Changing the Game: Using Badges to Assess Information Literacy Learning Outcomes

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From a “Crusade Against Ignorance” to a “Crisis of Authenticity”: Cultivating Information Literacy for a 21st Century Democracy

In this session, I propose ways to present information literacy instruction to students and faculty as an essential component in one’s education, a requirement for life in a civic democracy. I suggest that information literacy instructors should champion the concept of publicly important knowledge. Rather than instruction that privileges task-oriented process information-seeking processes, librarians should cultivate interactions where students develop patterns of curating knowledge that reflect a deep-seated desire to be aware of what matters to educated people. We will discover how social media platforms are the concrete tools we can use to facilitate this paradigm shift in information literacy instruction, and we will experiment with several instruction models and exercises we can use to cultivate information literacy

Effects of High-Intensity Airborne Ultrasound Exposure on Behavioural and Electrophysiological Measures of Auditory Function

Regulations on safe ultrasound exposure limits are based on a very limited number of studies, which have only considered audiometric threshold shifts as indicators of hearing deficits. The purpose of the current study was to assess the effects of exposure to high-intensity ultrasound on a range of measures of hearing function, which included audiometric thresholds, as well as subclinical measures of hearing deficits: speech-in-noise understanding, supra-threshold auditory brainstem response wave I amplitude and latency, and frequency following response levels to amplitude modulated (AM) tones. Changes in these measures were assessed before and after exposure of the left ear to high-intensity ultrasound in a group of nine young listeners. These changes were compared to those observed in a control group of nine young listeners. Exposure consisted in the presentation of a 40-kHz AM tone at levels of 105, 110, 115, and 120 dB SPL for 10 minutes at each level, plus an exposure to a 40-kHz unmodulated tone during an ultrasound detection task, for a total duration of 50 seconds. None of the measures of hearing function was found to change significantly more for the left compared to the right ear, for participants of the exposure group compared to control participants. Electroencephalographic recordings obtained during exposure to the AM tone did not show significant phase-locked activity at the modulation frequency or at low-frequency subharmonics of the ultrasound tone. One out of nine participants was able to perform the ultrasound detection task above chance level, although due to limitations of the experimental setup the mechanism by which she could detect the presentation of the tone remains unclear