Wicked information literacy: Program, course, and assignment design recommendations

Abstract

In Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses for a Complex World, Paul Hanstedt starts “with the assumption that what we all want for our students is for them to be capable of changing the world.” After graduation, students face a chaotic world full of “wicked problems,” where “the parameters of the problem and the means available for solving them” are “changing constantly.” If we want students to be able to change the world, the goal should be to create “wicked graduates with wicked competencies.”

While not aimed at librarians, we believe that Hanstedt’s ideas could be incorporated into our goals for information literacy, especially critical information literacy. In this essay, we outline Hanstedt’s wicked approach and describe how it can be integrated by teaching librarians. Adapting Hanstedt’s format, we provide ideas for program and course design, assignments, and teaching activities.