We regret to inform you that ARLIS/NA will not be holding its 48th Annual Conference in St. Louis, MO because of the serious health risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since its creation in 2018 by the ACRL Image Resources Interest Group, the ACRL Visual Literacy Task Force (VLTF) has actively pursued its charge to re-envision the 2011 ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education through the dual lenses of recent scholarship and the 2016 ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Products of the VLTF’s work thus far include a second draft of a new visual literacy framework; a glossary of updated terms and concepts drawn from an extensive, ongoing literature review; and a Zotero bibliography of over 400 sources. In the months leading up to ARLIS/NA St. Louis, we will gather empirical data on outsider and stakeholder perspectives via interviews, providing us with a structured scan of how librarians and affiliated professionals perceive, use, and define “visual literacy” in the 21st century. Our aim is to identify and define the skills, competencies, knowledge practices, and dispositions that enable students to be critical consumers of visual information, now and into the future. In this interactive session, members of the VLTF invite ARLIS/NA members—as frontline professionals in visual literacy pedagogy--to examine our study method and accumulated data, to critically and creatively engage with our data analysis, and contribute their collective wisdom and expertise to the enterprise of ‘reimagining’ visual literacy for a new generation. We will begin by briefly summarizing the task force’s progress on the new visual literacy guidelines draft, then present our empirical research strategy and instruments and share summaries of data and feedback gathered from the identified stakeholder groups. Attendees will be able to provide task force members with feedback as members of one of the primary groups with a professional stake in the outcome of the VLTF’s work. In the following break-out sessions and forum discussions, task force members will guide participants in Futures Thinking exercises informed by a constructivist instruction approach, designed to creatively explore new critical visual literacies informed but not necessarily constrained by current standards and frameworks. Attendees will reimagine the present from the perspective of their visual literacy practice 5 and 10 years in the future, exploring how critical visual literacies factor into various scenarios and reflecting on values and assumptions underlying each ‘future.’ Participants will utilize mind mapping, sketching, and other visual methods to make associations between scenarios, self-reflect, and connect with peers through several think-pair-share activities and discussions. Through this series of structured activities, audience members will engage in conceptual and practical exercises that will allow for the group as a whole to think broadly and holistically about Visual Literacy, and its future - both as a theoretical framework and as a practical tool for use in libraries and education. Conference attendees will also be able to contribute to the discussions through virtual means, such as the VLTF’s website.
