BLInk Training
Blended Learning of Information Literacy
This website presents a Blended Learning instruction program for information literacy tailored to the needs of psychology students on undergraduate or graduate level. Participants learn how to
search, access, and evaluate psychological information using scholarly databases, web search engines, and other online resources.
As a large proportion of the materials contains information specific to the situation at German universities, all materials are provided only in German language. At this stage,
there is no English language translation available.
BLInk Course Contents
The online materials of the instruction program are presented via the online learning platform Moodle and can be found
here1. The online materials are complemented by classroom seminars which are described in
the training manual2 (PDF).
The program is composed of three modules:
- Module 1 »Fundamentals of searching scholarly information«
introduces into the system of scientific publishing and describes several ways to find scholarly information in the field of psychology. The focus is on relevant reference databases like
PsycINFO and PSYNDEX, but also on search engines like Google Scholar. Additionally, resources of neighboring disciplines (e.g. ERIC for publications from the educational sciences) are described.
A separate section deals with the search for psychological assessment tools.
- Module 2 »Accessing scholarly information and advanced search strategies«
describes ways to access scientific publications (books, journal articles). The module covers the use of link resolvers, library catalogues, and interlibrary loan. Several non-traditional ways, like
finding PDF versions of articles using Google Scholar, or the use of repositories, are also described. The module additionally deals with the use of existing publications as a starting point for a
literature search. Methods described include the extraction of relevant keywords from a present paper, or finding citing publications.
- Module 3 »Evaluating scholarly information«
conveys information about criteria for the evaluation of scholarly publications and websites. The module includes »hard« criteria like citation indices (Journal Impact Factor, Scimago)
and the interpretation of these indices. For the evaluation of websites, the module names several indicators (e.g. scientific background of authors). Additionally, the module makes students
aware of the fact the evaluation is always carried out in the context of a specific information need which determines the utility of information.
Scientific Background of BLInk
The instruction program was developed by the research project »BLInk« (»Blended Learning von Informationskompetenz«). The project was conducted at the Leibniz Institute for Psychology
Information (ZPID) in Trier, Germany, from 2012 to 2015. It was funded by the Joint Initiative for Research and Innovation with a grant that was acquired within the Leibniz Competition 2012.
More information about the research project and its scientific publications may be found on the project website
http://www.zpid.de/index.php?wahl=forschung&uwahl=project&uuwahl=2012&lang=EN
When referring to the online materials, please cite as:
The training manual has been published as printed book:
- Leichner, N., Peter, J., Waeldin, S., Mayer, A.-K., & Krampen, G. (2015). Trainingsmanual Blended Learning von Informationskompetenz (BLInk) [training manual Blended Learning of
information literacy]. Lengerich, Germany: Pabst Science Publishers.
For a short description of the instruction program and an evaluation study, see the following scientific publication:
- Leichner, N., Peter, J., Mayer, A.-K., & Krampen, G. (2014). Assessing information literacy programmes using information search tasks.
Journal of Information Literacy, 8(1). doi:10.11645/8.1.1870
URLs of the link's on this page:
- http://www.informationbehavior.org/
- http://www.zpid.de/pub/research/2015_leichner_trainingsmanual_blink.pdf
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