LILAC and Citation Project Workshop

The LILAC Project (Learning Information Literacy across the Curriculum) is a multi-institutional study of student information-seeking behaviors (lilac-group.blogspot.com). This year we join forces with the Citation Project, a study of how students use the information they find (CitationProject.net), to consider what both studies may have to tell us about students’ information literacy “habits of mind.”

Participants will gain hands-on experience with the research-aloud protocol (RAP) video captures used as part of this study and identifying and coding subject behaviors. We will demonstrate coding and analysis of information-seeking behaviors of both native speakers of English and multilingual writers in composition courses, share preliminary findings of a project examining the information literacy of multilingual writers, and discuss its relevance in composition classes, ESL academic writing classes, and content courses in different disciplines. In both large- and small-group discussions, we will consider what we are learning from results of these studies and what we can do with the information, sharing our experience in data analysis and results interpretation, and inviting participants to discuss how to consider the framing of LILAC projects from different disciplinary perspectives. The addition of citation context analysis like that done by the Citation Project allows participants to explore both the research process and the products of that research. The triangulation of data made possible by this combined research provides deeper and more nuanced understanding of information literacy in general and use and misuse of sources in particular.