On April 28th, the DePaul University Library co-hosted the 21stAnnual Information Literacy Summit with the College of DuPage Library and with generous support from the Reaching Across Illinois Library System (RAILS) Continuing Education Event grant. Over 120 librarians and media specialists gathered together on campus at the College of DuPage to share research and practice related to information literacy, media and news media literacy, disinformation, and student-centered approaches to teaching media and information literacy skills.
The theme of this year’s summit, Stronger Together: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Media and Information Literacy, was explored with an opening keynote panel of librarians representing public, high school and community college libraries in conversation with DePaul College of Communication professor Stefanie Z. Demetriades. Panelists discussed how information and media literacies are informed by children’s literature, new technologies, and dispositions around curiosity, open mindedness, and a spirit of inquiry. Demetriades shared current misinformation research about the ways that cognitive biases and heuristics are working against us in our information seeking behaviors, which require new strategies for building media literacies and evaluating information.
Michael Spikes, co-founder of the Illinois Media Literacy Coalition, presented the closing keynote Making Sense of Media: A Framework for Media Literacy and Introductions to News Media Literacy. Spikes discussed recent legislation that requires media literacy instruction in Illinois high schools and the framework his organization developed for adapting media literacy into the curriculum. His work in news media literacy focuses on how educators can help students engage in the practices of journalists to become more mindful, literate consumers of information and how we can use news media as a platform for practicing those skills.
Twelve scheduled breakout sessions throughout the day further explored information literacy practice, including strategies for teaching students to differentiate and contextualize the vast landscape of “online sources;” involving students in the development of information literacy programming; libraries as spaces for content creation; and the implications of artificial intelligence for information literacy in higher education. In Going Beyond the Source: A Revised Curriculum for Source Evaluation, DePaul librarians Firouzeh Rismiller, Grace Spiewak and Sveta Stoytcheva presented our own library’s recently redesigned source evaluation curriculum. This updated framework guides students in critically evaluating sources within the context of the broader information landscape through engaging activities and discussions.
The Information Literacy Summit Program includes links to recordings of both keynotes presentations, as well as selected session materials provided courtesy of the presenters. For more information about instructional services at the DePaul University Library or information literacy, please contact Firouzeh Rismiller, Instructional Services Librarian.