Creating Active Learning Opportunities Through Open Educational Resources: The Marquette Information Literacy Modules

One of the goals of open education, beyond accessibility and affordability, is to create engaging active learning opportunities for students. Information Literacy Modules from Marquette University Raynor Library is one example of open educational resources (OER) that allows students to engage in active learning around foundational information literacy topics and allows librarians the ability to revise and remix the modules and their content. Research has shown that that most libraries rely on programming skills shared across a campus or library system or a relatively small web development team, making staff time to develop interactive online learning modules expensive and scarce. By releasing these nine stand-alone modules on GitHub under the GNU General Public License (GPLv3), the intent is for institutions that do not have the technical or staff resources to create interactive online modules, to be able to still utilize them in their information literacy instruction. It is hoped that a larger, diverse group of librarians, faculty (and perhaps students), who have the capacity and technical resources, can continue to expand and improve these modules.