Abstract:

Media and information literacy is of increasing importance and viewed as a necessary life skill for all ages, social groups and sectors of contemporary digital society. This paper illustrates the background and process of building a successful librarian-faculty partnership initiated as a quality improvement measure for a bachelor program in business administration at University West, Sweden. According to the Higher Education Act, Swedish higher education should rest on scientific or artistic basis and on proven experience, research and development. The process started in 2012 as a response to criticism from the Swedish Council for Higher Education regarding learning outcomes focused on students’ skills and abilities to seek, collect, evaluate and critically interpret relevant information within the field of business administration. The quality improvement process entitled “A Scientific Wave” aims at supporting the student's development during the study period to develop and strengthen skills in critical and analytical approaches, written and oral presentation, and media and information literacy skills to provide the prerequisites for achieving the learning outcomes for a bachelor’s degree in business administration. The Scientific Wave includes several different quality aspects and applies a holistic approach to improve the quality and progression of knowledge throughout all courses of the program. In addition, work-integrated learning, WIL, is applied as an educational and pedagogical model throughout the program to enhance the link between work life and learning, theory and practice. This paper will focus on how to build a successful librarian-faculty collaboration to improve students’ media and information literacy. Earlier research state that successful integration of media and information literacy in higher education should be based on close collaboration between librarians and discipline faculty, strategic anchoring and visualization in curriculum, syllabi, course objectives and examinations, and developed in line with the mission of the university. The Scientific Wave is here viewed as a co-creative continuous process based on the separate but complementary skills of librarians and faculty to provide students with tools for critical and creative thinking in today’s digital society.

Keywords:

Media and information literacy, librarian-faculty collaboration, curriculum, business administration, degree project.