Extending boundaries: team teaching to embed information literacy in a university module
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Date
2020
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
UNISA
Abstract
In today’s knowledge-based economy, the role of universities in preparing students to be information literate and independent thinkers and researchers is crucial. Information literacy (IL) skills enable students to become research-oriented, hold critical approaches to knowledge, be critical thinkers, consider things from different perspectives, develop their own ideas and defend and share these in an ethical manner. University students are often expected to access, process, evaluate and synthesise information from a number of sources in order to complete their assessment tasks. To do this efficiently, they need to possess good IL skills. This article postulates that students’ IL skills can be successfully fostered and enhanced if academics and academic librarians enter into a partnership to collaboratively develop students’ IL skills. The article discusses an intervention at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa that entailed embedding IL skills in an academic literacies (AL) course offered to first-year students in the Faculty of Community and Health Sciences. This intervention involved a partnership between academic librarians and an AL lecturer in adopting a team-teaching approach to collaboratively develop students’ IL skills. Overall, students showed great enthusiasm for the IL sessions, and their responses to the different tasks given to them were positive. The partnership between the team members was found to be successful.
Description
Keywords
Information literacy, Academic literacy, Academic librarians, Higher education, Team teaching
Citation
Bharuthram, S. et al. (2020). Extending boundaries: Team teaching to embed information literacy in a university module. Mousaion: South African Journal of Information Studies, 37(2), 6426. https://doi.org/10.25159/2663-659x/6426