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62nd IFLA General Conference - Conference Proceedings - August 25-31, 1996

Infolit: a South African initiative to promote information literacy

Ms Cathy-Mae Karelse
Western Cape Tertiary Institution's Trust
Calico - INFOLIT
South Africa


PAPER

The current decade has seen tremendous transformation at most levels of South African society. In most societal sectors, stakeholders speak a language of reconstruction, empowerment, development and knowledge production. Increasingly, there is growing concern with human resource development and with the generation of a citizenry who are equipped to participate in the shaping of our country with r edress and globalisation as mutually considered concerns . It is in this context that education and information policy are developing with an express interest in improving the quality of lives and bringing to fruition the desire for a learning nation.

The primary educational concern at present is to develop an educational system which can deliver to the fast-growing demands for tertiary education in ways that do not compromise on quality of education. The National Commission on Higher Education which has developed education policy for the country proposes that this can best be achieved through greater collaboration between institutions previou sly segregated by the apartheid regime. With regard to quality of education, there is broad consensus that the educational system must effect the shift from rote to student centred learning and that the conditions for life-long learning must be created. It is believed that learning spaces have to be shaped in ways that allow for maximum articulation between South African learning organisations as well as international formations.

The objective of partnership between institutions in the tertiary sector is overseen in the Western Province by the Western Cape Tertiary Institutions Trust which seeks to promote collaboration between the five institutions of Higher Education in the region. Its largest cooperative project is Calico - the Cape Library Co-operative - which combines the libraries of these institutions with a view t o developing a regional network of information services. Connectivity is clearly of paramount importance to these collaboratives with current plans to achieve a common information platform and strategy well underway. At its conception, it was understood that the gains of a library consortium which combined the holdings of the region would have to be premised on a strategy to ensure that learners were able to utilise these resources most effectively. It was in this framework that an information literacy project which could benefitiate the co-operative's information resources and maximise the gains of networking, was envisaged. In July 1995, Infolit was launched to promote information literacy in the Western Province.

Infolit is funded by the Reader's Digest to the tune of 1 million US$ and is committed to articulating the areas of redress and globalisation through developing an information literacy framework which ensures that learners have the skills, capacity, confidence and fluency to operate productively in the information age. Infolit is a five year project which is developing a system with implementable strategies to advance information literacy in ways that effect educational transformation. Infolit's strategies are framed by the notion that as educationalists we need to change our approach to educational delivery and teaching in order to enhance and deepen learning. The project seeks to promote both an information and a learning culture through developing a space in which learners are able to use and critically evaluate the information which they access.

As a cooperative project, Infolit seeks to echo the principle of partnership and collaboration increasingly seen on the planet not only internationally and inter-institutionally, but also within organisations. It is believed that coalitions of academics and information workers are essential for the development of an information literacy framework and that the trans-disciplinary approach which als o features more prominently on international agendas is a strength in pooling expertise to revisit the educational mission of tertiary institutions: that of advancing learning. For these reasons, Infolit seeks insofar as possible, to bridge gaps between information services and the academy and between institutions which are historically divided and in competition. The project is also premised on the notion of the socio-political and economic imperatives of transformation: in order to make its unique contribution to the shaping of the global economy, information services must transform to become fully integrated into the academy. This integrity pronounces convergence of the information functions, information technology and information provision to produce an information support and develo pment platform to academia.

As with other information literacy initiatives, Infolit believes that an information literacy framework imparts life skills, preparing people not only for participating more fully in civic life, but also in knowledge and economic production. We believe that in the context of the information society and the knowledge revolution, as information and knowledge assume growing prominence as strategic r esources, by empowering our communities with the means to participate in knowledge systems, they are not only more effective consumers of information, but also more productive, enhancing their contribution to the shaping and development of society.

Infolit is following a phased approach over five years building a solid research base and piloting of new approaches to developing information literacy. The project is hierarchically structured so that lower-order skills are being taught before putting into place the programmes which will address the abstract aspects of information literacy such as those of critical evaluation. The long-term obje ctive is to ensure the integration of information literacy training into the learning experience of all students, leading to the ability to use information to greater advantage in everyday decision-making in corporate and civic life. The project's mission of advancing a learning culture has led to a strategic plan which identifies various developmental imperatives:

  1. initially targeting tertiary institutions to transform approaches to teaching and learning with an extension into secondary and primary schools and the broader community;

  2. investigating the level of information literacy in the region through undertaking an audit and needs analysis so that intelligent interventions are made in programme development and so that best practice is identified and spread across the entire region;

  3. the generation of competitive pilot projects which promote information literacy and demonstrate success in deepening learning;

  4. identifying ways of measuring outcomes of these programmes so that investment is made in techniques that best promote information literacy;

  5. finding ways of integrating these pilots into full courses and curricula so that the improved approaches to learning become mainstreamed;
  6. raising levels of awareness of information literacy in the region through demonstrating successes of local and international models;

  7. growing greater collaboration between academics and information workers (including information technologists) so that they may complement each other in the design of programmes which teach students about a knowledge base at the same time as imparting to them generic life skills which they could use in other courses and in civic life;

  8. developing human resource capacity most especially of information workers to ensure that they are able to assume a dynamic role in the development of an information literacy framework.

Infolit has currently put in place its research wing to investigate levels of information literacy in the region. It has also launched its piloting phase, inviting proposals for funding for projects which promote information literacy. These developments are being co ordinated to feed into policy development so that information literacy features on the agendas of educational administrators and man agers: the players who determine where financial and human resource investments are made to effectively transform the educational culture and bring about student centred learning.

The most difficult area has proven to be the growth of synergy between the library and the academy. The education and training of information workers is only just beginning to address their need to function with confidence as facilitators in the information world. The pace of technological change has left many segments of the information sector agape and unaware of their agency in shaping the cha nge. Thus while librarians are generally unconfident and underprepared to assert their role as facilitators, academics are often reluctant to embrace this emerging role for information personnel, and more importantly, are discinclined to reassess their own roles in the context of global change. In other words, the problem areas are mainly around agency and the willingness of people to change thei r historic approaches to teaching. It is in this area that Infolit aims to draw on the most recent international successes of information literacy developments, with the intention of adapting these to local conditions so that appropriate models are developed. It is envisaged that promotion of these ideas will be coupled with continuing education programmes, curriculum development initiatives and capacity building strategies which facilitate affirmative role creation for information workers.

On the basis of its initial phase of piloting and research findings which will identify areas of greatest need as well as best practice internationally and regionally, Infolit will spread success across the region through popularisation of best results. The project is unique in South Africa and recognises the challenge to produce approaches to learning which are context driven and rooted in the S outh African reality, but which prepare our citizens for interaction with a range of foreign systems and experiences. In other words, much as we are concerned with concentrating our efforts on the most disadvantaged sectors of our student population, the project is not only concerned with levelling the playing fields, but also with expanding them. Investments are not being made with a view to bri nging the historically disadvantaged institutions on par with those historically advantaged. Rather, emphasis is being placed on transforming the educational system by ensuring that real learning takes place, not only within formal institutions, but also beyond their boundaries.

As a cooperative project, Infolit regards itself as strategically located to propagate the principle of collaboration while meeting the challenge of change by creating the conditions for South African learners to engage with scholars across time, space, cultures and other `boundaries'. By developing our project in collaboration with similar ventures concerned with deepening learning, we are confi dent that in the next five years we will have achieved a meaningful South African contribution to the development of global learning systems.