Information & Academic Literacy

Integration

Information and academic literacy are developed more successfully by learners when these literacies are integrated into a curriculum.

Disciplinary literacy practices are best acquired by learners when they are learnt over time within disciplinary contexts. As such, integration needs to be scaffolded across all years of a content program because these skills require practice and reinforcement in order to be transferred across courses and into future practice. 

Collaboration

Scaffolding literacies across content program is most effective when done through a collaboration between content and literacy experts. 

Collaboration between content and literacy experts in designing curricula and assignments is the most successful means of developing literacy. Content specialists can be supported by literacy specialists in making the often tacit "insider" knowledge and literacy explicit for students. Successful collaboration should see the development of competence and attributes of that competence in content and literacy in unison throughout throughout a program.

The Learning Commons team at UCQ can collaborate with you on incorporating information and academic literacy at an appropriate level for your course through

• reviewing and consulting on course outlines;
• consulting on assignments; 
• brainstorming active learning strategies that use information and/or academic literacy in the classroom;
• designing course assignments that integrate these literacies with core content; and
• developing rubrics which assess competencies of information and academic literacy.