Information Literacy & Instructional Technology
The Middle States Commission on Higher Education, in its revised accreditation document, Characteristics of Excellence in Higher Education, defines information literacy and sets the expectation for the development of information literacy programs in colleges and universities. In a companion document, Developing Research and Communication Skills: Guidelines for Information Literacy in the Curriculum, the Commission notes:
The principles underlying information literacy are as old as higher education itself. Faculty and administrators have expectations for how students will acquire, analyze, and use information related to courses that the institution offers. However, the usage of the term in contemporary educational practice has brought these various elements together into a single concept that has increasing value as a way to cope with the challenges of the “Information Age.”3
Both the University in its Strategic Plan and the Libraries in its own have adopted “information literacy” as an key institutional goal. UM Libraries have a long history of instructional outreach to students and faculty through User Education Services and, more recently, the Information Literacy Team. Statistics demonstrate steady growth in the numbers of students reached through our information literacy program, a jump from 18,836 to 21,075 students reached between FY01 and FY02 alone. This increase represents a reaction to an increasingly complex information environment as well as concerted efforts by librarians to reach out to faculty for instructional partnerships.
Two examples serve to illustrate different means of responding to this demand, one addressing the needs of a large-enrollment undergraduate class and the other focused on majors. EPSL Expedition is a two-hour workshop designed and delivered by science and technology librarians. It is offered to freshmen enrolled in ENES 100-Introduction to Engineering Design, the core introductory course for all engineering majors, and introduces the students to the resources of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Library. Twenty-four sessions reaching 864 students were taught in FY02. The second example, LASC 403: Research Sources and Methods in Latin America is a one-credit course developed by library faculty to prepare Latin American Studies certificate students for the senior capstone paper. These initiatives are indicative of a significant trend that will accelerate over the next five years and will cause a redirection of a significant portion of the effort of library faculty.
In addition to face-to-face instruction, technology provides opportunities to reach students in different ways through stand-alone and course-related online tutorials and the integration of information literacy skills and resources into courses using WebCT and other course management software that is used on campus as well as for distance learning courses. An online tutorial--TILT (Terrapin Information Literacy Tutorial)--developed by the Libraries User Education Services and the Information Technology Division and designed for English 101 classes is used heavily A partnership with the Office of Information Technology has been launched to establish better linkages between library resources and course management software. The use of IT in support of information literacy will allow us to expand our instructional reach in spite of fiscal restraints on the expansion of positions in the library faculty.
The Libraries also participate in SAILS (Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills), a project developed at Kent State University for the Association of Research Libraries to create a tool for measuring information literacy and assessing its impact on student learning. The results of this assessment will inform us about the effectiveness of library instruction activities and provide hard data for ongoing program development.
More than any time in the past, librarians are playing a direct and critical role in the development and delivery of the curriculum and it is anticipated that this role will continue and expand in the future. Over the next five years, the Libraries will need to monitor and adjust the allocation of human and technical resources to information literacy efforts. For example, subject librarians will likely devote a larger percentage of time to teaching and to working with faculty to integrate information literacy into the curriculum as well as to developing online tutorials, guides, and other “self-service” instructional resources that support the goal of user empowerment, which is a key objective of the Libraries instructional and IT programs and one that supports the University’s strategic plan.
