theorywatch

I had the pleasure of presenting this morning at the “Weird but Worthy” COIL Workshop over at the very nice new library of Northeastern State University-Broken Arrow. Other speakers did a great job on the worthy stuff (wikis, blogs, podcasts, streaming media, etc. ), but I got to do the weird part of the workshop, so my topic was “Is There a Weirding Way?”

For those unfamiliar with the phrase, it comes from Frank Herbert’s cult classic Dune, and I’m thinking specifically of the scene in which Reverend Mother Gaius Helen of the Bene Gesserit makes young Paul Atreides go through a torture test to see if he’s capable of mastering their so-called “weirding way” of expertise. While Paul thinks she is testing him beyond bearing, it turns out that she is the one totally shocked by his capabilities. (The analogy being here, of course, that I’m the one who’s always being shocked and awed by students’ untapped abilities and capabilities. I should note here that I was delighted that Amanda Lemon and Jenneffer Sixkiller of my last year’s 5433 class were workshop instructors today and are doing wonderful things, and also that several current SLIS students were there at the workshop. I know of at least eight people from my class last fall who are now creatively implementing web-based information services and activities at their own libraries. Very, very cool!!)

So, in line with Steven Bell’s recent post on the ACRL blog about how “You May Be a Tool of the Old Education Paradigm”, here’s what we talked about this morning, as pretty much everyone in the room (except myself!) represented the future of information literacy in academic libraries.

Our “weirding way” involved considering the potential impact of the following on that future:

Technology opportunities/challenges:

Developing the instructional iPhone: This is obviously what we’ll be seeing shortly on campuses everywhere as soon as the price/clone curves intersect: who needs a laptop AND a cell phone anymore? How will this impact “traditional” library websites and instructional design?

CompSpeak 2050: This is futurist William Crossman’s term for the eventual global shift from text-based to oral-based learning machines. It’s also called VIVO: voice-in, voice-out. What happens in information literacy when you can talk to content and it talks back?

Instructional opportunities/challenges:

Parasitic learning: This is Teemu Arina’s strikingly suggestive phrase, which Arina defines as the “learner using someone as a teacher through virtual means without the knowledge or consensus of the host.” Is parasitic learning an infestation or an inspiration for academic libraries? What if those making best (legal) use of your virtual resources aren’t your own students?

Reflective Judgment Model: This comes from educational theorists King and Kitchener, who have identified seven stages of critical/creative thinking in adolescence through adulthood. Since the stages of the ACRL information literacy standards for higher education stop at roughly the equivalent of stage 4 of the RJM model (that is to say, at about the senior undergraduate level), is there value to raising the bar: in other words, what if academic libraries’ information literacy efforts were to extend beyond the undergraduates? How scary is that?

So, it’s not about particular technologies, which may come and go, but what we realize we can make real by thinking about them and with them in the context of various information environments. I’m proposing that as the secret of the weirding way.