Graduate Information Literacy programme

Back in the UK, I will be catching up with conference reports: today, thinking back to the Information Literacy symposium at the Lifelong Learning conference in Yeppoon. Continuing the "researchers" theme of the post before last, I think the only presentation on information for research students was from Jim Berryman, who talked about the Graduate Information Literacy Program (GILP) for postgraduate students at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. ANU has a high proportion (34% of students) of postgraduate research and taught Masters (or as they called them in Australia, coursework Masters) students - and the aim is to make the proportion larger.

GILP is run from a small unit that is separate from the library, and the aim is develop academic skills including information literacy. They work closely with academic supervisors and other graduate support services.

Sessions in the programme include: selecting and searching subject databases, issues in writing the literature review, producing your thesis in Word or LaTex, bibliographic software. The approach is hands-on, with the focus on 2 hour sessions with 6-15 students. As Jim said, the subjects covered and approach were not unusual, but GILP had received a prestigious Carrick Award for "programmes that enhance learning", and the way in which staff are devoted specifically to postgraduate development is interesting. There is some info on GILP at http://ilp.anu.edu.au/grad/ and a report on the 2006 programme at http://ilp.anu.edu.au/reports/Report2006.pdf
Photo by Sheila Webber: Palm tree, Rydges resort (where the conference was held), June 2008

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