Student Learning in the Information Age

 

Chapter 5.
The Challenges of Human Resources

 

Dr. Howard Simmons, who served as executive director of the Commission on Higher Education (CHE) of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools until 1996 when he joined the faculty at Arizona State University, knows from personal experience that many will resist buying into information literacy.

The task of convincing CHE that information literacy is important to the improvement of the teaching and learning process was a relatively easy feat compared to the task of convincing administrators and faculty. More difficult still is the task of convincing faculty and administrators that resource-based learning techniques are not just bureaucratic schemes dreamed up by librarians.¹

For conscientious faculty who understand how important it is for their students to develop information literacy abilities, making a change to resource-based learning means evolving from being good teachers to being good facilitators of learning. Despite a lack of peer models and a lack of pedagogical training or personal experience with resource-based learning, they will move from being the fount of all knowledge to becoming organizers of learning experiences. For many other faculty members, a number of potential points of resistance must be addressed as efforts in resource-based learning move forward.

Overcoming Initial Faculty Resistance

The many conflicting demands on their time lead many faculty members to greet any seemingly new initiative with suspicion. At first, faculty may hope that resource-based learning is simply a new fad that will disappear before they are forced to give it any time or thought. In 1994, a comprehensive Australian study on lifelong learning documented the critical need for information literacy abilities and reported other causes of faculty resistance to resource-based learning.

During the interviews it became clear, however, that for the majority of teaching staff information literacy was not an issue of concern. In many instances, they believed that students either already had the necessary skills of information retrieval and management or that they would "pick them up" in the course of their studies. Often they opposed vehemently any incursion by librarians or other information specialists into their slice of the curriculum, although it is hard to resist the conclusion that frequently this was because they lacked the confidence to retrieve and manage information themselves.²

The first step in facilitating smooth transitions to resource-based learning is to provide faculty with easily internalized information on the limitations of the lecture method and the reasons why the Information Age requires that students be prepared for lifelong learning after graduation. Ideally, faculty should be reminded of how rapidly the information in their own fields is expanding and changing and of the ongoing challenge they face in keeping abreast of new developments. Some faculty members will quickly recognize that students are even more easily overwhelmed and in great need of faculty assistance to develop the skills they also need to stay up-to-date. Such general awareness-raising efforts will create mind sets that are conducive to moving beyond standard operating procedures in the classroom.

A clearly articulated campus commitment to preparing students for lifelong learning, to developing their critical thinking skills, or to preparing them to be lifelong problem-solvers can also facilitate a positive faculty mind set. Any such commitment can easily serve as a philosophical foundation for the development of information literacy programs. In fact, information literacy efforts can become a reasonably easy sell on campus if their complementary relationships with existing undergraduate improvement efforts are pointed out.

The climate for faculty acceptance of information literacy efforts can also be enhanced by placing these efforts within the context of existing campus commitments. Rather than being sold as a new initiative, information literacy efforts can be packaged as an empowerment tool for the achievement of already agreed-upon campus priorities. For example, if freshman retention is a concern, models and successful outcomes from high school information literacy efforts can provide a basis for freshman retention initiatives including, in some situations, actual partnering with feeder high schools.*

Or, if campus energies are being directed at enhancing the general education requirements, exploring how information literacy can enhance academic success and lifelong learning for all students should be a natural tie-in. Of course, any subject-specific curriculum review would offer similar opportunities. The important factor is not to promote information literacy as an end in itself, but as a means to strengthen existing and already shared academic commitments.

Another way to integrate information literacy efforts into existing endeavors is to incorporate them into assessment considerations. For example, when accreditation self-studies are undertaken, library information resources and services can be integrated throughout the report with emphasis on how they are being used to support campus achievement of its mission and goals.

Impact on Faculty Research Time

The publish-or-perish reward system in higher education forces faculty to stay current within their own focused research areas. This system promotes and even encourages teaching that reflects faculty research priorities so as to minimize time taken from research. At least initially, faculty will need additional time to plan how to better incorporate information resources and technology into their courses. However, even when the start-up phase is over, faculty will need to continue making time to consult with information specialists on campus to keep up-to-date with the ever-changing information resources and technology in their field. If such expenditures of time are seen as being counterproductive to achieving promotion and tenure, faculty will have little incentive to support the establishment of resource-based learning programs.

If faculty members are isolated from the information experts on their campuses, they will never have the time or the desire to work for the changes needed to adopt resource-based learning. Instead, faculty members need to have adequate support from librarians and other information specialists. In addition to ensuring such enhanced support levels, campus administrators also need to make sure that faculty development efforts and reward systems make clear that resource-based learning is important and will be suitably acknowledged.

Faculty Control of Student Learning

For many years, the expected format for higher education courses has been for professors to lecture, assign readings, and evaluate the content of papers. Because students seldom have the desire or time to go beyond the requirements, professors could be fairly certain that they knew more than their students knew. However, some professors may fear that the introduction of resource-based learning will send students out into the wide universe of information to read some prestigious expert who disagrees with what has been taught in class or find some information more current than last week's lecture.

Such fears can only be overcome through experience with resource-based learning and a gradual acceptance of the concept that professors need not know everything as long as they know how to find relevant information. Disagreements among experts afford a great opportunity for students to learn how to evaluate conflicting information from various authoritative sources. Students will use this skill throughout their entire lives.

Finding Good Models to Emulate

The potential role for faculty in supporting students' abilities to access, evaluate, and effectively use information is often not immediately evident because there exists a strong, long-standing model that excludes any systematic development of students' research skills. In 1980, an English professor and former provost at Earlham College vividly described this typical model.

What has been our experience as professors, after all? We have been accustomed to having the toughest courses we took and the toughest we teach introduce the longest list of books on reserve. Our professors gave us fine annotated bibliographies and we may do the same for our students. Often it has been our experience that the most challenging graduate seminars we took specified both the paper topics and the works we were to consult for all but the final paper; and frequently the final paper was an outgrowth of one of the shorter papers we did under instruction. That is to say, our best graduate courses in our discipline, like the best undergraduate courses we expected to teach, gave exclusive attention to mastering the content of major works in our field. Except in the rarest cases we were taught to regard the library solely as the place where all those things should be waiting for us.

I think of my very good experiences with reference services in college and graduate school, but I recall that I, and everyone else I knew, tended to go to the reference desk as a last resort and that I asked questions with no notion that I might learn a generalizable method of research which could help me become more expert in research and conceive of more interesting questions to pursue, either on my own or with the help of a reference librarian. And, I would add, I do not believe I ever thought of a librarian as a teacher until I began to work at Earlham. . . . Each piece of study I did through college and graduate school, if it had a research dimension to it, was essentially another hit or miss, hunt and peck activity. . . . I did not know much if anything about how to branch out efficiently into a new area. My independence as a student and as a thinker was consequently very limited, and I didn't even recognize the fact. I thought of the library as a vast reserve collection where I could find what had been assigned or suggested.

I suggest that my experience is not untypical of both undergraduate and graduate use of the library even now. If I am right in this, it would follow that many of us who are now teaching in colleges and universities are only slightly at home in libraries.³

The best place to look for models of resource-based learning is on campus. Faculty development officers and librarians should be able to identify faculty who can offer workshops or mentor other faculty interested in moving toward a resource-based learning approach to student learning. If enough faculty members cannot be found on campus, consider importing faculty from other campuses for information-gathering purposes and for faculty development offerings, or consider taking a team of people to campuses where resource-based learning is well established. Many of the examples given throughout this book would be a starting point for the latter.

Making a Long-Term Commitment to Resource-Based Learning

Overcoming faculty resistance to resource-based learning and trying some new collaborative efforts with librarians and other colleagues are not enough. Care and support needs to be ongoing to create a positive climate that fosters a growing faculty commitment.

It really desn't take a lot to make people feel good about who they are and what they are doing and to give them confidence that they are doing a good job. With a little time and creativity, appropriate incentives can be devised to foster information literacy programs on campus. Listed below is a range of inexpensive activities to encourage faculty cooperation.

As the previous suggestions show, it is important to celebrate successes. Such acknowledgments provide incentives to more and better undertakings and provide important models that other faculty can adopt or adapt. Such celebrations also build confidence, and, like the old adage says, "Nothing breeds confidence like success."

Breivik, Patricia Senn. Student Learning in the Information Age. (Phoenix: American Council on Education/Oryx Press Series on Higher Education, 1997).