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Christine Bruce (2008, Preface) has written extensively about informed learning. Informed learning is “using information, creatively and reflectively, in order to learn.” Bruce writes about informed learning as it relates to information literacy. Librarians, working collaboratively with professors, often develop research guides to teach information literacy skills, and to organize and present program, course, assignment, or topic-specific resources. Research is essential to documentary filmmaking. This chapter is a case study that describes how the History of Non-fiction Film Research Guide that we created aligns with the three principles and seven faces of informed learning.

Purpose – This chapter contributes to the development of informed learning pedagogy by examining its innately political character. Through examining issues of power that arise in a particular educational setting, the aim is to illuminate how power (and resistance to it) needs to be carefully considered by practitioners who engage with informed learning pedagogy.

Theoretical Approach – Foucault’s view of power, defining it as something that can be both generative and repressive, and which works only in combination with resistance to this power, is specifically drawn on to illuminate how dialogues between students give rise to changed information practices.

Design – Twenty groups of learners, each of five to seven students, engaged in a series of three complex informed learning activities, and generated extensive datasets as they recorded their dialogues to online discussion boards within the Blackboard course management system used on a postgraduate course in educational technology. These data were supplemented by interviews with a number of students and the course tutor.

Findings – The information practices of the groups developed in different ways depending on a number of factors consistent with informed learning. Students were motivated by achieving high grades, and data reveal that students respond to surveillance from teaching staff and each other by communicating outside of the official discussion board space. This is illuminating because by resisting power in this way students develop new practices that are specifically relevant to their group, and shows how dominant power and resistance to it help develop facets of informed learning.

Purpose – Academic librarians are well positioned to take on the role of the informed learning developer, working with teachers to design coursework in which students learn to use information as they engage with course context. This chapter aims to provide insights to academic librarians of how they may approach integrating information literacy into courses using an informed learning approach by identifying key aspects of this collaborative work.

Methods The literature on educational development, specifically outlining the core responsibilities, activities, skills, and models used by educational developers is reviewed and key aspects are identified and applied to describe the role of a developer working with teachers to foster learning through engagement with information in higher education.

Findings – Four key aspects of the work of educational developers are identified: collaborative, scholarly, contextual, and reflective. When adapted to describe the efforts of a developer focused on creating informed learning experiences for students, the four aspects include:

partnering with teachers to develop informed learning experiences by leveraging the expertise of the teacher and the librarian;

applying an informed learning pedagogic approach, and drawing from and sharing information literacy scholarship illuminating how information is used in the learning process;

creating informed learning experiences that are responsive to institutional and disciplinary perspectives; and

encouraging teachers to reflect on their intentions for content-focused learning and how learning outcomes may be shaped through interactions with information.

Implications – Drawing upon their expertise in how learners use information, academic librarians can use the findings to concentrate their consultative efforts to effectively partner with teachers to transform student learning experiences in higher education.

Informed learning can be enlivened through explicit and persistent attention to using information to learn during collaborative design activities. The resulting information experiences and accompanying information practices in the workplace, when combined with systems principles, can produce transferable individual and group (and, ultimately, organizational) capacity to advance knowledge in ever expanding professional contexts.

In development in North America since 2003, the Informed Systems Approach incorporates principles of systems thinking and informed learning though an inclusive, participatory design process that fosters information exchange, reflective dialogue, knowledge creation, and conceptual change in workplace organizations. It also furthers expression of collaborative information practices that enrich information experiences by simultaneously advancing both situated domain knowledge and transferable learning capacity. Integrated design activities support participants’ developing awareness of the conceptions of information experience and informed learning, in a cyclical and iterative fashion that promotes and sustains continuous learning.

A shared learning focus evolves through intentional use of information to learn, including collective reflection on information sources, collaborative practices, and systems functionalities, which further participants’ topical understandings and enrich their information experiences. In addition, an action-oriented intention and inclusive participatory disposition ensures improvements of real world situations.

This conceptual chapter sets the stage for how librarians can support informed learning. It looks at how the intersections between informed learning, Bakhtin’s philosophy of communication, and relational leadership contribute to a model of relational liaising. This chapter provides examples of practical applications, interdisciplinary collaboration, and shared leadership which librarians and other teachers can adapt for specific arts, humanities, or social sciences disciplines. Many of the illustrations are set within communication-related curricula but also include the arts.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to assess the avenues through which traditional notions of information literacy skills shape oral communication curriculum and to identify steps that can be taken to transform the experience of students in the public speaking classroom so that they are offered an opportunity to develop understandings of how they use information to learn.

Approach – This chapter engages in an analysis of teaching materials and best practice scholarship used in the traditional college public speaking classroom. An informed learning perspective is applied to this corpus to identify the ways in which an information literacy skills approach is reflected in current practice.

Findings – The analysis highlights the prevalence of an information literacy skills approach throughout the oral communication curriculum. Textbooks, assignment types and guidelines, along with grading rubrics and instructor feedback all perpetuate a skills approach. Outside class support, including peer tutors and library instruction, also contribute to a focus on information literacy over informed learning.

Implications – Informed learners are better prepared to engage and apply information across contexts and to use information to continue learning. Informed learners are reflective on the knowledge they gain through information use. Therefore, this chapter concludes that public speaking courses, along with the communication centers and libraries that support oral communication instruction, should embrace an informed learning approach to the development of course materials, assignments, and teaching.

Originality/value – Suggestions for reframing public speaking curriculum and support from the informed learning perspective are provided.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the informed learning experiences of early career academics (ECAs) while building their networks for professional and personal development. The notion that information and learning are inextricably linked via the concept of “informed learning” is used as a conceptual framework to gain a clearer picture of what informs ECAs while they learn and how they experience using that which informs their learning within this complex practice: to build, maintain and utilise their developmental networks.

This research employs a qualitative framework using a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006). Through semi-structured interviews with a sample of 14 ECAs from across two Australian universities, data were generated to investigate the research questions. The study used the methods of constant comparison to create codes and categories towards theme development. Further examination considered the relationship between thematic categories to construct an original theoretical model.

The model presented is a “knowledge ecosystem”, which represents the core informed learning experience. The model consists of informal learning interactions such as relating to information to create knowledge and engaging in mutually supportive relationships with a variety of knowledge resources found in people who assist in early career development.

Findings from this study present an alternative interpretation of informed learning that is focused on processes manifesting as human interactions with informing entities revolving around the contexts of reciprocal human relationships.

This chapter uses the idea of informed learning, an interpretation of information literacy that focuses on people’s information experiences rather than their skills or attributes, to analyse the character of using information to learn in diverse communities and settings, including digital, faith, indigenous and ethnic communities. While researchers of information behaviour or information seeking and use have investigated people’s information worlds in diverse contexts, this work is still at its earliest stages in the information literacy domain. To date, information literacy research has largely occurred in what might be considered mainstream educational and workplace contexts, with some emerging work in community settings. These have been mostly in academic libraries, schools and government workplaces. What does information literacy look like beyond these environments? How might we understand the experience of effective information use in a range of community settings, from the perspective of empirical research and other sources? The chapter concludes by commenting on the significance of diversifying the range of information experience contexts, for information literacy research and professional practice.

This article uses the idea of informed learning, an interpretation of information literacy that focuses on people’s information experiences rather than their skills or attributes, to analyse the character of using information to learn in diverse communities and settings, including digital, faith, indigenous and ethnic communities. While researchers of information behaviour or information seeking and use have investigated people’s information worlds in diverse contexts, this work is still at its earliest stages in the information literacy domain. To date, information literacy research has largely occurred in what might be considered mainstream educational and workplace contexts, with some emerging work in community settings. These have been mostly in academic libraries, schools and government workplaces. What does information literacy look like beyond these environments? How might we understand the experience of effective information use in a range of community settings, from the perspective of empirical research and other sources? The article concludes by commenting on the significance of diversifying the range of information experience contexts, for information literacy research and professional practice.

Purpose – This chapter puts forth an approach for deeper understanding of the ways that information professionals learn, based on concepts and strategies that enable them to fulfill the varied roles they take on. It considers multiple facets in their experiences of using information to learn, the essence of informed learning (Bruce, 2008). The purpose of furthering this understanding is to develop approaches for designing enhanced curriculum to support transformative learning experiences.

Design & Methodology – To explore the learning experiences, roles, and strategies of information professionals, this chapter enlists two frameworks pertinent to transformative learning: first, the informed learning construct of Bruce (2008) and, second, the threshold concepts theoretical framework of Meyer and Land (2003). Both frameworks have been used to guide the design of curriculum, and this chapter discusses using them together to design higher education courses for information professionals. Learning activities from two courses in an online MLIS degree program – information retrieval system design and information architecture – are used as case illustrations for implementing a blended approach.

Findings & Discussion – The outcomes from implementing curriculum that has been designed based on informed learning principles and threshold concepts that were derived from learner experiences are discussed. A third construct, information experience (Bruce et al., 2014), which evolved in part out of informed learning, is brought into the discussion, providing an additional dimension for understanding the learner’s relationship with his/her information world.