Scottish Government Library Information Literacy newsfeeds

‘Incredibly short-sighted’: CILIPS condemns North Ayrshire removal of school librarians

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 16:25:56 +0100

This is an incredibly short-sighted decision by North Ayrshire Council. To replace librarians with library assistants will create a situation where staff are asked to do many of the same tasks for a lower salary, which is clear de-professionalisation. This may save money, but education will suffer, and we have had pupils contact us to say they disagree with these cuts.

CILIPS Director Sean McNamara has condemned North Ayrshire Council’s decision to remove all school librarians for the new school year. Having written to the Council on multiple occasions in 2024, warning them of the detrimental impact that such cuts will have on attainment, wellbeing, information literacy skills and much more, as well as emphasising the evidence base that shows why school librarians are essential in Scotland now more than ever, CILIPS featured in The Herald newspaper this week to reiterate the fact that ‘for a school library to function it needs a librarian’.

‘The librarians that were in post were skilled and trained in how to provide a trusted space,’ Mr McNamara continued. ‘Librarians contribute to curriculum goals, help raise attainment and literacy levels, and improve health and wellbeing, and critical thinking. They are also often required to tackle challenges such as requests to ban books, rising misinformation and the complexities of Generative AI.’

If teachers were replaced with lower graded staff there would be a justifiable outcry and to do this to librarians shows just how the Council values its staff and its young people. Parents and trade unions should be outraged.

If you are a North Ayrshire resident, visit our Guide to Campaigning for details of how you can help to advocate for the area’s much-needed school librarians, including using our sample letter template to write to your local councillors.

Guide Dogs: Volunteer Champion Packs for Libraries

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 13:54:42 +0100

CILIPS members, do you want to have a pawsitive impact on your community in partnership with Guide Dogs? Then please sign up for a Volunteering Champion Pack and help grow their volunteer numbers to support more people with sight loss.

As all those who attended our CILIPS Sighted Guide Training for Library Professionals partnership event with Guide Dogs will remember, volunteers are essential to the services they provide and their recruitment means that Guide Dogs can help even more people with sight loss. Of course, there is no one better to help them with the challenge of finding more volunteers than our library professionals – local area experts with knowledge about their communities that could help Guide Dogs find volunteers in areas where people with sight loss need their services the most.

Request a Volunteering Champion pack to receive a bundle of promotional materials such as Guide Dogs posters, leaflets and business cards. You will also receive ‘A guide to attracting volunteers’ that will give you key information about each of their key roles, some top tips on how to use your promotional materials and how to help a library user apply for a volunteering role at Guide Dogs.

Your bespoke Volunteering Champion pack will be sent to you by your Local Volunteering Attraction Coordinator, who will also provide you with materials for roles that Guide Dogs are looking for in your area such as Fosterers, Puppy Raisers or Fundraising Group members.

Order a Volunteering Champion pack for your library now or please contact VolunteerAttraction@guidedogs.org.uk if you have any questions.

Strength and diversity through co creation and curation in library and archive settings

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 10:56:50 +0100

A free online event: ALISS showcase: strength and diversity through co creation and curation in library and archive settings on 17 July 2025 at 13.45-16.45 BST/UK time. "This afternoon event showcases a range of practical projects where library and archive services are harnessing the perspectives and expertise of their current and potential user communities to create more appropriate and better collections and services for all". Speakers are:
- The Student Curator Project: Creating connections through collections and beyond – Catherine Batson and Ivana Jurisic, University of Surrey, UK (running a collaborative staff-student partnership project based around the collections and resources in the Library);
- Liberate the Library: co-production and collaboration with students at the University of Sheffield - Rhian Stephenson, University of Sheffield, UK (discussing The Creative Library (Liberate the Library) Project);
- The Fitba Research Club - Dora Petherbridge, curator, National Library of Scotland, Scotland "The Fitba Research Club’s community curators developed research skills and information literacy to explore a rich history of sporting achievement and to create the Andrew Watson’s XI, an all-star fantasy team of Black footballers and footballers of colour who played in Scotland."
The event will be preceded by ALISS' brief AGM, open to all. To register contact Heather Dawson h.dawson@lse.ac.uk
Photo by Sheila Webber: rhododendron flowers, June 2025

Guardians of Tomorrow (Mental Health Foundation): Request a free copy for your library

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 08:39:38 +0100

A new publication from the Mental Health Foundation, written by six volunteers about their experience of the asylum process, shares advice for looking after mental health while going through this complex and often challenging system.

We are six refugees and asylum seekers who have come together through the Mental Health Foundation’s Weaving Threads for Wellbeing programme. Together, we have created the Guardians of Tomorrow, through which we tell our Tales of Survival. We hope that this comic book will give advice and inspiration to other people in the asylum process.

To request free physical copies of the book for your library, please contact Rosie Burrell at rburrell@mentalhealth.org.uk. Please include your postal address and the number of copies you require.

Healthcare Information For All

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 12:45:44 +0100

HIFA: Healthcare Information For All made a statement about the importance of information for health at the World Health Organization's World Health Assembly 2025. You can view it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVniAi6JYLM and it is embedded below. It was read by Dr Meena Nathan Cherian, representing HIFA, who said
"Access to reliable healthcare information is fundamental to achieving universal health coverage. Every person and every health worker needs access to relevant and reliable healthcare information to protect their own health and the health of others.
"In 2023 and 2024, we undertook a global consultation through the Healthcare Information For All global health network. We gathered feedback from 2,400 health professionals, policymakers, librarians, publishers, researchers, and patient representatives.
"The respondents overwhelmingly called on WHO to explicitly champion the goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. While universal access to reliable healthcare information is implicit in the WHO's Constitution, it is not recognised in WHO policy. We urge WHO to explicitly champion this goal and convene stakeholders to develop a global strategy for its realisation. We and our partners stand ready to support."

Webinar: The case for AI literacy

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 09:30:00 +0100

A free webinar: The case for AI literacy on 28 July 2025 at 11.00-12.00 UK time/BST.
" ... you'll hear from Dame Wendy Hall, a leading voice in AI and an advisor to governments and companies around the world. She'll explain why understanding AI is now essential for professionals across all sectors, not just those in technology. Dame Wendy will be joined by a panel of experts to discuss the growing importance of AI literacy as artificial intelligence continues to shape governance, the workplace, and everyday decision-making."
This is also a sales pitch for The University of Southampton’s online MA in Artificial Intelligence, from the sound of it, but the debate could be interesting. Thanks to Richard Wakeford for highlighting this.
Register at https://southampton.streamgo.live/university-of-southampton-ai-event-with-dame-wendy-hall-280725/register
Photo by Sheila Webber: a spectacular rhododendron (it really was that luminous pink), May 2025

What I Used To Think

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 20:32:41 +0100

I’m en route to Munich, for a three day writing session with Sae, which should see us complete the manuscript for ‘The Unreconciled Self: A Planetary Philosophy’. You may have heard me say a number of times that the manuscript is nearly finished. Because it nearly has been. But each time some new thought or challenge comes up, some new words come in, or are taken out. But this time, it feels different.

Both Sae and I have read through the whole thing – start to end – in our last sessions a couple of weeks ago, and it feels right. There are two parts to rewrite, but both are only around 600 words each, and then there is a solid pass I need to do, to smooth out some of the language.

The poetry of this piece is important, and when we are ‘tinkering’ with it, sometimes that gets lost, so I want to gently run through it one more time to recapture that flow.

I”ve completed probably six solid illustrations, but the other thing we will do whilst we are together is a rough outline of what other images we want where. Ideally I want a full list that I can then take away and work on.

The illustrations are very time consuming, and whilst I love them, I am a bit daunted, but intend to just keep focus.

So the book it nearly done, and with that so is the thinking, which is quite alarming.

In my previous writing I have described how when a book goes to publication, it ceases to be ‘what I am thinking’, and simply becomes ‘what I used to think’. The world moves on, ideas flow into practice, and thinking evolves.

I have written twenty one books, and often see them stretched out behind me, in a line through my thoughts over fourteen years. Peppered around with the three thousand blog posts, which flow around them like a long cloud.

Some of my older books are just that: older. They represent a stepping stone, but they slip back into my past. Others remain firmly in my current thinking, not really dating, as I am still in that part of the landscape.

Anyway: enough of this. I am on the final leg of the train journey, idling away my time before I try o disconnect and focus for three days. And next week, the Planetary work will either be ‘nearly done’, or ‘fully thought’…

#WorkingOutLoud on the Planetary Philosophy

LILAC Stories Report now available

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 14:09:55 +0100

The LILAC Stories project, which was launched at LILAC 2023 in Cambridge, has now published a full report of the research, including a literature review of current research on conference impact, the methodology of the project, and the full results and recommendations from the project’s Principal Investigator, Jess Haigh. The report is available through the […]

NEW: Free CILIPS CPD Workshops

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 12:10:48 +0100

Would you and your colleagues like to arrange a free CILIPS-led Continuing Professional Development workshop, supporting your organisation to engage with key themes affecting the profession and varied aspects of our member offer, including Professional Registration?

Whilst most of our training is exclusively for CILIP members, these new workshops are also open to non-members who are interested in finding out more about our work.

We are currently open to expressions of interest from library services that would like to schedule a CILIPS visit between 1st September 2025 and 31st March 2026.

To learn more, please provide details via this form and the team will be in touch soon. Sean, Kirsten and Leah look forward to speaking with your service!

New report: Family and intergenerational literacy and learning

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 10:49:53 +0100

UNESCO has published a substantial (360 page) report with thoughtful and detailed accounts of literacy projects in different regions of the world. For the Western countries there is emphasis on projects engaging underserved populations. There is not a focus on information literacy specifically, but certainly some relevant material and initiatives.

Prins, E., & Zholdoshalieva, R. (Eds.) (2025) Family and intergenerational literacy and learning: international perspectives. UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. ISBN: 978-92-820-1259-8.
Go to https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000393131
Photo by Sheila Webber: rhododendron in the park, May 2025

Landscapes

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 19:50:18 +0100

A landscape is not neutral, but rather something that we construct through our experience of it. And construct anew each time we experience it. A story within a space that is dynamic, over time. Landscapes are not simply expressions of physical geography: there can be a cultural landscape, a political one, a landscape of technology, and one of trust. All, at times, superimposed, or cohabiting, the same geography.

This is on my mind as I am thinking about the landscape of my work, which is, by it’s nature, exploratory. My method of exploration is not forensic (although it is research led): it does not provide a scaled representation, but rather a sketch map. It’s probably enough to show the relative locations of certain features of the Social Age, like ‘community’, ‘trust’, and ‘belonging’, but not a clear route map to move between them.

I mention this as I have had a feeling recently that I am superimposing a layer on top of what I have already documented: not adding greater detail, but rather a layer of context or interpretation. I guess that contextual interpretation would be a feature of knowing a landscape over time (just as a map of your street may show the same houses over decades, but with a contextual layer that showed changing patterns of ownership and habitation.

This is not to relinquish the desire to explore: I still find myself at the boundaries (boundaries themselves being a feature of the new context I am exploring), as with the new Planetary Philosophy work. But it does perhaps represent a more detailed ‘knowing’ of the place. Almost as if I have a certain comfort or familiarity that permits me to move without navigating, without fear of getting lost, and hence to spot new landmarks of features as my eyes are no longer needing to stare at my feet so much.

There is risk in this of course: I would normally challenge that our own comfort and certainty are key features of our self delusion and failure. But without some certainty, some platform, we have nothing to stand upon at all.

The notion of landscapes, and my identity as ‘explorer’ formed a central part of my doctoral research, and hence perhaps why, as I come to the end of that journey, I find it leaching back out into my writing and work more broadly. Learning has a way of doing this, not simply changing what you know, but rather of changing the ‘you’ that does the knowing.

Metaphors of landscape, and of exploration, as well as a consideration of the social structures within which we explore, have always formed a backdrop to my work. It perhaps represents something of my thought process, which is that of the generalist or trans-disciplinary practitioner, or polymath, in that I probably hold a breadth of knowledge more so than a depth of it, but with the advantage that the breadth allows for a broader model of pattern recognition, or interconnection across boundaries. And in a time of change, this may be a useful feature.

The Planetary work is proving a useful excuse to delve into some of this more deeply, and to situate my broader work in a new context: understanding that certain feature of our social context are desegregating, or unbundling, and that the landscape, at a tectonic level, is in motion.

#WorkingOutLoud on landscapes and knowing.

Webinar: Do As I Say: Authenticity in Teaching Research Practices and Information Literacy

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 10:43:31 +0100

There's a free webinar Do As I Say: Authenticity in Teaching Research Practices and Information Literacy, on 10 July 2025 at 12.00-13.00 US Eastern time (which is 17.00-18.00 BST/UK time) presented by Jane Hammons and organised by Ohio State University Libraries.
"When starting a research project, do you always develop a list of keywords and synonyms before you search? Have you ever cited a source without reading the entire article? Do you always spend a significant amount of time evaluating each source you find? When instructors and librarians teach students how to conduct research, we often outline specific steps that students should take and provide guidelines they should follow. But, do we always follow these steps or guidelines ourselves? If we don't, why not? And what does that mean for the way we teach research and information literacy? This presentation will explore the idea of authenticity in relation to how we teach the research process. Participants will be encouraged to think about how we can approach teaching research and information literacy as it often is, rather than what we think it should look like."
Register at https://osu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6Rtch5_tSK2_1YorcjxCGw#/registrationPhoto by Sheila Webber: bandstand before the band arrive, June 2025

High Performance: Ecosystem Perspectives

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 19:01:13 +0100

Some features of performance are held structurally within our Organisations; codified into systems and processes, into artefacts of knowledge and culture. Others are emergent, reacting more dynamically to context and circumstance. Certain Organisations appear to perform consistently at a higher level than others, and some seem to do so without undue extra effort. Other can perform exceptionally well for short bursts, but them seemingly become exhausted. And indeed some are fundamentally able to access high performance at all, despite their best efforts.

The notion of ‘High Performance’ itself is, of course, contextual. What counts as high performance on Monday may not be the same as on Friday, as circumstance changes. If there is a fire, and the warehouse is damaged, a high performing team behaves very differently in the week following it than the one before it – or at least they do if they recover well.

The harder we stare at, or consider, the question of high performance, the more likely it is to dissolve into a series of parallel features: there is the technology that underpins or enables it, there are formal team structures that are intended to hold it, there are tribal social structures that may power it, there are processes that have codified the learning from last time we did ‘it’, and there are also ‘tensions’ which may enable or derail it.

I think at this early stage I am seeking to draw a broad sketch map: where are the boundaries within this landscape, where are the coastlines, the mountains. Then to seek patterns or themes within it. This is very early stage work.

I think it’s easy to work on intuition, bounded by dogma, in this space. I suspect that the more broadly we can explore, and the longer we can remain uncertain, the greater the likelihood we can find not a ‘truth’, but an understanding of forces, interrelationships, connections, that may serve us well.

#WorkingOutLoud on High Performance.

Recording: Developing Scalable Library Research Training

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 14:19:57 +0100

There's a recording (18 minutes) of the webinar Developing Scalable Library Research Training held in May 2025 and organised by the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), a joint project of EDUCAUSE and the Association of Research Libraries. It describes a project at University of California San Diego Library.
"The project developed a structured search protocol to support systematic literature searches and library resource navigation. It follows a linear workflow, incorporating problem-solving actions, systematic search templates, an information needs taxonomy, and worked examples to support information retrieval. Unlike general library research guides, this protocol helps users apply search heuristics and methodologies to support System 1 (intuitive) and System 2 (analytical) problem-solving for more effective search strategy development.
"Its modular design enabled the development of instructional content in multiple formats, including videos, web-based guides, infographics, quizzes, and instructor resources, supporting diverse learning contexts. The structured protocol and modular learning content have been piloted in classrooms, where they received positive initial feedback.
"Beyond modular learning, the protocol serves as a foundation for AI-assisted research support. It was used to configure a custom GPT chatbot, guiding users stepwise through systematic search query development. Initial tests showed promise, but challenges in enforcing workflows and maintaining response consistency highlight the need for refinements to enhance AI-guided research assistance." Thanks to Esther Grassian for alerting me to this.
Go to https://youtu.be/NPrbCe2PlVE
Photo by Sheila Webber: more fern on the wall, June 2025

Contexts of Performance

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 21:25:59 +0100

Tomorrow I facilitate the first session on High Performance, and will start by expanding on three perspectives: the ‘Context of the Social Age’, aspects of ‘Post Pandemic power’, and the ‘Advent of AI’.

The Social Age charts an evolved ecosystem, a shift away from structural strength towards a more Socially Dynamic one. The story of the Post Pandemic era is that of a fractured relationship between power and place, and the Advent of AI is about our relationship with higher order thinking, and sophisticated artefacts. Put together, it’s quite a storm.

AI requires us to reassess our relationship with capability and skills, the Social Age provides an evolved perspective within which to do this, and the pandemic leaves us weakened as we do so.

My opening is still cluttered and unclear – hence writing late tonight – but the messages are relatively clear, at least in my head.

This is the canvas upon which we will explore High Performance – initially in the abstract, and then later in terms of culture and teams, behaviours and systems.

#WorkingOutLoud on High Performance

CILIPS Writes to Oppose School Library Cuts in Glasgow

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 15:27:12 +0100

CILIPS have written to the Glasgow City Council Leader and members of the Glasgow Life Board raising our concerns about proposals to remove all school librarians for their schools. The proposals would save £100k – a saving agreed in Feb 2024 – by putting library assistants into school libraries instead, a move that in our view will de-professionalise the service and put unfair pressure on the assistants.

CILIPS are pleased to see that Glasgow Life will be engaging with trade unions and staff to discuss counter proposals, and we hope that a solution can be found that avoids such a drastic reduction in vital staffing. We strongly believe that the only way to avoid severely damaging the service would be for Glasgow City Council and Glasgow Life to reverse the cut entirely.

Local parents and pupils are also campaigning against the cuts including setting up a petition, which you can see here.

Dagger in the Library award announced

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 12:18:09 +0100

The Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) has announced that this year’s prestigious Dagger in the Library award, which is based on nominations by libraries and borrowers, has gone to Richard Osman.

The Dagger in the Library is a prize for a body of work by an established writer of crime fiction or non-fiction who is popular with borrowers from libraries. It also rewards authors who have supported libraries and their users through taking part in library events.

John Dean, a crime writer in Dumfries and Galloway and the CWA’s Libraries Champion in Scotland (one of three Champions covering the UK) thanked all those who had supported the 2025 Dagger in the Library.

Find out more about this year’s Dagger winners via the CWA website.

Webinar: Eye catching research communications

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 09:30:00 +0100

A priced online course Eye catching research communications - using creative tools to make your own videos, animations and graphics will take place on 17 July 2025 12-14.00 BST/UK time, led by Andy Tattersall. Cost is: UKeiG/CILIP members £35 + VAT; Non-members £65 + VAT.
Videos, animations and infographics are powerful methods to catch the attention of wide audiences and help showcase research in ways that traditional activities cannot. ... The session will include live demos as well as provide you with several hacks and shortcuts to help your first outputs be as good as they can be.... The course will also explore AI's potential to support communication activities and highlight pitfalls of being overly reliant on them. Details and registration at https://www.cilip.org.uk/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1968332&group=201314
Photo by Sheila Webber: azalea, May 2025

Webinar: AI and ACRL’s information literacy framework

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 16:24:43 +0100

A free webinar on 11 July 2025 at 12.30 US EST (which is 17.30 BST/UK time) is on AI as it relates to ACRL’s information literacy framework. It is hosted by the Special Libraries Association Academic & Education Community and ACRL's EBSS Education Committee. The speaker is Ladislava Khailova. Register at https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMvceqtpzwsHtDYWS_rchrX5m7G3s7BG3DS
Image created by Sheila Webber using Midjourney AI

The impact of augmented reality technology on students' innovation ability: Evidence from a meta‐analysis

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 19:29:35 +0100

Abstract

Deepening education reform and innovation, and cultivating students' innovative abilities are considered essential development directions of AR technology. However, whether AR technology can effectively improve students’ innovation abilities remains a topic of debate, as different studies have reported significant discrepancies in their findings. Therefore, this study utilises a meta-analysis method to conduct a quantitative analysis of 36 studies (quasi-experimental or experimental) with respect to ‘the impact of AR technology on students' innovative ability’ in the past 10 years. The results illustrate that: (1) AR technology exerts a moderate promotion effect on students innovative ability (the overall effect size is 0.702), and there is no significant difference in innovative thinking, innovative practice, innovative personality, etc; (2) in contrast to other educational stages, AR technology has a more positive impact on the innovative ability of children in pre-school; (3) compared with other instructional forms, integrating AR technology with practical instructional methods has a stronger promoting effect on students' innovative ability; (4) AR technology applied to group learning can improve students' innovation ability more effectively than applied to independent learning; (5) the application of AR technology in declarative knowledge teaching is more conducive to cultivating students' innovative ability than in procedural knowledge teaching; and (6) the impact degree of immediate testing and delayed testing on students' innovative ability reach a medium level, with no significant difference observed between the two testing conditions. These analyses provide important references for the future design and optimisation of innovation capability training with the aid of AR technology.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic? As one of the core competencies necessary for talent in the 21st century, innovation ability has attracted widespread attention from countries around the world. As a human-computer interaction technology that ‘seamlessly’ (smoothly) integrates real information with virtual information, AR technology can be used to create immersive learning scenarios, improve the learning experience and promote teaching innovation. Opinions diverge greatly so far on whether AR technology can significantly enhance students' innovation ability. There has remained a lack of meta-analyses synthesising the contradictory findings about the substantive impact of AR technology on students' innovation abilities.

What this paper adds to the field? This study applies a meta-analysis method to analyse 36 studies (quasi-experimental or experimental) regarding the impact of AR technology on students' innovative ability published in the past 10 years. This study verifies that AR technology has a moderate degree of promoting effect on students' innovative ability, but there is no pronounced difference in its impact on innovative practice, innovative thinking and innovative personality. This study finds that there are significant differences in the development of innovative abilities supported by AR technology in different educational stages, instructional forms, learning methods, as well as knowledge types.

Implications for practice and policy A flexible and effective AR teaching system and supporting ecosystem should be established to advance the deep integration of AR and education. AR-based teaching is an effective way to foster students' innovation ability. The cultivation of innovative ability based on AR technology is not universally applicable across all learning scenarios and cannot be implemented blindly. Instead, the technology should be used scientifically and reasonably according to specific educational stages, knowledge types, etc.

Registration for LILi [Lifelong Information Literacy] Conference

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 09:09:01 +0100

Registration is open for the free, online 2025 LILi [Lifelong Information Literacy] Conference, taking place on 17 July 2025 (9.45m - 13.30 US PDT, which is 17.45 - 21.30 BST/UK time) and 18 July 2025 (9.45m - 13.30 US PDT, which is 17.45 - 21.30 BST/UK time).
Complete the registration form by 11 July 2025. Register for live participation (limited to 300 simultaneous participants) or just the recordings, or both.
The schedule is here https://lili.libguides.com/lili2025/schedule
To register go to https://tinyurl.com/mw4jzefx

Breaking human dominance: Investigating learners' preferences for learning feedback from generative AI and human tutors

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 08:57:01 +0100

Abstract

Understanding learners' preferences in educational settings is crucial for optimizing learning outcomes and experience. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into educational contexts, it is crucial to understand learners' preferences between AI and human tutors to support their learning. While AI demonstrates growing potential in education, the phenomenon of algorithm aversion, which is a tendency to favour human decision making over algorithmic solutions, requires further investigation. To explore this issue, an experiment involving 114 university students was conducted to measure learners' preferences for different feedback sources before and after exposure to one of four conditions: no feedback, human tutor feedback, ChatGPT feedback through a free-dialogue user interface, and AI-powered writing analytics tool feedback through a structured interface. Our results revealed a strong initial preference for human tutors. However, the post-task analysis showed an important nuance. While the general preference for human tutors persisted, learners' preference towards the free-dialogue interface (ChatGPT 4.0) of ChatGPT increased, whereas the structured AI interface (AI-powered writing analytics tool) reinforced the preference for human tutors. These findings offer theoretical and practical contributions by extending algorithm aversion theory to educational contexts and demonstrating that appropriate interaction design can mitigate this aversion. The success of free-dialogue interfaces suggests that overcoming algorithm aversion may depend more on creating natural, flexible interaction experiences than purely technical optimization. However, we must also consider that increased preference for AI tools, particularly those with more engaging interfaces, may potentially lead to over-reliance and metacognitive laziness among learners, highlighting the importance of balancing technological support with the development of independent learning skills.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic? Algorithm aversion exists across various contexts where individuals tend to prefer human over algorithmic decision-making. The introduction of generative AI brings new possibilities for AI-supported learning.

What this paper adds? In academic writing tasks, learners show strong initial preference for human tutors over Generative AI feedback. Strong initial preference for human tutors persists even after exposure to generative AI feedback. Different interaction designs lead to divergent preference patterns: Free-dialogue interface increases preference for AI feedback, structured interface reinforces preference for human tutors.

Implications for practice and/or policy Algorithm aversion in educational contexts can be mitigated through appropriate interaction design, particularly through natural dialogue interfaces. Design AI educational tools with back-and-forth, conversational interfaces to reduce algorithm aversion.

Investigating the motivational and knowledge affordances of conversational AI using induction, concretization and exemplification in math learning

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 12:19:02 +0100

Abstract

A promising approach to support students' math learning effectively, automatically and at scale within existing learning environments is conversational artificial intelligence (ConvAI). Although previous studies have suggested ConvAI's potential to guide, facilitate and enhance learning, its effects on students' conceptual change and academic motivation—the latter a crucial moderator of conceptual change—in math education remain understudied. Our study expands understanding of how ConvAI can be used to support Algebra learning from a conceptual change perspective. Using a between-subjects, pre- and posttest design, we conducted an experimental study with 151 participants, with the experimental group accessing ConvAI developed with induction, concretization and exemplification teaching strategies. Results showed that participants in the ConvAI group exhibited higher mastery goal orientation and self-efficacy compared with the control group post-intervention. The frequency of visiting recommended learning resources by ConvAI significantly predicted participants' motivation changes, with increased visits correlating with higher motivation. Additionally, although there was no significant main effect on misconceptions between ConvAI and no-AI participants, significant interaction effects on misconceptions emerged between treatment conditions and student motivation. Our findings, revealed through open-sourced implementations, provide support and implications for educational practitioners and researchers to design and develop pedagogically meaningful ConvAI for math learning.

Collective Reflections on LILAC 2025: Delegates Feeling Empowered

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 12:14:54 +0100

At the closing session of LILAC 2025, held at Cardiff University, delegates were invited to reflect on their experience of the conference. They were asked to write about what surprised them, made them feel something, or to write about something they might do after the conference. At a conference with three keynotes, 41 parallel sessions, […]

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 10:10:38 +0100

#WorkingOutLoud on High Performance Culture – Questions and Scaffolding

I’m doing quite a bit at the moment around ‘High Performing Cultures’ and teams, so starting to pull together a framework around this. As I do so, I am influenced by some core ideas, which I am sharing today, alongside some of the question sets I’m using in these conversations.

As usual, my initial approach is to deconstruct the question: to start with what ‘High Performance’ is, before considering how it is delivered, or achieved, within cultures or teams.

Predominantly I am interested in the question of whether ‘High Performance’ is being viewed within existing context, or as an evolution of that context, or to put it another way, do we seek a ‘High Performing’ culture for efficiency and increased output, at quality, within what w do today, or do we seek it for innovation and change, to reimagine what we do for tomorrow. These may be very different things, and we would have to consider how universal the capabilities are (if we are even able to define those capabilities at all).

[1] Within which of these structures is the ability to be ‘high performing’ primarily held?

Skills and behaviour of the individual
Collective capability of the community
Culture of the team
Culture of the organisation
The systems and processes that we create and deploy
The technologies that we own and share

[This is a difficult question, as the obvious answer is ‘all of them’. But some will sit in tension with others, and some lie more directly under our control than others.]

[2] What are the characteristics of High Performance?

Quantifiable increases in output or profit
Broader resilience in the underlying systems
Stronger ability to innovate and deploy innovation
Individual leadership ability to creatively solve problems
The ability to stop doing things
Greater speed and momentum
Ability to experiment and prototype
Consistent curiosity and ability to learn

[There are a range of expressions here, from the observable outputs, to aspects of underlying systems, which relates to ‘ability’ and ‘outputs’. It can also lead us into a conversation about which of these things support, amplify, or act in synergy with others, which can indicate where things breakdown – you can be excellent in places with each, but not be high performing].

[3] What are the system features that support High Performance?

Clear targets
Overall clear mission and purpose
Competition
Strong senior leadership and sponsorship
Fear
Individual Agency
Availability of additional resource
Access to expertise

[This question explores several important aspects of leadership and culture: whether High Performance is ‘driven’ or ‘unlocked’, whether it sits at the ‘top’ or the ‘middle’, and the relationship between structure and agency].

[4] Can High Performing Cultures change?

Yes, better than others – they are excellent at this
Yes, but with effort – they can learn to change
No, they are specific to context and changing that context can break the high performance
No, they are rooted in the existing system. You have to rebuild from scratch

[This question is about the context of performance, and a central question around High Performance and change: is ‘High Performance’ specifically a feature of change, or expertise in such, or is it rooted in known contexts. The answer may be that different ‘flavours’ of High Performance exist, which I am keen to explore].

[5] What is the core ability of High Performance?

Ability to Deliver – faster and better
Ability to Change – quicker and better
Ability to Innovate – within systems and of systems
Ability to Compete – in known markets, and to define new ones
Ability to Integrate – new ideas, and new challenges
Ability to Learn – within known domains, and from new ones

[These abilities are about different parts of the landscape, and touch on a core question of how ‘fertile’ the landscape is: ability to learn and integrate ideas may relate more to innovation, ability to change and deliver are more about efficiency and optimisation within existing systems]

Scaffoldings of High Performance

On top of these question sets, I’m also jumping a little ahead, and using work from ‘The Socially Dynamic Organisation’ book to support some thoughts on the ‘Scaffoldings’ of High Performance, both in terms of Organisational Design, but also leadership behaviours, and team dynamics,

Interconnection: from the Domain based Organisation (vertically segmented) to the Interconnected one (horizontally and socially interconnected)
The 1% Organisation: unlocking Collective Capability, distributed cognition
Reconfigurable to need: structurally more fluid, unbundling of role and structure, specific capability to reconfigure as feature, not aberration.
Emergence vs Codification: catering for, and creating conditions for, emergence, not simply codified strength

All of this will, of course, circle back around to Culture: what is a High Performing Culture, how do we build and nurture it etc. And in turn, this will loop back into the broader Culture Weaving research and work that I’m developing throughout 2025.

#WorkingOutLoud on Culture, High Performance, Social Leadership, and Change

New articles: Digital health literacy; CPD scale; Information needs of nurses

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 09:30:00 +0100

Latest issue of open-access IFLA Journal (Volume 51, No. 2, June 2025) includes the following:
- TikTok and digital health literacy: A systematic review by Margaret Kristin Merga
- Development and validation of the Continuing Professional Development Scale: A knowledge transfer perspective by Syed Fakhar Abbas, Syeda Hina Batool and Kanwal Ameen
- Information needs and information-seeking behavior of Egyptian nurses during a health crisis: A survey by Amany M. Elsayed, Safaa Salah Ismail, Manar Hamza and Zeinab S. Said
Go to https://repository.ifla.org/handle/20.500.14598/4167
Photo by Sheila Webber: dandelions at different stages, June 2025

Effects of AI‐generated adaptive feedback on statistical skills and interest in statistics: A field experiment in higher education

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 13:15:08 +0100

Abstract

This study explores whether AI-generated adaptive feedback or static feedback is favourable for student interest and performance outcomes in learning statistics in a digital learning environment. Previous studies have favoured adaptive feedback over static feedback for skill acquisition, however, without investigating the outcome of students' subject-specific interest. This study randomly assigned 90 educational sciences students to four conditions in a 2 × 2 Solomon four-group design, with one factor feedback type (adaptive vs. static) and, controlling for pretest sensitisation, another factor pretest participation (yes vs. no). Using a large language model, the adaptive feedback provided feedback messages tailored to students' responses for several tasks on reporting statistical results according to APA style, while static feedback offered a standardised expert solution. There was no evidence of pretest sensitisation and no significant effect of the feedback type on task performance. However, a significant medium-sized effect of feedback type on interest was found, with lower interest observed in the adaptive condition than in the static condition. In highly structured learning tasks, AI-generated adaptive feedback, compared with static feedback, may be non-essential for learners' performance enhancement and less favourable for learners' interest, potentially due to its impact on learners' perceived autonomy and competence.

Recording: Information Literacy Disciplinarity and Values

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 09:30:00 +0100

There is a recording (1 hour 12 minutes) of the webinar Information Literacy Disciplinarity and Values, that took place on 30 June 2025 as part of Ohio State University Libraries information literacy series. The presenters are Professor Clarence Maybee and Dr Karen Kaufmann.
Go to https://youtu.be/rSfPmIzfU6c?si=WHxmtysorHD33yTy

Fragments: Planetary Philosophy

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 17:00:34 +0100

Today I am sharing fragments of writing from the Planetary Philosophy book: working alongside Sae in London today, I’ve completed a full draft of the work, and tomorrow will start again with a pass through to refine language, and tidy up some citations and ‘bridges’ between key sections. This first piece is from the introduction to the book:

“This book proposes a new Planetary Philosophy. It bears witness to the things we’ve lost, such as our increasing isolation from nature and our lost connections, and it considers what humanity’s ‘progress’ has cost us, both individually and collectively. This is a philosophy contextualized in motion.

I’ve situated this philosophical exploration within my broader (and, some may argue, my more rigorous and more useful) work on the Social Age. Through that lens, we can see the evolution of our structures of society, productivity, identity, learning, belief, and belonging. All the facets of our world are in motion, changed by the proliferation of our collaborative technologies, which have fractured our old ways of being and have resulted not only in motion, but acceleration, and, ultimately, crisis.

This book seeks to explain our pathway to this moment, our potential trajectory, and critically, how we may address the budding crisis for ourselves and our planet.

This is a story of scale: from the atomic (you, me, and the individuals who walk through the system) to the planetary in scope. It’s about individuals and communities as well as the emergent global collective. At the extremes, this book argues for new models of citizenship, belief, and belonging, necessary for our new world order, lest we irrevocably lose connections to one another and to our remarkable environment.”

Then, a little further in:

“We’re losing our senses of place and context as we shed our once local and rooted existence for an abstract, global, and technologically mediated way of living. Our changing lifestyles aren’t inherently corrupted, but as we drift further from our natural foundations, our sensation dulls. Things drift out of our reach.

We lose some of the texture and nuance of lived experience, growing clumsy and myopic. And we find that our evolved biology and historically constructed structures of being are no longer entirely fit for purpose amongst our rapidly changing surroundings.

The Unreconciled Self indicates a broader untethering of ‘self’ and ‘place’. A shift away from the notion of Nation to the emergent Trans-National and ultimately the Planetary.”

This final section comes from the end of the book, drawing together threads that have run through it.

“I have described a sense of fragmentation or dissolution, as our technology enabled personas delaminate the legacy structures of belief and belonging, of security and effect. And with this a reconnection to the natural: a rediscovery of texture, a humility of action.

The Quantified Planet alongside the catalytic context of GenAI may be a point of fracture, away from our legacies of both industrialisation and colonisation, and into a space governed by new principles and mechanisms of effect. It remains to be seen if we can move forward, without redress to the past: without reconciliation and reparation.

As utility is increasingly automated, and our relationship with our human exceptionalism is tested to the full, we should consider our foundational premise.

Our ways of knowing and being.

Perhaps we will cease to be confined by the identity of place, to become nomadic in citizenship and, indeed, to adopt a philosophy of constant motion.

This is the nomadic self, no longer differentiated by geography or technology, but bound back into the natural. The rhythm of the tides, the beating of the seasons, the willingness to look beyond the walls.”

#WorkingOutLoud on the Planetary Philosophy

Dissertation Request for Glasgow Public Library Staff!

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 14:06:52 +0100

Are you a public library staff member in Glasgow? We have a Masters student looking for volunteers to participate in short interviews for a research project on how public libraries support marginalised and vulnerable populations in accessing resources. For more information, please visit the project’s linktree here.

Kenya, a student from the University of Strathclyde got in touch with the CILIPS team to request assistance in sourcing interview and survey participants for their dissertation research. The research project is titled: “Analysis of Digital Resource Distribution to Marginalised and Vulnerable Populations by Glasgow Public Libraries.”

Click here to access the Project’s linktree with links to the survey and participants forms.