Introduction - use of computers

Library Trends, Summer, 2001 by T.G. McFadden

COMPUTER-ASSISTED INSTRUCTION IS REALLY nothing more than the electronic application of well-understood principles of learning that gave rise to the popularity, some years ago, of "programmed instruction." But if the instructional use of computers in libraries amounted to little more than self-paced, guided-task, learning, we should not be very interested. In fact, libraries find themselves, as they often do, at a significant intersection of various technologies, services, products, and scholarship that offers unique opportunities. We are in a position to integrate, within the same technology, teaching about scholarship, production of scholarship, delivery of information and services, and effective use of these simultaneously. The computer, and electronic technology generally, has finally begun to realize some of the promise that Memex offered (Bush, 1945). The same technology that delivers information and scholarship can also be used to teach the direct, and indirect, use of that information and associated research and analytical techniques. The "how to" and the "what" can be presented in a seamless environment of tutorial or classroom learning managed and presented by electronic media and computing machines.

This issue of Library Trends includes articles that explore both the theoretical and practical aspects of the use of computers to teach, and not merely to deliver, information. Inevitably, any discussion of the use of computers in instruction, and as teachers, will evolve into a discussion about the general nature of the skills to be taught, as well as the skills required to learn from a computerized instructional program. A computer may be used to teach about a great many things, not least importantly about itself.

One of the things that one may usefully learn from a machine program is the technique of information retrieval and management. And this is what many librarians and faculty members have in mind when they speak about "information literacy." How to define this concept, and how to draw useful connections among the related ideas of "technical literacy" and "information technology literacy" is the subject of contributions here by O'Hanlon, Cox, Kaplowitz, Hansen, and Brandt. (1)

It is important to note that much of the current discussion about "information literacy" is really more about "computer literacy." The ability to handle information in an intelligent and critical way is not different from the kind of thing required of any undergraduate, for example, as a normal part of general education and of meeting the requirements of the major. We might wonder if, in fact, most undergraduates do actually succeed in acquiring these skills and abilities, but that is another matter.

Many colleges and universities have established guidelines for describing this kind of competence and for evaluating undergraduate achievement, but most of these programs simply reflect traditional concern for library and research skills. (2) What some have called "digital literacy" is something else again, although there are overlaps. (3)

Genuine digital competence, in the sense intended, can be thought of as having two distinct aspects: desktop competence and electronic information retrieval competence (largely a matter of World Wide Web skill, but not entirely). These two types of competence are closely related, as Brandt argues, and we need to pay more attention to how the first level of competence contributes to the second (and to the assumptions we make about the prior levels of competence of either kind that our students and users bring to our libraries). If our readers do not possess some minimal set of desktop competencies, they will not be able to profit from instruction by computers, or even in the most basic elements of electronic information retrieval competence as taught by and through computing machines.

One of the most exciting developments in library and information retrieval instruction has been the rapid expansion of quality content--general as well as specialized intellectual resources--available through the Internet. The problem of how to retrieve and evaluate this content, and distinguish it from the vast amount of low- or no-quality information on the Internet, has become the subject of countless conference papers, journal articles, and books by librarians and faculty members alike. The authors of several articles in this issue of Library Trends (for instance, O'Hanlon, Cox, Kaplowitz, and Hansen) present the results of practical experiences in teaching these skills and general World Wide Web skills through the medium itself. Using the medium to teach about itself, doing so essentially to the autodidact, exploits two important aspects of one kind of successful learning: the instruction is self-paced and the subject matter is largely self-taught. (4) Combining instruction of this kind with the use of computers as instructional devices puts this strategy directly into the center of a controversial, and now somewhat neglected, historical tradition.