January 13, 2003 Meeting of User Education Committee

Agenda not yet available.

Members Present: Paul Callister, Cindy Shirkey, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (ex officio) – Chair, Karen Hogenboom, Joseph Straw

Members Absent: Cindy Ashwill, Jing Liao, Allison Sutton

Additional Attendees: Ely Anderson (User Education GA)

Information Literacy Competency Standards

Three sets of standards were reviewed for adoption or adaptation. In addition, creating a new set of competency standards was discussed.

The committee discussed the positive and negative aspects of each proposed set of standards. The committee found that the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Educationhttp://www.ala.org/acrl/ilcomstan.html possessed well-defined, process-oriented information.

The committee chose to exclude the Information Power http://www.ala.org/aasl/ip_nine.htmlstandards because of its primary use in K-12 settings. However, the committee will use the Information Power standards as a resource.

The committee found that the Model Statement of Objectives for Academic Bibliographic Instructionhttp://www.ala.org/acrl/ilcomstan.html encompasses the user’s social responsibility and provides an excellent statement of cognitive outcomes and concepts, however it lacks comprehensiveness in that it is focused solely on academic information issues.

Paul suggested three criteria for evaluating competency standards: scalability, exhaustibility, and communicability. The committee agreed with the criteria.

The committee decided to create a general statement that would include principles from both the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education and the Model Statement of Objectives for Academic Bibliographic Instruction. This document would refer readers to both original documents. The general statement would include: an overview of both standards and why one would use both, a conceptual framework, performance-oriented learning objectives, and an indication of best uses for each.

Lisa will create such a document for committee approval.

Karen suggested that the newly created document and its outcomes be discussed at a future User Education lunch. The committee agreed.

Respectfully submitted,
Ely Anderson