Participative Resources, Practices, and Information Literacy Standards in Online Stem Education

Abstract

How are nontraditional, participative resources such as social media content being integrated into online STEM education, and how can libraries best support these fastchanging practices? Using conceptual content analysis of information literacy standards, a survey of undergraduate students' use of supplemental learning resources, and participant observation of librarian-led information literacy instruction sessions, we investigate the extent to which these less-visible actors enable, resist, and extend the incorporation of participative resources into STEM education. Our preliminary findings suggest that information literacy standards are evolving to encompass participative resources and practices, that students actively incorporate formal and informal resources into their learning, and that participative dimensions are incorporated into information literacy instruction sessions, though they may not be formally documented. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the apparently uneven translation and inscription of information literacy standards into practice and how actors outside the classroom impact STEM education in a social media environment.

Online Technologies in STEM Education

“…Secondly, methods for assessing the real effectiveness of such programs are being studied, in particular, evaluation teachers' work, whose role in STEM is especially great [2,20]. Thirdly, there is a discussion about the boundaries of using online STEM courses and how actually such an approach can be applied to this teaching methodology [6,26]. According to the majority of researchers, online-education is not able to completely replace work in the classroom and laboratory, and attempts to teach mainly online lead to low effectiveness, rapid dropout and students usually do not achieve their academic goals [25].…”

“…The rapid technological development and the spread of practices previously considered as extremely rare and specialized require integration of such techniques [5]. Let us say, robotics, gene research, and other specialized scientific research are now available not only for students, but schoolchildren as well [4][5][6]. The introduction of network technologies, cloud-based services, big data, as well as virtual and augmented reality into pedagogical practice has dramatically increased learning opportunities.…”