Affiliations: [a] School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand | [b] Institute for Information Science and Language Technology, University of Hildesheim, Germany
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Maja Krtalić, School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected].
Abstract: The information disciplines are rapidly developing and that development brings twofold challenge for library and information science (LIS) education; in terms of delivering the content, and in terms of the content itself. The former means that, as with any other discipline, it needs to implement new technologies and didactic approaches to provide its students with better learning experiences, greater retention of knowledge, and skills for rapidly changing and challenging labour market. The latter means that LIS education needs to train its students to understand how technical and social changes affect diverse information ecologies and successfully work in such environments. To address these ideas this paper aims to investigate how trends in LIS education are identified, implemented and evaluated in the LIS study programmes, both in terms of technology used for teaching, and in terms of teaching methods. The methodology used to address the research questions and objectives consisted of a literature review of the topic, a content analysis of LIS curricula from a sample of eight European universities that offer education in the LIS field, and an interview study with programme directors from the respective universities. The results have shown that there is a strong and positive culture of innovation in the LIS field that derives from the identity of the discipline and its natural inclination towards responding promptly to social and technical changes. Diverse didactic methods are applied in the analysed study programmes with an aim to offer a more flexible, authentic and individually tailored learning experience. There are obstacles in implementing innovations, and they usually arise from a mismatch between efforts to innovate and how university policies and procedure support those efforts. Another significant obstacle is the general learning culture of a country.
Keywords: Library and information science education, higher education, learning, teaching, pedagogical innovation, study programme
