Integrating an online information literacy module in all students' curriculum: teaching across the disciplines in a technical university

The EPFL Library recently took part in the creation of a new educational offer, called Global Issues, targeting 1st year Bachelor students across all disciplines taught at EPFL, which represents 1,600 people. This course is a multidisciplinary approach of global challenges, bringing humanities and technical sciences together, encouraging students to go beyond their core discipline. For the first time, information literacy is embedded in an EPFL credited course. Due to the number of students, we had to find new ways to pass on knowledge and skills. We shaped an online course completed with exercises, tutorials and a forum, in order to deal with this constraint. Thanks to this innovative experience, bridges were built between the Library and the Center for Digital Education - experts in the production of MOOCs -, the Teaching Support Center and the Faculty. At the end of the semester, each group of students was required to present a poster in front of a panel of judges. Thus, our teaching focused on efficient research techniques, reference management and proper use of information provides students with a set of concrete tools to be used straight away, and to be studied more in-depth throughout their curriculum. Despite the rather important role we played in this teaching, we have the feeling that we will need to keep arguing for the importance of the information literacy skills in the years to come.