago suggested librarians start labeling disinformation when he identified inaccuracies of items on library shelves (Pendergrast, 1988). Don Fallis, a library science instructor from the University of Arizona, recommends we just verify inaccurate information for our users, which sounds a lot like labeling (Fallis, 2004). One of Floridi’s possible solutions was something he called ‘quality certification,’ another name for labeling (Floridi, 1995). Then there is censorship, simply removing all the disinformation from the Internet (Fallis, 2009). Fallis recommends this as a less than effective solution for inaccurate information in general, and again assumed censorship would also work in controlling disinformation. The ethical and epistemic ramifications of censorship exclude it from consideration. It goes against librarians’ basic ethical principles and there are ‘epistemic costs to restricting access to information’ (Fallis, 2004). Accurate information can be censored along with the inaccurate information and restricting plurality restricts the acquisition of true beliefs (Fallis, 2004). Any type of regulation needs extensive debate and extreme caution before implementation. Librarians stand for intellectual freedom and resisting censorship. These principles are the foundation of librarianship and do not integrate well with regulation of information. Librarians teach our participants how to acquire knowledge; they do not decide what knowledge they should acquire. Regulation, censorship, and labeling are unethical and should not be considered a feasible solution. Classification is ethical, just not feasible, but the sheer quantity of the information makes this method unrealistic. Education is the most viable solution. Controlling disinformation through education requires some foundational clarification. The ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy (IL) published an update in 1998 to its final report on IL from 1989. The report recommends ‘that information literacy be promoted as a priority for all areas of education.’ If librarians are going to solve this verifiability problem with education, it is going to be done by them using ILI. How can ILI help our participants with the verifiability problem? It is feasible and ethical, but is it an effective method for controlling disinformation?

Disinformation is harder to identify because the creator wants to hide the fact that it is inaccurate information and may require a different instructional technique (Fallis, 2009).

Chapter 1 defined information literacy as finding, evaluating, and using information effectively, and information literacy instruction (ILI) is teaching these skills depending on who is being taught and where the instruction takes place. The foundation of IL is to teach IL skills to participants so that they can become information literate and self-sufficient in acquiring and using information, in other words, to promote an information literate society. ILI developed in an effort to teach library users to be information literate. When ILI was conceptualized, the learning paradigm and learning objectives were sufficient. Whether the instruction is face to face or web delivered, whether it includes fully integrated classes, web-based tutorials or a one-shot session, the process always follows a scripted progression:

Though not comprehensive, this strategy forms the basis for most web-based and face-to-face ILI. This pedagogical concept is not as effective in producing information literate participants for this ease-of-access, information-rich environment full of disinformation. There is no proven method to control disinformation and no way to protect participants from all that exists on the Internet. However, teaching them to become better ‘epistemic justifiers’ (Budd, 2004) may improve their chances of avoiding disinformation.

Developing better epistemic justifiers requires a re-conceptualized ILI learning paradigm that produces participants who are multi-literate. Studies have shown that in the current learning paradigm design, ILI is limited and requires additional elements to prepare participants for all the challenges they face when acquiring information. A 2008 study performed by a group of instructional researchers argued that the basic ILI pedagogy required modification (Hunt et al., 2008). The same study cited other research that recommended these changes: ‘Initially, information literacy must be student-centered and account for multiple learning styles. Additionally, information literacy instruction must move away from the “show and tell” pedagogy and also teach e-research skills along with evaluation of sources and critical thinking skills’ (Samson and Granath, 2001). Another study measuring the IL and IT competencies published in a 2003 book found deficiencies in the way ILI prepared participants: to address deficiencies in information literacy, educators must better understand how and why students gather information, and design instruction to determine ‘what students know, what they think they know, and what they need to know’ (Stern, 2003). Participants will need additional skills to verify accurate information. So, how will librarians re-design the learning paradigm to help participants verify accurate information? To be a viable solution, the modifications should include an evaluation component that focuses on information accuracy. There should also be a change in the learning paradigm that allows for a more skeptical approach to acquiring knowledge. The new ILI would create a multi-literacy instruction (MLI) that combines multiple disciplines into one instructional process.

The evaluation element is the part of ILI pedagogy that can help with the verifiability problem, but it needs more accurate evaluation indicators. Librarians employ a standard method in ILI for evaluating information on the Internet. Most often the method involves an explanation of information quality characteristics that help the student identify quality information. There is a set of widely accepted standard guidelines used as indicators of accurate information (Smith, 1997). Verifying information about the information shows whether the indicators are present or not. Who is the author of the page? Is there contact information for the author? Was the author qualified to write the page? These are the types of questions asked when verifying accuracy. When was the page last updated? Are there any dead links on the page? Is the information outdated? These would be questions to verify currency (Kapoun, 1998). Table 5.1 lists the evaluation indicators, the questions a participant would ask about the indicators, and the basic analysis of the answers. The current accuracy evaluation indicators are not necessarily the best indicators of accuracy for web-based information. In his article ‘Verifying the Accuracy of Information,’ Don Fallis applies epistemology to the problem of verifying accuracy of information. He provides a conceptual framework in the article that explains the effectiveness of the standard guidelines librarians use for evaluating information (Fallis, 2004). The article also explains that the guidelines used are not scientifically tested. Two studies tested the guideline characteristics and indicate that the evaluation indicators of quality and accuracy of web pages do not correlate with accuracy (Fallis and Fricke, 2002; Frick and Fallis, 2004). New indicators of accuracy are just one of the changes the ILI learning paradigm needs to make it more effective for today’s participants.

Librarians also have to change the epistemology of ILI and its relationship with critical thinking (Lankshear, 2000). The learning paradigm follows that the user recognizes a problem, finds information, evaluates and organizes the information in a way to solve the problem, and then uses the information to solve the problem. This concept of critical thinking is associated with foundationalism (Kapitzke, 2003). Foundationalism is an epistemological theory involving the justification of beliefs and how we justify or believe what we know (Fumerton, 2005). Cushla Kapitzke, a Behavioral Science professor from the University of Queensland, calls this approach to information ‘operational’ (Kapitzke, 2003). She contends that this allows the student to ‘learn information through information, but the student does not learn anything about information and knowledge’ (Kapitzke, 2003). This paradigm does not encourage enough critical reflection about the information (Kapitzke, 2003). The user is not skeptical enough. The lack of reliable accuracy indicators and an epistemic weakness in the ILI learning paradigm are design flaws. Kapitzke’s suggestion of the creation of a ‘hyperliteracy’ inspired the idea of combining literacies. Information literacy skills are no longer sufficient to prepare participants to acquire knowledge in their preferred method. Educating participants needs to go beyond developing just IL skills, and participants must be taught to be more skeptical.

First, the epistemic weakness of the learning paradigm can be fixed by introducing skepticism. Librarians need to find a literacy that is based on skepticism and combine it with ILI to create a new multi-literacy instructional (MLI) method that is more skeptical. The new method would be designed around the types of information our users are accessing in the twenty-first century, including disinformation on the Internet. Additionally, the evaluation process requires a new focus. The ILI process focuses on evaluating information with a set of criteria, one of which is accuracy. The new process will focus on evaluating the accuracy of the information. MLI will form a new strategy with a different learning paradigm and an evaluation component that has accuracy indicators proven in providing accurate information. There are still some unanswered questions. How does epistemology help? What is the new literacy? What will change? What are the new accuracy indicators? What would MLI look like? What are the evaluation criteria? Let’s start by explaining why epistemology is important.

The ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy promotes ILI as a ‘means of personal empowerment’ because it allows people to become ‘seekers of truth.’ IL also allows people ‘to experience the excitement of the search for knowledge and their own successful quest for knowledge’ (Lapitzke, 2003; ALA, 1989/1998). If ILI empowers users to find truths and acquire knowledge, the objectives of ILI are epistemic. Using Internet information and verifying accurate information introduces new learning into the pedagogy of ILI, and epistemology can help to meet that objective. Table 5.2 shows a comparison of the learning objectives defined by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in their Competency Standards for Information Literacy and a new set of learning objectives designed for MLI. ILI is associated with the epistemic theory of foundationalism. Foundationalism theorizes that what we know or believe comes from basic beliefs or self-evident beliefs and that justification for these beliefs is internal (Fumerton, 2005). Lapitzke believes this concept does not encourage the user to critically reflect enough about the information. There is a lack of skepticism. Skepticism is associated with the epistemology theory of reliablism (Hooker, 1996). The theory of reliablism claims that we justify true beliefs only through a reliable cognitive process, and that justification for these beliefs is external (Hayden, 2008). We justify B only if B has been arrived at through a reliable process. Reliablism inspired skepticism, and according to skepticism knowledge is only acquired through doubt and scrutiny (Hooker, 1996).

ILI is associated with foundational concepts and is not skeptical enough to teach participants how to avoid disinformation. So do librarians change to a literacy instruction that is associated with reliablism and teach from a learning paradigm of skepticism? If a critical thinking paradigm is too credulous, would a skepticism paradigm not be too skeptical? Would participants then be to skeptical to determine the difference between the accurate and inaccurate information? Librarians want the users to be skeptical enough to investigate for evidence in order to verify the information, but not so skeptical that they would ignore accurate information in their quest for verification. How do we obtain equilibrium? The answer is to combine some literacy with a skeptical learning paradigm together with the critical thinking paradigm of ILI and form a new multi-literacy (ML) learning paridigm. Cyber literacy is based on a critical literacy paradigm and may contain the element of skepticism required (Stiller, 2006; Gregson, 2008).

Laura Gurak, a nationally recognized Internet researcher, defines cyberliteracy as ‘a set of concepts and critical views with which to understand today’s Internet’ (Gurak, 2003). She calls it a newly emerging electronic literacy that employs a special form of critical thinking which takes a more critical perspective about Internet technology. Gurak wrote a book called Cyberliteracy: Navigating the Internet with Awareness. The book lays out a framework for developing a literacy that teaches people how to be cyber literate. Gurak describes a person who is cyber literate as ‘someone who understands the relationship between our communication technologies, our communities and our cultures’ (Gurak, 2003). Cyber literacy teaches a set of competencies that introduce more skeptical learning objectives. The competencies are based on critical literacy. Critical literacy has been described as a critical questioning of media expressions, especially electronic media (Tyner, 1998). Barbara Warnick, a professor of Rhetorical Criticism, describes critical literacy ‘as a focus on making what is hidden or not apparent in communications visible.’ Warnick describes the following list of items as techniques that would help someone become cyber literate:

The characteristics of this set of objectives are more critical and skeptical than the learning objectives defined in the ACRL’s Competency Standards for Information Literacy. Evelyn Stiller and Cathie LeBlanc are computer science instructors at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. They have designed and implemented a cyber literacy course using the concepts from Gurak’s book and Warnick’s critical literacy techniques. They created a list of competencies (see Table 5.3) that address issues associated with Internet communications and the dangers associated with the Internet (Stiller, 2006). Combining these competencies with the critical thinking competencies increases the skepticism of the ILI paradigm. Critical literacy and critical thinking combine both internal and external epistemic justification concepts creating a more skeptical learning paradigm. MLI has a learning paradigm more suitable for dealing with disinformation and developing the skills for finding, verifying and using Internet information. Now the ILI evaluation component needs more effective accuracy indicators.

The evaluation element will no longer focus on the information – it will focus on the accuracy of the information. Table 5.4 shows a new set of MLI evaluation criteria that have been scientifically tested and are more likely to correlate with accuracy than the traditional set of IL indicators. There is no empirical evidence which shows that certain accuracy indicators can help in the verification of disinformation on the Internet. There is empirical evidence showing that the indicators in Table 5.4 are indicators of accuracy for health information and reference questions from the Internet (Fallis and Fricke, 2002; Fallis and Fricke, 2004). The study found that if the indicators were present, a website would be more likely to contain accurate information (Fallis and Fricke 2004). These are the only proven indicators of accuracy and are assumed to be valid for use in MLIs evaluation process. There were four accuracy indicators proven most likely to return accurate information: currency, copyright, inlinks, and Google PageRank (Fallis and Fricke, 2004). Inlinks is the number of websites that link to a website (Fallis and Fricke, 2004). To find the number of inlinks to a particular website you just type ‘link:website_url’ into the Google search box. For instance, to find the number of links coming into the University of Arizona website, type link:arizona.edu into the search box (Roy, 2001). Google PageRank is another link structure indicator that uses the number of inlinks and other criteria in an algorithm that evaluates the importance of a webpage. It is done by using the Google PageRank Checker (PR Checker, 2009). These indicators and the standard accuracy indicator from ILI will make up the evaluation criteria for MLI. MLI now has a pedagogy that could be effective in preparing participants for the challenges they face in today’s information world and are effective in verifying disinformation.

Multi literacy is:

The above model is basic, but functional. The learning paradigm includes critical thinking components and critical literacy components. The objectives reflect the skepticism of critical literacy. The MLI evaluation criteria have a similar structure to ILI, except that the focus is on the evaluation of accuracy. Lesson plans could include the importance of keeping up with current events, the dangers and issues involved with all communications on the Internet, the ethical and social issues connected with web-based information, the different types of inaccurate information you can encounter, and how to verify the accuracy of information on the Internet.

MLI is structured to educate participants about the different kinds of information available in the twenty-first century and how to find it, verify it, and use it. Whether it works or not remains to be seen. Determining effectiveness requires design and implementation of lesson plans that target prospective audiences, and then an assessment and evaluation process needs to be done. After extended use and modification, experimental research needs to be done to measure the effectiveness. Another consideration to take into account is the old adage about leading a horse to water, but. . . Teaching participants how they ought to do something and having them do it is not always the progression of reality (Fallis, 2004). MLI should make our participants better ‘epistemic justifiers,’ and more skeptical of the information they access on the Internet. This combination will more likely than not develop multi-literate participants who have the necessary skills to complete ‘their own successful quest for knowledge.’

A prototype software exists that can verify information accuracy using some of the proven accuracy indicators mentioned (Price and Hersh, 1999). This type of technology will probably be the most effective method available to participants for finding and using Internet information in the future. The concept of a multi-literacy instructional model and its usefulness to librarians may have a longer duration. Joan Kaplowitz, co-writer of Information Literacy Instruction, Theory and Practice, believes instruction is the future of librarianship. The technology of information and new resources is growing at an exponential rate. Kaplowitz claims instruction of some kind will continue to be needed (Kaplowitz, 2009). MLI has the potential to advance the careers of librarians. Many librarians are already doing a form of MLI in all types of libraries. More than 35 percent of all reference questions received at Cochise College Libraries Douglas campus over the 2009/10 academic year were technology related (Walsh, 2010). The skills librarians are teaching through individual reference sessions should be combined with the class sessions of ILI. MLI is flexible and can be combined with any literacy to form a new learning paradigm to meet whatever the learning objectives happen to be. This is similar to the concept introduced at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005 called transliteracies. Transliteracy combines literacies (digital literacy, media literacy, information literacy, visual literacy, twenty-first-century literacies) to form a learning paradigm that teaches the ability to read, write, and interact with information across all existing platforms. In other words, a transliterate person is one who is literate in multiple media.

Transliteracies

The concept of transliteracy has been around for centuries, developing from the ability to write or print in multiple alphabets. The updated meaning of the term transliteracies evolved at the Transcriptions Research Project directed by Professor Alan Liu in the Department of English at the University of California Santa Barbara in 2005. Transliteracy is a recent terminology gaining currency in the library world. Transliteracy is the ability to read, write, and interact across a range of platforms, tools, and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio, and film, to digital social networks (Transliteracies Project, 2010). The concept is not library-centric and is not familiar to most in librarianship. Consequently, the term is not often related with the information literacy instructional mission librarians have been supporting. The term is still new; it is still in flux and has not been fully defined. Transliterate will be what it means to be literate in the twenty-first century. It is an inclusive concept which bridges and connects past, present and, hopefully, future modalities (Thomas et al., 2007). A group of academics at the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University are working to identify transliteracies and examples of transliterate practice. Sue Thomas is the coordinator and the group formed the Production and Research in Transliteracy (PART) in 2006. They support ideas about media convergence held by MIT scholar Henry Jenkins: ‘While it can be easy to tie transliteracy to technology, transliteracies are not just about computer-based materials, but about all communication types across time and culture and include technological, economic, social, cultural, and global issues’ (Thomas et al., 2007). This is an opportunity for librarians to help in the development and conceptualization of transliteracies and become leaders in the movement. Librarians should not just be watching developments in this new field, they should be involved in the development and make known how transliteracies instruction will impact participants. Librarians are uniquely positioned to be the leaders in the transliteracies movement. Libraries and librarians already play an important role in the education of people for effective and efficient information use by teaching them information skills at all levels of education. They are key personnel in the implementation of resource-based programs. They are designers of the information literacy curriculum and have expertise in this field. They have always been leaders in new information technologies and have the experience with information-finding tools that gives them a context for the application of new tools such as the different media of the World Wide Web (Dhiman, 2006). Librarians are good educators and have the skill set to educate participants in multiple literacies. This should be promoted at the educational level of librarians, and all Library Science graduate programs should introduce more advanced instructional requirements for their students. Librarians are spending more and more of their everyday schedule on instruction and this should be reflected in the education of future librarians.

Other new ideas for ILI

Take-home message

The proliferation of information resources, due to rapid technological changes and easier access to resources via the Internet, has complicated the ways in which library participants acquire information (American Association of College and Research Libraries, 2000; Swanson, 2004; Wilder, 2005). This change in knowledge acquisition behavior has increased the importance of information fluency and the demand for ILI. It is rapidly becoming a key component of general education programs (Jacobson and Mark, 2000) and, in most libraries, of public service offerings. The new behavior calls for an expansion of the fundamental skills required to be considered information literate. Meeting these progressive needs may require a re-conceptualization of IL and how it is taught. One solution is to combine the concepts and learning paradigms of multiple literacies to form a dynamic pedagogy that changes with time and technology, always teaching the most relevant skills. A multi-literacy instruction allows for flexibility and shifts in the learning objectives and paradigms. This type of instructional method could be effective in maintaining the pace with information technology and supporting the lifelong learning concept. MLI would be a developmental literacy, changing over a library participant’s lifetime, teaching whatever required skills were needed. Online tutorials also need fundamental re-structuring. The face-to-face environment is more desirable than the electronic environment for the best learning outcomes and confidence in development of information literacy skills (Churkovich and Oughtred, 2002). ILI online tutorials will be considered as supplemental instruction until they can deliver the connectedness and point of need instruction that FTF instruction supplies. The most effective solution would be to develop a full blown real-time search simulation tutorial that supports live participant interaction as the instruction leads the participant through the research cycle. Finally, participants can be taught to route instructional information in a certain way that promotes critical analysis of information and long-term retention. To be more effective in teaching participants, librarians should consider employing the social psychology concepts and persuasive techniques in the design of ILI.

References