Presented at LILAC 2018

1. USING OBL FOR IL AND MORE
The Project
Experimenting with archive objects to teach a variety of information literacy
skills as well as encouraging curiosity and engagement from students.
The University of Bedfordshire special collections houses archives from the
Bedford Physical Training College, including student magazines, photographs,
sporting equipment, administrative records and oral archives.
Colleagues have also run this project using the UCL Institute of Education
archive.
The Aims and the Theory
Information Literacy:
Self-reflection; significance of the creation process; ambiguity of information;
spectrum of inquiry; questioning; scope of investigation; assess for
information gaps; synthesise ideas; draw reasonable conclusions; intellectual
curiosity; open mind and critical stance; flexibility; deeper understanding;
aware of own biases (ACRL, 2016)
Active Learning:
multi-sensory, Kolbs learning cycle, encourage engagement, think as well as
do (Chatterjee and Hannan, 2015; Romanek and Lynch, 2008 )
Deeper Learning:
Tactile, resonates with students, become independent learners (Bellanca,
2015; Chatterjee and Hannan, 2015)
Critical and Lateral Thinking:
Draw upon own prior learning and experiences to make and take meaning,
provoke thoughts and discussion, encourage different perceptions and
divergent thinking (Appleton, Grandal Montero and Jones, 2017; Hardie,
2015; Chatterjee and Hannan, 2015)
Visual literacy and 21st Century Skills:
Ability to read objects and make and take meaning from them, skills and
confidence in research, creation of open discussion, learning to look (Hardie,
2015; Little, Felten and Berry, 2015)
The Feedback
Foundation Year students:
“Made me think outside the box”
“New ideas about how to look at information”
“Learned how to analyse sources”
“Interactive”
“Asking questions”
“Enjoyed how we had to investigate each article and physical object to put
together a conclusion”
“Surprising that literature can be more difficult to link together than pictures”
“Not to do with my assignment”
“time constraints”
MA Music Students:
“Helpful and fun in terms of piquing interest”
“I like that we dived into the activity before anything was explained, drew
connections to critical reading/writing well”
“the learning stuck better doing this way than the other way round I’d
imagine”
“I found it very useful in a practical way to explore the ideas presented”
“An interesting and stimulating way into the topic”
“Good to work as a team”
“It was a very engaging activity, and I enjoyed it very much. It is something I
had never done before and it helped me a lot to think in new ways”.
The Future
Article in Higher Education Pedagogies Journal
More trial sessions to gather more feedback and refine the timing and
activities
Suggestions welcome!
What is OBL?
OBL stands ford OBJECT-BASED LEARNING. It is “a student-centred
learning approach that uses objects to facilitate deep learning”
(Sheffield Hallam University, nd)
What we did
Question: Explore photographs, generate as many questions you can in
2 minutes
Discuss: Discuss in groups, compare questions, why are they the
same/different?
Reflect: What makes your perceptions different?
Changing perceptions: Additional objects added whilst the group
discussed. Did the additional objects change your ideas?
Make links: Identify common themes, create narratives
Subject context: Take the processes and apply it to academic research
process, academic texts and students own writing