Blogging toward Information Literacy

It's great to see case studies using Web 2.0 to teach information literacy : it's what this blog was set up for and updates the book!

Blogging toward information literacy : engaging students and facilitating peer learning, by C.Chan and D.Cmor (Reference Services Review, 2009, 37(1) 395-407) is a very interesting account of using blogs to develop information literacy with a group of 88 students on a first year politics course at Hong Kong Baptist University. The authors are quite cautious about the applicability elsewhere - too cautious I reckon because there are some really good ideas here. Students are required to post answers to weekly library research questions posted on the blog. The intention was that they learned from each other's posts.They used Blogger. Over the term 8 different resaerch questions wee used and each student was required to attempt one. (they are listed in the article).76 out of 88 posted on the blog, because they were told this was compulsory as part of the course. Only 20% said they only posted once. Only 16% said they visited it 5 or more times. In the assessment of usefulness 94% said they found it very useful or somewhat useful. It's a well structured article and I think others could try out the structure and perhaps improve on the results.

Pic is of part of our new Social Learning Space at our Putteridge Bury site.