Metaliterate Learning for the Post-truth World

Foreword by Troy A. Swanson

Metaliteracy is especially well suited as a tool for ensuring that learners can successfully navigate the proliferation of fake news, questionable content, and outright denialism of facts in today’s information morass. Indeed, it is starkly evident that the competencies, knowledge, and personal attributes specific to metaliterate individuals are critical; digital literacy and traditional conceptions of information literacy are insufficient for the significant challenges we currently face. This book examines the newest version of the Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives, including the four domains of metaliterate learning, as well as the relationship between metaliteracy and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Featuring contributions from a variety of information literacy instructors, educators, librarians, and faculty, the chapters in this book

• discuss the social, political, and ethical dimensions of information creation, distribution, and use;
• use case studies to demonstrate how metaliteracy guides learners to read online information with a critical eye, apply metacognitive thinking to the consumption of all information, and make purposeful and responsible contributions to the social media ecosystem as active participants;
• examine when images are taken out of context and paired with misleading text, a prevalent feature of the misinformation frequently shared via social media; and
• situates metaliteracy in such contexts such as the academic library, a science class, fiction writing, digital storytelling, and a theater arts course.

Metaliteracy is a powerful model for preparing learners to be responsible participants in today’s divisive information environment, and this book showcases several teaching and learning practices that have already proven effective.

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Thomas P. Mackey is Vice Provost for Academic Programs at SUNY Empire State College. His professional interests include open learning in innovative social spaces and critical engagement with emerging technologies. His collaborative work with Trudi Jacobson to originate the metaliteracy framework emphasizes the reflective learner as producer and participant in dynamic information environments. He appreciates all of their work, especially the metaliteracy research, writing, editing, teaching, grant projects, and design of innovative learning spaces using competency-based digital badging and massive open online courses (MOOCs).

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Trudi E. Jacobson, Distinguished Librarian, is Head of the Information Literacy Department at the University Libraries, University at Albany. Her professional interests focus on team-based and other forms of active learning, learner motivation, digital badging, and, of course, metaliteracy, a concept Tom Mackey and she developed in response to inadequate conceptions of information literacy in a rapidly changing information environment.