When preparing to teach their first Information Literacy course, Amy Edwards and Andrea Jarratt approached the task in an unusual way: They met with the S.C. Autism Society. The two reference librarians in USC's Thomas Cooper Library wanted to add a service component to the course, and they believed that the society could benefit from their pilot project.
The result of combining information literacy with a service project is a classroom full of students who are learning how to do research and help others at the same time.
“We are working with the Autism Society to develop an online manual to be used by parents of autistic children to describe service points and resources within the state,” Edwards said.
“We met with the Autism Society first to get the project started,” Edwards said. “The Libraries’ IT department built a form for us, and students are filling out the forms, then the information will be put on a database. We are handing all the information over to the Autism Society when complete. Everything we developed was with an eye toward giving it over to the S.C. Autism Society.”
A manual on the national level exists, but the South Carolina resource section isn’t strong, Jarratt said. She believed that the students could create a more comprehensive one.
“We want to teach information literacy as a lifelong skill,” said Jarratt. “We want students to know that these information literacy skills apply to your work, your personal life, your volunteer work.”
To read more about this topic, please click on the above title.
To access the CDR Library catalog, please click this link.
No comments:
Post a Comment