Adapting Infosphère: Leveraging an OER Information Literacy Platform

In the rapidly evolving landscape of higher education, ensuring that students possess robust information literacy skills is crucial. Infosphère – a comprehensive, modular online information literacy training platform originally developed and released under a CC BY license by the Université du Québec à Montréal – provides a dynamic, customizable framework to help learners refine their abilities in navigating complex information ecosystems. Leveraging its status as an open educational resource (OER), EPFL library training team adapted Infosphère’s content to better align with the specific curriculum needs of bachelor’s and master’s students at our institution, EPFL academic contexts, and language and technology specificities. This presentation will detail the process and rationale behind customization of Infosphère. We will discuss how the platform’s open license facilitated the adaptation and the revision of instructional materials to better address disciplinary nuances and student learning outcomes. By sharing these insights, we aim to highlight how the OER nature of Infosphère not only supported intellectual freedom and pedagogical innovation, but also enabled iterative refinements based on the exchanges with stakeholders. Attendees will gain practical knowledge about the implementation challenges and opportunities encountered throughout this adaptation journey. We will explore how our team collaborated with subject librarians, pedagogical and IT experts, and internal key players to establish a responsive, inclusive, and transparent development process. Moreover, we will discuss the adjustments needed to ensure that content and navigation patterns were accessible to learners with diverse backgrounds. This session underscores the transformative potential of openly licensed educational resources, showcasing how tools like Infosphère can be molded to meet local needs while retaining their core mission of cultivating critical information literacy competencies. Ultimately, by embracing the adaptability and scalability of OER-driven platforms, academic libraries can reaffirm their commitment to fostering equitable and meaningful learning experiences for students across all stages of their academic journeys.