Digital and Information Literacy

Information literacy is all about knowing how to find, evaluate, use and manage information. It is part of lifelong learning and an important skill for all students. Digital literacy is all about knowing how to find, organise, evaluate and create information using digital technology.

Both literacies are of paramount importance in learning, teaching and research.

Some staff are concerned that your students may "rely on google" or other internet search engines to find readings without being adequately equipped to evaluate sources properly.

• Moodle, the School's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), is an extremely useful tool to overcome this concern. By making full-text readings available you can ensure your students are reading the quality resources that you want them to read. You can link to these readings from reading lists created in Moodle.

Some staff are concerned that making too many resources and readings available in electronic format students will not learn how to find and evaluate library resources for themselves.

• The Library offers a range of Information Skills training sessions, both face-to-face and online, which will help your students become information literate.
• The Library and CLT offer a six week training course for PhD students called MY592: Information literacy - tools for research

The Library and CLT are keen to work with staff to run customised digital literacy or information literacy training for your students, so get in touch with Jane Secker at j.secker@lse.ac.uk or Maria Bell (m.bell@lse.ac.uk) to discuss your own or your students' training requirements. Sessions we can cover include:

• finding and using information for your course: using LSE Library, using search engines and other databases
• evalating information and finding scholarly material
• citing, referencing and managing information: including avoiding plagiarism, copyright issues and other ethical issues
• using social media, managing your web presence, finding material after you leave LSE

Workshops will be customised to meet the disciplinary needs of your students and appropriate to their level of level.

Image by sonja grussendorf, permission given.