The LITS Instructional Staff’s Literacies Framework serves as a set of guiding principles and objectives for our teaching, in support of student’s coursework and independent vocational exploration. These literacies borrow from the work of the Association of College and Research Libraries, education scholars, and smart colleagues across the country who engage in related work.
Vocation + Literacies
We identified six literacies that best represent the areas we work in – Information, Maker, Data, Media, Visual, and AI literacies. We have also explored intersections of each and ways in which they relate to one’s vocational exploration. David Cunningham in At this time and in this place : vocation and higher education suggests one key vocational question for us and our students is “how will I negotiate the larger global context that increasingly affects everything I do?” (2016). We see these literacies as helping students to develop the skills to successfully manage those negotiations as they appear.
The Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities Rooted and Open document claims that “vocation-centered education equips students with the wisdom and capacity for good and needed work in the world through all forms of human endeavor” (2018). In considering our literacies, the terms wisdom and capacity get at the skill building and evaluative techniques we’re trying to instill, while all forms suggests those skills and techniques apply in many different situations and to many different forms of information.
Yet another aspect of our work involves vocational storytelling – the uncovering, constructing, and sharing of vocation stories. In our instruction, we may share elements of our own vocational journey with students. These literacies also provide students with the language and tools to aid in discerning and creating their own vocation stories.
Information Literacy
Information literacy is the skill set that allows us to responsibly locate and use information for a purpose. The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education articulates six core concepts (frames):
- Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
- Information Creation as a Process
- Information Has Value
- Research as Inquiry
- Scholarship as Conversation
- Searching as Strategic Exploration
Information literacy skills (and their lack) drive every decision our students make, from choosing a toothbrush to voting for an elected official. There is a glut of information available today and their information literacy skills will help students distinguish between reliable information, unreliable information, and lies in the media they encounter on a daily basis. It is also a key aspect of lifelong learning once students graduate.
Information Literacy Learning OutcomesStudents will be able to
- Find and distinguish between a variety of information sources, including primary and secondary sources, scholarly and popular sources, those that assert facts or opinions, and those whose sources are cited or not.
- Evaluate sources within the context of their production and consumption. This includes engaging with primary sources, understanding the various uses of qualitative and quantitative data, placing an information source within the larger topical discourse, and investigating the qualifications of author(s), editor(s), and publisher(s).
- Interrogate gaps, contradictions, and evidence of power relationships in individual sources and among groups of sources.
- Use collected information to form their personal views, verify claims, or drive decisions/arguments.
- Use collected information to form their personal views, verify claims, or drive decisions/arguments.
Media Literacy
Media Literacy involves developing the necessary skills to be critical consumers and producers of media content. Media literate individuals are able to analyze and evaluate media for its communication strategies, audience engagement, cognitive and emotional impacts, and biases, empowering people to be effective communicators and consumers of all the forms of media that surround us.
Media literacy is critically important in an age where a wide variety of media compete for and commodify our attention. The ability to discern points of view, biases, and intent behind media content is imperative in navigating our contemporary media-saturated landscape, as well as the better understand our media history.
Media Literacy Learning OutcomesStudents will be able to:
- Critically analyze the messages and points of view employed in different media (e.g., advertising, news programs, websites, video games, blogs, documentaries).
- Analyze design elements of various kinds of media productions to observe that media messages are constructed for a specific purpose
- Analyze media for purpose, message, accuracy, bias, and intended audience and gain understanding that media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules.
- Create a persuasive multimedia work or a piece of digital communication or contribute to an online collaboration for a specific purpose.
- Demonstrate a developmentally appropriate understanding of copyright, attribution, principles of Fair Use, Creative Commons licenses and the effect of genre on conventions of attribution and citation. Publish the work and share with an audience.
- Recognize ethical standards and safe practices in social and personal media communications.
Data Literacy
Data Literacy is the ability to accurately and ethically interpret, manipulate, create, and communicate about data in-context. Datasets are collections of information, and can be both quantitative (numerical observations or measurements) and qualitative (non-numeric formats). For example, data can be formatted as information from a survey, interviews, observations, and test results.
In both their undergraduate work and post-graduate life, students will need to apply data knowledge and skills in regard to the information landscapes they inhabit. Data literacy skills equip students to critically approach and ethically create and use the data they encounter in their daily lives.
Data Literacy Learning OutcomesStudents will be able to:
- Use Data Ethically: Describe ethical standards for creating and collecting data and recognize when those standards have or have not been met, as well as ethically reference and cite existing data and statistics in new research.
- Critically Evaluate Data: Identify the methodologies used to collect data, and determine whether the conclusions drawn are reasonable and accurate.
- Describe and Interpret Data: Create or locate supporting documentation, such as codebooks, metadata, and research articles, to interpret datasets and draw conclusions.
- Contextualize Data: Identify and describe the contexts in which data is collected and disseminated, and explain how those contexts impact likely interpretations and appropriate uses of the data.
- Strategically Find Data: Develop flexible search strategies that account for differences in terminology used to describe data between different disciplines, and identify relevant places to search for data on a selected topic.
- Sustainably Manage Data: Develop processes of organizing and storing information in an efficient and sustainable manner that is most suitable for a given project or coincides with data standard practices.
Maker Literacy
Hosted in Rolvaag Memorial Library, the Cave and DiSCO are open to all students and provide a welcoming and accessible place for students to cultivate their maker skills and community ethos. Instruction sessions in these spaces, and in collaboration with faculty and staff, introduce students to competencies and processes of design and creation.
In alignment with St. Olaf’s Mission in Practice, students are encouraged to pursue inquiry and imagination. By developing maker literacy skills students are able to creatively experiment and learn the value of trial and error, practice teamwork and project management, and understand how to share skills with others and transfer making skills across disciplines. In making, students also recognize they do not create in a vacuum, but that their ideas and solutions can make a difference.
Maker Literacy Learning OutcomesStudents will be able to:
- Discover and Question: Ask questions to identify challenges, problems, or unmet needs that can be answered through acts of making and creation.
- Articulate and Discern: Learn how to articulate an idea, question, or problem, explore how others have solved a similar issue, and discern which solution will best meet their needs and/or other’s needs.
- Design and Adapt: Become proficient in iterative design principles and learn how to create criteria for prototypes versus finished products, design testing protocols, become comfortable with failure, identify and solicit feedback from stakeholders and mentors, and adapt and revise their designs.
- Reflect and Connect: Reflect and understand how skills and experiences connect across disciplines and how these skills and solutions can be transferred to solve other challenges.
Generative AI Literacy
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is rapidly moving into every aspect of our lives, either becoming embedded in digital tools we already use or through the introduction of new and revolutionary chatbots at our disposal. GenAI tools can be used to both source existing information as well as to generate entirely new content, including text, images, audio, video, and code. A critical understanding of how these technologies function, as well as their capabilities and limitations, is essential for cultivating students who can capitalize on their uniquely human skills (creativity, empathy, critical thinking, adaptability) while harnessing the potential of GenAI systems.
As GenAI becomes more ubiquitous, basic GenAI Literacy will be essential both for the academic success and career prospects of St. Olaf students, as well as for their private and civic lives. As students are regularly tasked with seeking and evaluating information for its accuracy and context, as well as creating academic and creative content of their own, it is essential for students to learn how to appropriately and productively engage with GenAI tools in order to avoid their flaws and risks. Ideal use of GenAI is for such tools to assist, rather than replace, student voice, ideas, and learning.
AI Literacy Learning OutcomesStudents will gain a general understanding of how AI systems function, including:
- How large language models (LLMs) are trained and operate
- The conversational, iterative nature of GenAI output
Students will develop an understanding of the ethical implications of GenAI, including:
- How to appropriately cite GenAI output
- Inherent algorithmic bias/prejudice
- Privacy and online safety
- Copyright issues
Students will learn how to critically evaluate and fact-check GenAI output, including:
- Identifying “hallucinations”
- Locating reliable and corroborating sources
Students will learn how to effectively and appropriately use GenAI, including:
- Evaluating which tools to use for a given task
- How to generate prompts for high-quality, relevant output
- Idea generation, information sourcing, and editing
Visual Literacy
Visual Literacy is students’ ability to find, evaluate, interpret, and create visual media.
Contemporary students constantly encounter visual media. St. Olaf Libraries and IT, in conjunction with the Flaten Art Museum, model how to engage with visual media as forms of information and misinformation. Research & Instruction Librarians teach how to find and evaluate visual media. Museum staff demonstrate the cultural interpretation of visual media. Instructional Technologists facilitate students’ creation of posters, videos, and other forms of visual information.
Visual Literacy Learning OutcomesStudents will be able to:
- Know When to Use Visual Media – Students understand when visual media can be an effective communication tool. Examples include diagrams supplementing text or interactive maps documenting geographic trends.
- Learn Where to Find Visual Media – Students understand where to find visual media, including physical objects such as paintings, sculptures, and printed maps, as well as digital materials found in archival image databases, museum websites, and other online sources.
- Know How to Use Visual Media – Students demonstrate ethical, interpretive, and creative knowledge in their use of visual media.
- Understand how copyright law, public domain, and licensing apply to images, and how to correctly cite sources for visual media. Example: finding and citing images to use in a slide presentation.
- Explain an image’s cultural context and how the image’s construction conveys a message. Example: analyzing how camera angles affect the mood of a movie scene.
- Use analog and digital technologies to create original images for their own use. Example: creating an academic poster in Powerpoint.