Durable Skills Faculty Toolkit:
Information + Technolgy Literacy
This toolkit is designed as a practical, plug-and-play resource for faculty who are integrating Information + Technology Literacy into their courses. Moving from the Durable Skills framework to practical application, these materials can be easily incorporated into existing lesson plans and syllabi. Because information and technology literacy skills often overlap with other essential Durable Skills, this resource will help you to foster engagement while providing your students with opportunities to practice the broader competencies they need to succeed in their academic and professional lives.
Contents Include:
- An overview of information literacy standards for higher education and how they intersect with the other Durable Skills. This helps faculty explore the specific skills that make up information and technology literacy, and provides the necessary context for why it's foundational to student success.
- Plug-and-play assignments that can be adopted as-is or adapted. These cover key areas such as source evaluation, digital ethics, and information creation.
- A selection of modular, low-prep active learning activities that target specific literacy skills.
- A curated list of reflective prompts that can be used for discussion, journals, or short writing assignments. These are designed to help students examine their own research habits and the resources they use to find information.
For additional information about how you can collaborate with a librarian to tailor and embed information literacy instruction into your courses, please explore this guide.
The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education serves as a guide for integrating information and technology literacy into the classroom. Rather than providing a checklist of skills, it introduces six concepts that help students navigate, evaluate, and use information ethically as they progress through their academic and professional careers. It also identifies specific knowledge practices associated with each frame.
The Frames
- Authority Is Constructed and Contextual: Recognizing that information quality relies on context and intended use rather than static markers, students engage in specific knowledge practices and tasks to evaluate authority.
- Information Creation as a Process: Recognizing that information is produced through deliberate processes; understanding these methods helps students navigate specific practices and tasks to determine the best types of sources for their research needs.
- Information Has Value: Recognizing that information is a commodity shaped by legal, social, and economic interests, students explore specific practices and tasks to understand how these factors influence access and sharing.
- Research as Inquiry: Approaching research as an exploratory, non-linear journey, students engage in specific practices and tasks that involve asking increasingly complex questions.
- Scholarship as Conversation: Viewing academic fields as ongoing discussions, students utilize specific practices and tasks to learn how to engage with diverse perspectives and contribute their own ideas.
- Searching as Strategic Exploration: Understanding that searching is a dynamic process requiring flexibility, students apply specific practices and tasks to pivot strategies when necessary.
Why the ACRL Framework Still Matters
This framework shifts the focus of instruction from the memorization of search tools to the development of deep, critical engagement with information systems. By centering these threshold concepts, faculty can:
- Promote student agency. It empowers students to take ownership of their own learning by understanding the underlying architectures of the information they consume and produce.
- Foster lifelong learning. Because these concepts are transferable across disciplines and career paths, they provide students with the skills to navigate the evolving information landscape.
- Refine academic inquiry. It moves information literacy beyond the library, integrating it into the classroom as an important component of intellectual rigor, scholarly ethics, and creative innovation.
The mapping below identifies the alignments and overlaps between the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy and the Durable Skills Framework, and demonstrates how they connect to research competencies.
Table: Aligning Research Competencies with ACRL Concepts and Durable Skills
| Research Competency | ACRL Framework Concept | Durable Skill |
| Define research needs | Research as Inquiry | Critical Thinking + Problem Solving |
| Search for information | Searching as Strategic Exploration | Emotional + Cultural Competence; Critical Thinking + Problem Solving |
| Evaluate information | Authority Is Constructed + Contextual | Critical Thinking + Problem Solving |
| Synthesize information | Scholarship as Conversation | Critical Thinking + Problem Solving; Collaboration + Communication |
| Use information ethically | Information Has Value | Critical Thinking + Problem Solving; Leadership + Professionalism |