Since fall semester of 2019, David and Elder have collaborated in PHIL 3242, Values and Technology, to teach students core concepts of our current information environment. The need felt urgent to Elder given students’ concerns: “They are living in a world where much of our information is mediated by algorithms, shaped by financial incentives that are rarely made explicit (like markets in personal data), and influenced by social and political affiliations. Giving them tools and space to see how these concerns intersect with course materials can lead to exciting and productive discussions.”
It seems many students were waiting for the opportunity to engage with the concept. Elder noted, “I vividly remember a Zoom class meeting during our online year when Mags asked a relatively innocuous question about echo chambers, and the students, clearly excited to have a chance to connect about it, just spent the entire class period sharing their experiences with echo chambers in increasing detail and neither Mags nor I could get a word in edgewise. I think we just ended up conferring in the chat and deciding it was more important to let them talk than get through the lesson!”
Alumnus Oliver Yehlik (Interdisciplinary Studies ’24) affirmed the value of the coursework Elder and David have developed: “I see information literacy as a key piece of our toolkit as learners, helping us explore the worlds of information that are unfamiliar to us or beyond our specialties. With an overwhelm of information online, especially with the influx of generated text from Large Language Models, it is especially important to practice information literacy. These tools and practices can help us slow down, spend time with, and give care or consideration to the information we are constantly navigating.”
The duo has adapted and adjusted lesson plans over the years, but Elder credits David’s use of the Association of College and Research Libraries' Framework for Information Literacy for a jumping-off point as a rich resource for guiding students in different directions and complementing so many different topics, depending on instructor learning goals as well as student interest. To begin, David typically leads one class meeting with a focus on a theme in information literacy (such as “Information Has Value,” especially focusing on commodification of personal data).
From there, Elder explained, “as time permits, she attends other class meetings: sometimes as an expert guest to discuss things like information search ethics with the class, when we’re discussing ethical questions involving search engines; sometimes to discuss copyright and public domain issues, when we’re talking about intellectual property; sometimes to participate in discussions about Indigenous data sovereignty and how archivists and librarians can work to respect it; and recently to discuss AI, ChatGPT, and the role of authorship in knowledge production.”
David affirms, “It is great to be involved in discussions with students that revolve around their course material and to be able to surface points about information in an informal and natural way. This is something that doesn’t happen in the typical information literacy instruction that I do, but it is a primary point of intersection—how information interacts with other disciplinary concepts.”
Ultimately, Elder wants “students to have the tools and skills to navigate a frequently chaotic and overwhelming information landscape, and to see how much it shapes their world, in my case by appreciating how information technologies both inform and reflect our values, but also throughout their lives inside and outside the university.”
Similarly, while David wants students “to know ALL the information literacy!”, her goal is for students “to habitually think more deeply about all of their interactions with information and all of the people and systems that produce, and are affected by, information.”
Their collaboration has produced rich results, both for their mutual interests and to the benefit of students. Yehlik notes he now thinks “about information itself as something with aliveness. I see information and information literacy with more depth, an area of ongoing conversation about the values, virtues, and concerns around our relationships with information.”
For More Information:
Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education: https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework [WJ1] z.umn.edu/Info-Literacy
“Information literacy is relevant to a wide variety of topics in arts, humanities, and social sciences, and the ALA’s Framework for Information Literacy provides a great springboard for reflecting on different ways it can support and illuminate issues in your own teaching and learning. It goes far beyond learning to cite sources or seek out peer reviewed materials, and can help provide students with the tools to articulate and grapple with a wide variety of issues in their academic, personal, and professional lives… while also enriching and complementing your own goals in the classroom.” –Dr. Alexis Elder