To handle the vast amount of information they will encounter in school, life, and work, today's students must develop skills not required of previous generations. Advocates of information literacy—the ability to find, interpret, use, and communicate information from a variety of sources—say resource-based learning is the tool for the complex job of preparing students for tomorrow's information-dependent society.
Resource-based learning is based on the belief that students learn best by interacting directly with learning resources rather than listening to classroom lectures. The learning is more self-directed and therefore more meaningful—and students retain the knowledge better because they learned it in a more engaging process, advocates say.
Since the skills of information literacy cannot be taught in a content vacuum, resource-based learning integrates the classroom and the library media center. "There cannot be resource-based learning without content," says Patricia Senn Breivik, coauthor of Information Literacy: Educating Children for the 21st Century. "The whole intent is to get students more meaningfully involved with content so that more of the information or knowledge `sticks.'"
For resource-based learning to work, educators need to foster a process of discovery through which students learn how to use information resources effectively while pursuing questions they find meaningful. "A learner cannot identify resources—whether print, online, or human—without first having a question to ask, a problem to solve, or a project to complete," says Vicki Hancock, director of ASCD's Education and Technology Resources Center and vice chair of the National Forum on Information Literacy. "If it's the educator's job to `cover' content, then surrounding the content with resource-based learning activities makes the experience that much more interactive, collaborative, and vivid for learners."
Central to the purpose of resource-based learning, Hancock writes, is that teachers "involve students in complex tasks that have purposes beyond the limits of the classroom and the teacher's critical evaluation." The process thus aims to get beyond textbooks, and is conducive to collaborative learning, she adds. And in reaching beyond traditional sources—especially into the local community and mass media—students develop more awareness of the source and nature of many kinds of information.
Collaboration and Planning
Vonna Pitel, library media specialist at Cedarburg (Wisc.) High School and coauthor of Teaching Electronic Information Skills: A Resource Guide for Grades 9–12, says the first step toward resource-based learning is collaboration and planning between classroom teacher and library media specialist. "Teachers have to see us as partners," she says. "We're teachers, too."
That partnership ideally runs throughout a given unit. Teacher and library media specialist together analyze the needs and abilities of students, agree on content and materials, design activities to meet unit objectives, present the unit together when possible, and evaluate it jointly.
Pitel has achieved the best results when she has had a chance to lay the resource groundwork for an upcoming unit. For example, in preparation for a recent unit on microbes in a high school class, she and the teacher developed a list of potential research topics. After "presearching" the subject, Pitel could offer a concentrated series of sessions on how to use the resources—tailored to the subject.
Then the students began their own research. As they delved into the material, with Pitel in the library media center to guide them when necessary, they sometimes found their topics were too wide or too narrow. Or they decided to pursue resources outside the school. For Pitel, the bottom line was that they learned about the subject while learning how to find and use information more effectively—two aspects of one learning process.
Barbara Campbell, information literacy and technology supervisor for the Plainville (Conn.) Community Schools, says resource-based learning must adapt to the challenges of different grade levels. At the elementary level, efforts may be hampered by inflexible schedules or the tendency of students to stay with one teacher too much. In middle schools, the team-teaching structures that lend themselves to resource-based learning are often in place already, Campbell says. But in high schools, students are often constrained by short class periods and rigid content demands that make it hard for teachers to develop the flexibility needed for resource-based learning.
Campbell and others stress that resource-based learning is all but impossible in 45-minute blocks of time. For example, with high school students, Pitel says she concentrates on research skills that will be useful to them in college, including learning to use outside resources. Short periods are impractical for that type of research.
One of the best aspects of resource-based learning is that "the learning experience doesn't end with the bell," says Kerri Cravens, a teacher at Lanphier High School in Springfield, Ill. "Students start searching the newspapers, talk to their parents or others about what they are learning, and come back to class to dispense their findings. They are delighted when they find something that no one else has discovered—not even the teacher."
Studying the Media
Studying the Media
In this sample unit, from Teaching Electronic Information Skills: A Resource Guide for Grades 9–12, teacher and library media specialist collaborate in a resource-based approach to learning about violence in the media. To study the impact of media violence, students conduct research in preparation for a multimedia presentation. Information skills objectives include:
Appreciation: Watch a TV program, recording the number of violent acts, and discuss ideas about the impact of violence.
Presearch: Compare the number of violent acts across genres, use online search tools to find information on violence in the media, create a list of sub-topics, and brainstorm keywords for them.
Search: Interview a person or contact a group concerned with media violence, search resources for supporting data, and define “violent act.”
Interpretation: Develop a violence rating scale, determine the credibility of data and sources gathered, and write a review of one program with an emphasis on violence.
Communication: Create a cartoon or comic strip on the subject, design an antiviolence program for the school, and determine an effective method for reporting findings.
To join ASCD's Information Literacy Network, contact Kim Carter at Souhegan High School, Amherst, N.H., (603) 673-9940; or Barbara Campbell, Plainville (Conn.) Community Schools, (203) 793-3245.