ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 612 / C&RL News • October 2003 C o l l e g e & R e s e a r c h L i b r a r i e s news A critical 2 lst-century issue by llene F. Rockman Information literacy is no longer just a library issue. It is the critical campuswide issue for the 21st century, of keen importance to all educa tional stakeholders, including faculty, librarians, and administrators. The increasingly complex world in which we live contains an abundance of information choices and formats. Those individuals who are knowl edgeable about finding, evaluating, comparing, se lecting, analyzing, integrating, managing, and con veying information to others effectively and effi ciently are held in high esteem. These are the stu dents, workers, and citizens who are most suc cessful at solving problems, providing solutions, and producing new ideas and directions for the future. Within the higher education environment, it is important for students to be able to build upon a foundation of information literacy skills and abili ties by being able to transfer their knowledge of information literacy from course to course. Re sponsibility for helping them reach this goal and for assessing their progress is best accomplished through faculty-librarian partnerships. The California State University (CSU), the larg est system of senior higher education in North America, has recognized the value of faculty-li brarian partnerships for many years and is strongly committed to graduating students who possess a mastery of information competence. Since the CSU serves over 400,000 students on 23 cam puses, its teaching and learning missions are of paramount importance. Students who graduate from one of 23 CSU campuses use their education to improve their lives, and the lives of others. In addition, from its 1995 Information Com petence Initiative ‚ faculty-librarian collaborations have resulted in the creation of information lit eracy courses, summer faculty workshops, assess ment instalments, and, most recently, the integra tion of information literacy principles into the learning outcomes of academic departments.1 CSU has received national recognition from ACRL, who selected CSU-Fullerton as a “best practices” campus for its ability to integrate infor mation literacy systematically across all university departments and vertically within these depart ments at both the lower and upper division levels. CSU-Monterey Bay, an outcomes-based campus, has also been successful in integrating information literacy principles into multiple academic disci plines across the campus. Incentives for such working relationships have come from a competitive giant process in which small grants (approximately $5,000) have been awarded on an annual basis. Such monies have been used to fund faculty retreats to learn more about information competence and to define in formation competence in specific disciplines, re lease time for faculty to revise course curricula or to create assignments that will strengthen students’ information competence skills, to develop a ma trix of information competence objectives for key courses in die department, for the development of Web-based tutorials and other instructional tools, and for the development of assessment tools About the author llene F. Rockman is m anager o f th e In fo rm a tio n Competence In itiative a t the California State University Office o f the Chancellor, e-mail: irockman@calstate.edu Integrating information literacy into the learning outcomes of academic disciplines mailto:irockman@calstate.edu C&RL News ■ October 2003 / 613 to evaluate students’ information competence skills and abilities. Success stories In the 2001-2002 academic year, CSU awarded 25 grants to 16 campuses. The grants required that instructional departments integrate informa tion competence into their student learning out comes, and that this information be visible on their course syllabi. In addition, the grant stipu lated that faculty create assignments that would promote the development of student informa tion competence skills and abilities. In order to share these successful grant experi ences, the CSU Information Competence Initia tive sponsored several systemwide one-day work shops in 2003. Presenters were discipline and li brary faculty representing exemplar grant projects at the undergraduate (biology, history, first-year experience) and graduate (educational psychol ogy/counseling) levels. The initiative funded one faculty member and one librarian to attend the workshops from each of the 23 CSU campuses. Opportunities were also provided at the workshops for focused small group discussion and sharing of individual campus ex periences. B iological sciences The biological sciences information competence workshop was presented by a faculty-librarian team (Bob Hyde and Charity Hope) from San Jose State University. The goals of their project were to: • assess how information competency is cur rently taught in the Biology curriculum, • articulate information competency objectives for the program as a whole and for key courses, • build support for information competency within the department, and • facilitate the sharing of successful informa tion competence teaching strategies and assign ments across the department.2 Based on ACRL’s “Information Literacy Com petency Standards for Higher Education,”3 the de partment faculty applied the standards to the bio logical sciences. They identified specific learning out comes for each course by clarifying individual course objectives using the standards as a guide. Examples of some of the educational course objectives were: • to find primary sources for evaluating every day problems as revealed in news articles after these problems have been defined, • to analyze relationships between biotic and abi otic factors with course materials and primary sources ‚ • to construct and/or interpret graphical pre sentations for data for most topics covered, • to communicate effectively (in writing and orally) the results of analysis of primary sources and lab data, and • to include in all written analyses the proper use of citations from primary sources. Biology faculty also developed a curriculum matrix, which correlated course offerings (e.g., plant science, animal biology, scientific communi cation) with various components of the standards; created a pre- and post-student self-assessment worksheets; and created various open-ended stu dent assignments (such as researching a topic on PubMed, conducting a literature review and cit ing materials correctly, or developing arguments for a scientific debate). All of these were mounted on a campus Web site for easy access so that fac ulty could refer to them and use them in their teaching.'* History The history information competence workshop was presented by a faculty-librarian team (Dee McBroome, Anne Paulet, and Ray Wang) from Humboldt State University. The history de partment wanted to create a fully integrated major sequence o f courses, with information competence as an important component, cul minating in Senior Seminar and Portfolio As sessment. The department decided to establish two basic lower division courses (Introduction to History and Computer Research in History), which would form the core of the major.5 Information competence skills were strongly integrated into both o f these courses. Faculty agreed that the courses should include these stu dent learning outcomes: • research skills/gathering sources, • facility with primary and secondary sources, • critical reading and thinking, • history methodologies, • historiography, • facility in oral presentation, and • production in coherent and analytical his torical writing. In addition, in the computer research class, students are introduced to the Internet, online library databases (especially for locating full-text journal articles), locating primary sources on the Web, evaluating and designing Web pages, and cit ing information correctly. In upper division courses, students hone, rein 6 1 4 / C&RL News ■ October 2003 force, and apply these information competence skills (research, locating sources, critical thinking, oral and written communication, technology) as they complete their required coursework. This preparation and experience is necessary for the Senior Research Seminar, which requires them to produce a seminal paper or a piece of original research, and for the Portfolio Assessment class, in which they are asked to compile a portfolio of their work assessing their growth over time as both a writer and as an historian. The grant helped the history department fac ulty to reflect upon, and reinvigorate, the content of their department courses without changing the basic structure of the history major. By all ac counts, the grant experience was a success and a major step forward for the department. Educational psychology/counseling The graduate program in Educational Psychol ogy/Counseling (EPC) was presented by the fac- ulty-librarian team (Rie Rogers Mitchell, Merrill Simon, Greg Jackson, and Lynn Lampert) from CSU-Northridge. As with the other disciplines, the EPC faculty wanted to explicitly state their desired learning outcomes, and incorporate in formation competence principles into the gradu ate program. The department faculty agreed with the ACRL document “Information Literacy in a Nutshell: Basic Information For Academic Administrators and Faculty,”6 which defines information compe tence as a gestalt composed of: • tool competence (the ability to use print and electronic resources), • research competence (the ability to under stand and use information technology tools to cany out research), • publishing competence (the ability to pro duce a text, multimedia report, journal article or PowerPoint presentation), • resource competence (the ability to under stand the form, format, location, and method to access needed information), • social-structure competence (the ability to understand how infomiation is produced, includ ing the professional publishing process), and • professional competence (how to use these skills effectively and efficiently with clients). In addition, the department noted that be cause the typical graduate student lacks basic re search and library skills, a prerequisite for admis sion into the graduate program would be the pos session of information competence skills (or re ferral to where students can develop these skills), and that such competence (e.g., staying current with the professional literature, being able to con duct a literature review) is essential for lifelong learning and excellent performance as a profes sional in the field of counseling. The department worked to develop processes to ensure that information competence was in cluded in specific core classes by integrating infor mation from the ACRL standards. The goal was that students would progressively acquire these skills throughout their coursework, and should improve as they advance in the graduate program. As a result, the department created a certificate of mastery in information and research compe tencies, which distinguishes its graduates from graduates in other programs from other universi ties. The certificate is signed by the department chair and distributed to students upon comple tion of the program.7 First-year experience/freshm en sem inar Addressing the needs of entering freshmen to in tegrate information competence into the fresh man seminar curriculum was a collaborative team from Sonoma State University, including a disci pline faculty member (Suzanne Toczyski), library faculty member (Karen Brodsky), peer mentors, and students. Unlike other universities in which freshmen seminar is mandatory, at Sonoma State Univer sity, approximately 70 percent of the university’s freshmen choose to enroll,8 and within the expe rience they receive a healthy dose of opportuni ties to develop information competence skills. The goals of the freshmen seminars are to: • increase information competence among the faculty and peer mentors, • increase collaboration between the library and discipline faculty, resulting in course-specific student freshmen experiences, which further their information competence skills and abilities, • increase contact between librarians and fresh men, • help faculty to develop assignments that will allow students to use information competence in concrete, assessable ways, and • assist students in identifying resources, imple menting research strategies, writing bibliographies, citing sources, and presenting information both orally and in writing. A distinct advantage of the experience from a faculty perspective was the time and opportunity C&RL News ■ O ctober 2003 / 615 to consult with a librarian concerning appro priate assignments and research projects. This “check and balance” with a librarian prevented students from receiving assignments that were too complex, overwhelming, or inappropriate for a freshmen-level experience. Students appreciated the interactions with a librarian in which they learned (often, for the first time) that not all information sources are of equal value or to be trusted. In addition, they learned how to define a manageable research project, the differences between scholarly jour nals and popular periodicals, and about Web and print resources. Conclusion It is clear that administrative support and strate gic campus partnerships have helped to advance the infusion o f information competence into the learning outcomes of academic disciplines within the CSU system. Small grants have helped to seed the growth and development of the Information Compe tence Initiative, and intercampus sharing of successful experiences have inspired and moti vated faculty to move forward in a positive direction. The challenge in future years will be to sus tain these programs, which is now more pos sible than ever before due to a common baseline of information competence knowledge among the faculty. By doing so, the chief beneficiaries will be our students— our new lifelong learners. Notes 1. Information on CSU’s Information Compe tence Initiative is at www.calstate.edu/LS/ infocomp.shtml. 2. See “Information Competency in the Biology Curriculum,” sjlibrary.org/services/ literacy/info_comρ/infocomρ_bio.htm. 3. ACRL’s “Information Literacy Competen cy Standards for Higher Education,” www.acrl. org, click on “Standards & Guidelines.” 4. See “Information Competency in the Biology Curriculum,” sjlibrary.org/services/ literacy/info_comρ/infocomp_bio.htm. 5. Humboldt State University Web page on Information Competence for History Majors is at www.humboldLedu/~ap23/infocomp/index.htm. 6. Association of College and Research Li braries. “Information Literacy in a Nutshell: Basic Information for Academic Administrators and Faculty.” www.ala.org/acrl/nili/whatis.html. 7. The certificate is online at: www.csun. edu/edpsy/ACES/pdf/document 19.pdf. 8. Karen Brodsky and Suzanne Toczyski, “Information Competence in the Freshmen Seminar,” Academ ic Exchange Quarterly 6:4 (Winter 2002): 46-51. ■ http://www.calstate.edu/LS/ http://www.acrl http://www.humboldLedu/~ap23/infocomp/index.htm http://www.ala.org/acrl/nili/whatis.html http://www.csun