www.shef.ac.uk/cilass

The Critical Appraisal of the Public Presentation of Psychology: building information literacy skills in first year undergraduate students in the Department of PsychologyPamela McKinney

Sandra Turkington

• 5 year programme, impacting on 10,000 students

• £4.85M funding in total from HEFCE• Includes £2.35M capital funding• Focusing on inquiry-based learning• Core community: Faculties of Arts,

Social Sciences, Law• Development, innovation and research • CILASS hub located in the Information

Commons plus ‘satellite’ in Bartolome House

CILASS: Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences

What is Inquiry-based learning?• Student-directed, open-

ended inquiry• Problems, case scenarios,

small and large investigations

• Individual and collaborative projects

• Appropriately scaled from Level 1

• Participation in communities and culture of inquiry

• Capabilities for scholarship, employability, lifelong learning

• Information literacy - a key theme for CILASS with collaborative inquiry and networked learning

• Strong information literacy capabilities are fundamental to the success of IBL

• Process support for inquiry

• Specialist role in the CILASS team: Learning Development and research Associate (Information Literacy)

Inquiry-based Learning and Information Literacy

• Phased programme of engagement with all Departments and Schools in the faculties of Arts, Social Science and Law

• Each Department or School has 2 opportunities to bid for funds from CILASS for curriculum development projects

• Strategic impact on Learning and Teaching

Departmental engagement

• 3 project strands

• Project 1: ‘Critical Appraisal of the Public Presentation of Psychology’ level 1 semester 1

• Project 2: ‘Information Literacy in Research Methods’ level 1 semester 2

• Project 3: ‘Collaborative Learning Through Argumentation’ level 3 semester 2

PEBBLE: Psychological Enquiry-based Learning

• Task delivered and supported in postgraduate-led tutorials

• Students working collaboratively in small groups

• Find a newspaper article with relevance to Psychology purportedly based on real research

• Find the original research using the Web of Knowledge database

• Reflect on the search process and implications of the results

Critical Appraisal of the Public Presentation of Psychology

• Ensure the task was doable

• Establish working relationship with the Library

• Train the trainers

• Set up WebCT support environment

• Create support documentation for PG tutors and for students

Implementation of the project

Extract from student support documentation

Collaboration with the Library

• Work with CILASS liaison librarian to establish access to online newspapers

• Create subject specific version of Information skills tutorial for Web of Knowledge

• Ensure access through module WebCT course to information skills tutorials

• Feed in research conducted for Masters dissertation by a member of Library staff to the project evaluation plan

CILASS evaluation process• Establish a ‘Theory of Change’ for the

departmental project • Agree performance indicators: • Enablers / Resources • Processes / Activities • Outcomes • Decide how each of these indicators is to

be evaluated in the evaluation plan

Psychology departmental Theory of Change

Information literacy competency questionnaire

• Original questionnaire designed by Diane Mittermeyer at Quebec University.

• Based on ALA information literacy standards

• Adapted by colleagues at Leeds University for students of Psychology

• Deemed suitable pre-intervention / post-intervention evaluation tool for this project

Delivery of competency questionnaire

• First questionnaire handed out in paper format during week 2 lecture by module and project leader

• 143 responses • Second questionnaire handed out at

end of semester 1 by guest lecturer • 33 responses

Recognise an information need

13. You have been asked to write an essay on the predicted social consequences of changing UK licensing laws to permit 24 hour drinking. You have been directed to a website which lists all the research data used by the government when they decided to change the law. To complete the essay would you; Pre test n=152 Post test n=33

a.       Read the website only 0 0b.       Read the website and some of the original articles 46% 42%c.       Look for new articles written by people on the website 9% 15%d.       Conduct a literature search on the predicted social consequences of changing the UK licensing laws 34% 36%Don’t know 11% 7%

Locate and access information

2. What can you use the library catalogue to find?

Pre test n=164

Post test n=36

a) the titles of all published books 17% 8%b) the titles of all published journals 8% 16%c) the titles of all of the journal articles that are available in the library

30% 33%

d) the titles of the journals available in the library 16% 30%e) Don’t know 29% 13.80%

Compare and evaluate information

19. Journal articles are peer reviewed. This means that:

Pre test n=141

Post test n=31

a) People who buy and read the journal have commented on the articles 19% 6%b) The journal articles are reviewed by experts in the field after they are published 21% 12%c) The journal articles are reviewed by experts in the field before they are published 35% 64%d) People who buy and read the journal can write letters to the journal about the articles 2% 3%e) Don’t know 20% 15%

Student work• Quotes were used in the BBC article as a main focus, maybe

to indicate more valid findings. However in the journal, research evidence was provided instead.

• By searching using the name of the author, it was able to come up with all the articles written by that author and I could narrow the search down by Putting in key words of the article such as ‘Gene’ and ‘Anxiety’, by using this method, the search would come up with fewer matches

• News article relied on ethnicity and insinuated this was the only cause explored

• The BBC completely misattributes the results because the journal states that only 9% of females said that they had initiated a date fight, whereas the BBC conveys that a higher number of date fights is linked with wrestling.

Project leader reflection• Developed a task previously used at level 2 to

compare news and academic journal with added information literacy

• All students found relevant journal articles and all showed competence with Web of Knowledge database

• Best submissions showed significant reflection on search strategies and results

• Some students followed progress of an academic debate

Project leader reflection: amendments for next year• Despite some initial negative feedback

generally positive response from PG tutors so will repeat next year

• Some misinterpretation of question ‘If you couldn’t find the corresponding journal article, why was that difficult?’

• Focus more on referencing using the Library’s referencing tutorial in WebCT

Postgraduate tutor focus group• Some difficulties in getting students to engage

with collaborative work • Unfamiliar with term ‘Information literacy’ but “it

makes sense” • Skills students learn through this activity are

“vital” • “It is really helpful, especially right at the

beginning because then they can go right through university knowing how to judge an article, judge sources of information”

Postgraduate tutor focus group• Students are already accomplished searchers,

just need to transfer skills to new medium • Positive response to open-ended nature of the

task - ability to pick topics of personal interest • “Both the [news] articles they picked had no

original article……they got quite upset and thought they were going to get marked down for that”

• More helpful to model the full process of the task before students start searching for news articles

Student tutorial evaluation

As a result of doing this tutorial task I feel more confident in using Library resources for

psychology

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Stronglyagree

Agree Undecided Disagree Stronglydisagree

Series1

60% agree or agree strongly

20% undecided

20% disagree or disagree strongly

Student tutorial evaluation

71% agree or agree strongly

19% undecided

10% disagree or disagree strongly

As a result of doing the activities in the tutorial task I can use the web of knowledge database

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Stronglyagree

Agree Undecided Disagree Stronglydisagree

Series1

Student tutorial evaluation

As a result of doing the activities in the tutorial task I feel I have the skills to evaluate information I

find

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Stronglyagree

Agree Undecided Disagree Stronglydisagree

Series1

59% agree or agree strongly

28% undecided

13% disagree or disagree strongly

Inquiry-based pedagogy for Information Literacy?• Students develop database search

skills in the context of assessed work• Open choice of topic area fosters

engagement• Critical evaluation of information at

level one supported through collaboration

• Skills development through reflection

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