When Research Does Not Start with a Question: Teaching with the Framework and Visual Literacy Standards within Art and Architecture Librarianship

While much has been written about implementing the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in various classroom settings, this article addresses mapping the ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education to the Framework in designing instruction for art and architecture students. Disciplinary lenses, allowing for an integrative, pragmatic heuristic, are coupled with an integration of approaches found in the library instruction literature, including faculty and librarian teaching partnerships and assessment. The versatility of mapping these professional documents is demonstrated through implementation in both one-shot and embedded instruction.[The following article is an expansion of two papers presented at the eponymous panel session, co-organized by the authors at the ARLIS/NA conference held in New Orleans, Louisiana, February 2017.

Uniting the field: using the ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards to move beyond the definition problem of visual literacy

Visual literacy has evolved alongside information literacy and media literacy, reflecting social, technological, and cultural changes. Rapidly advancing technology, multimodal access to information and disinformation, and political rhetoric increasingly impact the perception, trust, and use of visual media. These broader technological and cultural shifts also change what it means to be a visually literate individual in the twenty-first century. Although much has been written about visual literacy, there is very little that reviews scholarship that uses the 2011 ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Through an analysis of 196 articles published from 2011 to 2019, this study examines how the standards, which outline visual literacy competencies for learners in the twenty-first century, have been used since their adoption, by whom, and for what purposes. This study unveils an emerging shift in the paradigm of visual literacy scholarship. Abbreviations: ACRL: Association of College and Research Libraries; Visual Literacy Standards: Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education; the Standards: Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education; the Framework: Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education

Paradigm Shift, Expansion, and Inclusion: Visual Literacy Research for the Field of Information

In addition to the continuing call for the inclusion of visual literacy into the curriculum for library and information science education, a paradigm expansion in research to develop and lead an interdisciplinary research advancement is a pressing task. The proposed paradigm shift in research results from the shift in the nature of information from text-based to visual information. Such a paradigm shift requires expanding research methodologies and theoretical frameworks. At the same time, paradigm inclusion is needed to invite and embrace interdisciplinary research and diverse research methodologies and theoretical frameworks to study visual information. This paradigm shift, expansion, and inclusion empathize with the social construction of knowledge/meaning in the studies of visual information by communities of users/viewers/readers

Teaching students to critically read digital images: a visual literacy approach using the DIG method

This innovative teaching idea, the Digital Image Guide (DIG) Method, addresses the pressing need to develop visual pedagogies in the university classroom by providing a technique for students to use to critically read digital images. This article also introduces the concept of shallow and deep images. It then explains the difference between the two types of images and how to use the DIG Method to dig deeper in order to understand deep images. By utilizing the DIG Method, students can learn to analyze, interpret, evaluate and comprehend images found on social media sites and around the web, increasing their visual literacy skills in the process

How to Frame a Picture: A Digital Humanities Toolbox for Enhancing Visual Literacy Instruction

Teaching visual literacy isn’t always part of the bigger information literacy ‘picture’. “How to Frame a Picture” is a poster presentation that endeavors to help instruction librarians integrate more visual literacy instruction into their information literacy curriculum through the use of digital humanities tools. Each ACRL Visual Literacy standard is mapped to a curated selection of digital tools and sample projects, and attendees will have the opportunity to engage with the ‘toolbox’

Killing the hidden essay: Supporting disciplines to move to multimodal public communication assignments

This chapter will consider the role of nondisciplinary, library-based professionals in supporting faculty academic staff and students in approaching public communication assignments in a way that values their multimodality—in particular, moving away from what we describe as “hidden essays” with visual elements ignored in favour of assessing the academic discourse within the textual content alone. We argue that visuals and formatting can play an important, if not equal, role in effective multimodal public communications and show, through two case studies, how our expertise has been applie

Visual Literacy Assessment: Engaging Students to Improve Success

Does library engagement of students contribute to their success? This poster will highlight our study of the impact of library services on the development of visual literacy skills. Our research process and results will be shared, including next steps to promote use of services that directly impact visual literacy