Becoming #critlib

Tonight there will be a #critlib chat in which my colleague-friend Kevin has assigned a homework writing reflection. I'm not sure if I will finish this in time for the chat, which starts in 30 minutes, but I decided to give it a go. I am brain fried due to a 9-hour day of (awesome) librarian collaboration today, so I'm not sure how much sense I will make.

Kevin proposed three questions as prompts for reflection, which some have chosen to use to frame their reflections. I am choosing to do the same. Let's see what I wind up typing in response to his questions.

Why are you a critical librarian? Why do you identify with these ideas? Why do you participate in these chats?

I'm not sure that I am a critical librarian. But I want to be.

I believe it is important--no, essential--to approach work in libraries (or any kind of work, really) in a way that includes working to see the structures and systems in which we all--including and especially our students--aim to thrive (but often can't). These structures and systems can be technical and physical, but they can also be social and economic. We need to see these structures and systems, and then we need to critique and try to make them better and more just.

The thing is, I'm not sure how good I am at this. I need help seeing the structures and systems. I know it's because I am privileged within these structures and systems, which makes it hard for me to see them. I know all this. But I choose to try to see them anyway. Then I choose to try to develop the vocabulary and relationships with others necessary to critique them. And then I really, really want to make them better and more just.

But on my own I will never learn how to do these things, things that I understand to be necessary to grow into a whole human being. Because if my humanity is at the expense of the humanity of others, then it isn't humanity as I understand it.

So I identify with these ideas because to say the stakes are high is an understatement.

And I participate in these chats because, through listening to others who live this critical work because they have to (i.e., embody this critical work through their lived experiences), I learn more and better about how to see, critique, and try to make better and more just.

I need help with these things. I am a baby at them. I am not a critical librarian, but I am trying to become one. And the #critlib chats--and way more importantly, the incredible persons who constitute them--are helping me to do so.

In addition, the relationships I have developed as a result of my participation in the chats have grown invaluable to me as a person, let alone as a librarian in this profession. I am so grateful I get to do this incredibly important work in and through our relationships with each other.

I'm brain fried so I can't think of a summative way to end this post. So I will just end it here and click publish, not even sure what all I wrote here. You all are beyond lovely as persons in the world. Thank you for being. *sparkly heart emoji*

Edited on 12/17/15 to add: I consider the community of #critlib librarians to include way more librarians than those who participate in the chats. Some of the most critical, #critlib parts of my experience on Twitter do not include the hashtag, and happen outside the chats (and most often involve me listening, not tweeting). This was what I meant above by "the relationships I have developed as a result of my participation in the chats": the idea being, through the chats I started to see the systems and structures that oppress, and as a result of that seeing I have sought to connect with those who, through lived experience, make what I'm seeing real within my humanity--whether or not they ever tweet using the #critlib hashtag. Many of those connections have become relationships--both professional and personal--for which I am incredibly grateful, and because of which I am becoming more human. To be frank, usually the real critical work is happening outside the chats, which is not to say the chats aren't worthwhile, but that they serve a different purpose from "containing the bulk of the critical library work happening on and through Twitter". They don't. And I'm grateful this is so because it means one mode of participation does not hold the monopoly on what it means to do critical library work, on and through Twitter or otherwise.

Metaliteracy at the Course Level: A look at “Revising for Metaliteracy” from the forthcoming Metaliteracy in Practice book [Metaliteracy.org]

This piece is cross-posted at Metaliteracy.org. I co-wrote it with Teresa Grettano as a preview of our chapter, "Revising for Metaliteracy: Flexible Course Design to Support Social Media Pedagogy," appearing in the forthcoming book Metaliteracy in Practice. 

What does a course designed intentionally for metaliteracy—as both a pedagogical method as well as a learning outcome—look like? How can a course’s goals, assignments, and schedule be deliberately composed and structured to develop metaliteracy in both students and instructors? And why might instructors choose to use social media in their courses, not despite but because of the complexities that accompany these technologies when they are invited into the learning community of the classroom?

This chapter offers answers to these questions by describing, analyzing, and reflecting on a 200-level Writing course called Rhetoric & Social Media, in which students “investigate rhetoric through and the rhetoric of social media.” This course was co-designed and co-taught by the authors—an information literacy librarian and a rhetoric/composition professor—for the first time at their institution in spring 2011. At its inception the course focused on the social media platform Facebook as both the primary object of analysis and vehicle for learning in the course. By 2013, it became clear to the authors that a course intentionally designed to develop both information literacy and rhetorical and critical practice in students on social media needed to address more platforms than Facebook, and needed to be flexible in how it did so. To this end, the authors significantly revised the course in time for the spring 2013 semester to include Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, in addition to Facebook, with a restructured course schedule and new learning exercises (i.e., assignments) developed to take advantage of this expansion in scope.

This chapter shares with readers this revision process: what the revisions were, the authors’ pedagogical rationale for the revisions made, the outcomes of the revisions (i.e., how they played out in practice in the classroom), and the relationship between this revision process and the development of metaliteracy in all involved—students and instructors/authors alike. Like a companion chapter in this collection, this chapter models a metaliterate approach to course design through its method of analyzing elements of the syllabus over time, in order to build an argument for what metaliteracy at the course-level looks like. It also makes connections between the goals of rhetorical theory and the goals of metaliteracy, connections that can be leveraged by information literacy educators to further integrate these domains within and across the curriculum.

Sabbatical 2016: Technology, Identity, & Personhood

In my recent internet travels, I discovered that two years ago Barbara Fister shared publicly her research proposal for a year-long sabbatical. She was subsequently awarded the sabbatical, and during academic year 2014-2015 she immersed herself in her research inquiry and created a series of digital texts that resulted from this work.

I was awarded tenure this year. I had hoped to write a reflection about what this means for me and my work as an academic librarian, and I still may (though it feels kind of overwhelming to try to capture in words all the complex feelings I have about this). But one very concrete thing it means is that I am eligible for a sabbatical during my first year as tenured library faculty, and that year has just started.

Library faculty at my institution are eligible for what is termed a "short-term sabbatical" in our Faculty Handbook, which means we may take sabbatical time during the "off seasons" on our campus: January, June, July, and August. The number of months (four) equal that of a single semester-long sabbatical, but they are broken up. I suspect the reasoning behind this when it was negotiated has to do with ensuring the library is properly staffed during the fall and spring academic semesters. I have a lot of thoughts, questions, and ideas about this, which I may pursue on my campus in my future as a tenured member of the library faculty. 

But for now, being eligible at all for a sabbatical--during which I will be paid my full salary for pursuing in-depth research in my professional discipline--is a privilege I can barely wrap my tired, feeble mind around at this point. I'm sure I won't understand the significance until it is Monday, January 4, 2016, and I don't have to report to the office for my daily library duties, and instead get to crack the pages of bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress for the first time. 

If you haven't guessed by now, my sabbatical was granted, and I will be taking it in January, June, July, and August of 2016. I am incredibly excited about the line of inquiry I plan to pursue during these months, as it brings together in conversation so many areas I have studied and begun to scratch the surface on during my six probationary years on the tenure track. 

On a practical level, my main goal is to use this time to read, read, and read some more, with some writing in there as well, but most of the writing will serve my understanding and processing of the reading. There are some concrete things I hope to show for the experience, including scholarly contributions in appropriate publications, as well as some curricular development and mapping across my campus in the areas I'll be researching. 

But mainly, I plan to read. I want to read all the longform things I haven't been able to fit into my daily 12-month, 40-hours-per-week work schedule. 

I had an idea to possibly share my sabbatical application openly in some way, and coming across Barbara's post from two years ago has inspired me to do so here. 

A few contextual notes: I had to apply for a sabbatical that would take place during academic year 2015-2016 in September 2014. This means I was casting out a year and three months to what I hoped would be a series of worthwhile research activities for the specific months of the sabbatical, which was not an easy feat. Also, I have expanded the publications I plan to target for any process-based writing that results from this research to include In the Library with the Leadpipe, Hybrid Pedagogy, and the Journal of Digital Humanities (or another appropriate DH publication for a particular idea I have in mind) [edited to also add the Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy who just put out a call for submissions I am eyeing...]. 

So, without further ado, here are my own soon to be real "sabbatical dreams":

---

Technology, Identity, & Personhood:

A critical inquiry into the relationship between who we are

and the information tools we use to learn, process, and communicate

Application for Short-Term Sabbatical Leave

During Intersession 2016 and Summer 2016

(PDF version here)

 September 15, 2014

Donna Witek, MA, MLIS

Associate Professor &

Public Services Librarian

Weinberg Memorial Library

The University of Scranton

Scranton, PA 18510

donna.witek@scranton.edu ~ 1.570.941.4000

SUMMARY

I request a short-term, scholarly research sabbatical leave, to be taken during Intersession 2016 and Summer 2016, to research the intersections between the technologies we use to both interact with and create knowledge and information, and our conceptions of self and embodied personhood in the digital post-modern world.

BACKGROUND

Information literacy is currently defined by the American Library Association (ALA) and the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) as “a set of abilities requiring individuals to ‘recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information,’” a definition first published in 1989 and developed further in 2000, just before the emergence of social media on the Web. ACRL is currently revising its Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education into a Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education to address the technological developments that have occurred these past fourteen years, moving beyond a skills-based understanding of information literacy to an understanding that incorporates dispositional attitudes and conceptual knowledge of the increasingly complex nature and contexts of information in the digital age.

In the June 2014 draft of this new Framework, the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education Task Force offers the following as an updated definition of information literacy in our present context:

Information literacy is a repertoire of understandings, practices, and dispositions focused on flexible engagement with the information ecosystem, underpinned by critical self-reflection. The repertoire involves finding, evaluating, interpreting, managing, and using information to answer questions and develop new ones; and creating new knowledge through ethical participation in communities of learning, scholarship, and practice. (p. 2)

As a faculty librarian whose instructional content area centers on information literacy, it is my job to both engage and embody this definition of information literacy in my work, in order to effectively develop it in our students through my teaching and pedagogy. In particular, the definition’s focus on “dispositions,” “critical self-reflection,” and “ethical participation in communities of learning, scholarship, and practice,” opens the door to engaging and understanding information literacy through new theoretical lenses, such as critical, rhetorical, and social theory, as well as Christian anthropology and ethics—particularly when information literacy is taught, learned, and practiced in the Catholic, Jesuit educational context.

            I began this work of understanding information literacy within this increasingly complex technological environment several years before ACRL developed the updated definition shared above. Through my work co-designing and co-teaching the course WRTG 224: Rhetoric & Social Media with Dr. Teresa Grettano, student learning outcomes related to information literacy and developed through the lenses of rhetorical and identity theory, metaliteracy, and Jesuit pedagogy have been taught on our campus since the first run of the course in Spring 2011. As the syllabus tells the students,

We designed this course to engage you “where you are at”—a goal of both Jesuit education and critical pedagogy—by situating traditional instruction in rhetorical theory/practice and information literacy within social networks—specifically on Facebook. The benefit of our doing so is not only your enhanced engagement, but also an opportunity for us to facilitate a critical engagement with the media you use daily. . . . In essence, the course will investigate rhetoric through and the rhetoric of social media. Put simply, we will be examining and practicing how you make meaning with information on Facebook.

The course has been taught three times since its creation, and each time Teresa and I update the content and assignments to address the changes in social media that have occurred since the last iteration; for instance, for the third run of the course, the platforms studied were expanded to include Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, in addition to Facebook, inviting critical engagement with an increasingly diverse set of participatory information tools which students use on a daily basis. Teresa and I have published on our work (Witek & Grettano, 2012; Witek & Grettano, 2014), and the course will be offered again in Spring 2015 after another substantial revision to account for further changes in both the theory and practice of rhetoric and information literacy on social media.

            Amid the above instructional work with Teresa, I completed my MA in Theology here at the University, and wrote my thesis on worship and liturgy as they relate to knowledge and experience of God (Witek, 2013). While at first a connection between this work and my work with Teresa might not seem obvious, I found myself using the liturgical theology I was engaging for my thesis as a tool to critique the digital contexts I was studying and working in with Teresa and the students in Rhetoric & Social Media. More specifically, the implications of an incarnational, embodied understanding of what it means to know (and love) God—and by extension, what it means to be in community and know (and love) others—when considered alongside theories of constructed knowledge and identity as they play out in participatory and virtual environments and spaces, are considerable and require further study. What are the differences between identity (understood to be constructed) and personhood (understood as the Imago Dei in us)? How do these differences play out in our relationships with both the technologies we interact with on a daily basis and those persons with whom we seek to be in community, often facilitated by these technologies? How might Christian anthropology offer a lens through which to both use ethically and critique these technologies? And how can we use the answers to these questions to inform our pedagogy?

REASONS OR NEED

            There are several needs for this type of inquiry at this moment in time, and situated on our particular campus. Issues of privacy, surveillance, and monetization of personal data are playing out in both government legislation and in the national discourse surrounding the Internet, including the “free” platforms we use on a daily basis to both learn and communicate—platforms like the ones we study in Rhetoric & Social Media which are, in fact, businesses that understand users and their data as the product they sell to their actual customers: advertisers. It is critical that our students develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions, as well as the moral and ethical compass necessary to both navigate this future (which has already arrived) and thrive within it as men and women for [and with] others.

In 2013, a film titled Her was released in which a near future containing artificially intelligent software is depicted. Ironically (and tellingly), the film is first and foremost a love story, where the protagonist Theodore falls in love with his computer’s (disembodied) operating system, named Samantha; the film’s function as dystopian commentary is secondary to this relationship-based romance. As fanciful as this premise sounds, the information systems we currently interact with on a daily basis are learning our preferences with every click, swipe, and keystroke we make—much as Samantha does for Theodore in the film—through the use of powerful algorithms designed to offer us the personalized experience those in power would have us believe we crave. And with wearable technology like glasses and watches that are also mini-computers whose function is to collect personal data about our very selves, in order to augment the way we interact with the world around us, the question of how to both critically and meaningfully thrive in this world as persons of dignity and worth is more pressing than ever. Furthermore, such an inquiry will put in constructive dialogue the humanities and information literacy, a conversation that will infuse and benefit multiple areas of the curriculum on our campus and, through our transformed pedagogy, result in the formation of our students into critical yet empathetic persons and professionals upon leaving the University.

SPECIFIC ACTIVITIES

This TIME cover appeared in my Twitter feed 

as I wrote this application (Moore, 2014).

            I plan to participate in the Ignatian Pedagogy Seminar on our campus the summer prior to the sabbatical (Summer 2015 [my recently posted follow-up report]), with an eye towards identifying ways that Ignatian pedagogy can both critique and provide meaning to the use of technology in our classrooms and in our lives. My primary activity during the proposed sabbatical will be to immerse myself in the literature focused on information science, social media, identity, personhood, ethics, and Christian anthropology, as well as the focused study of critical, rhetorical, and social theory as they relate to both technology and pedagogy. As I do so, I will map connections between these discourses, identifying areas of overlap and complement, as well as any conflict between modes of thinking and being articulated in them. In many ways, finding these anticipated points of conflict and incompatibility is a primary goal of this project, as these points will provide an opportunity to critique both the technologies themselves and our relationship with them, while yet offering (perhaps) a way forward for thinking, learning, and being, with dignity and discernment, in the digital post-modern world we find ourselves in.

During and after this focused period of research, and still within the period of the proposed sabbatical, I plan to develop learning outcomes in three modes—cognitive (knowledge), behavioral (skills), and dispositional (attitudes/habits)—related to my findings as I compare and synthesize this material. These outcomes, while situated within the curricular goals of the Weinberg Memorial Library (WML) Information Literacy Program, will have resonance for other programs on campus, and so will serve as a resource for further integrating information literacy into the campus-wide curriculum. To this end, I will map these developed learning outcomes to the following documents: the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, the WML Information Literacy Program Assessment Plan, and institutional and program goals at the University. Finally, I will begin the preliminary design of learning activities (i.e., assignments and assessments), through which these learning outcomes might be developed in students both inside and outside the classroom, for intended use by the WML Information Literacy Program in collaboration with other curricular programs on campus.

OUTCOMES

            In addition to developing learning outcomes related to my sabbatical research, as well as documents mapping these outcomes to the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, the WML Information Literacy Program Assessment Plan, the Institutional Learning Outcomes for the University, and other relevant curricular programs on campus (i.e., General Education, Eloquentia Perfecta, etc.), I plan to report on the process, findings, and classroom implementation of my sabbatical research activity, targeting the following peer-reviewed venues: Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal ; SIMILE: Studies In Media & Information Literacy Education ; Composition Forum ; Journal of Technology, Theology, & Religion ; and, Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science.

REFERENCES

ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education Task Force. (2014). Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, Draft 2, June 2014. ACRL. Retrieved from: http://acrl.ala.org/ilstandards/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Framework-for-IL-for-HE-Draft-2.pdf

American Library Association & Association of College and Research Libraries. (2000). Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. ALA and ACRL. Retrieved from: http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/standards/standards.pdf

Moore, T. [TimMoore]. (2014, September 10). How #WearableTech is changing your life - like it or not. @TIME pic.twitter.com/iwjxT8o8Ly [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/TimMoore/status/509803279870476288

Witek, D. (2013). “‘Now lay aside all earthly cares’: Knowledge of God through Christian Worship.” MA thesis. The University of Scranton. Retrieved from: http://digitalservices.scranton.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15111coll1/id/941

Witek, D., & Grettano, T. (2012). “Information literacy on Facebook: an analysis.” Reference Services Review, 40(2), 242-257.

Witek, D., & Grettano, T. (2014). “Teaching metaliteracy: a new paradigm in action.” Reference Services Review, 42(2), 188-208.