1. What is information literacy and why is it hard to teach?

Welcome to Part 1 and thanks for being here!

This guide will begin with a definition of information literacy. Then, you'll explore the following three issues that impede students' ability to learn information literacy skills:

On the pages that follow, you'll learn more about these and other problems, and you'll be supplied with tips and/or assignment ideas that'll help address these problems.

What is information literacy?

Information literacy is the ability to effectively find, evaluate, and use information. That's the short definition, but if you want a longer, more official definition then here's how the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) defines information literacy:

Information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning.*

*(For more information, see: American Library Association (2015) "Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education," American Library Association, February 9, 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework)

For NAU's General Studies Program, we've recast these skills into three learning goals:

Obviously students with good information literacy skills are going to do better on college research assignments. But many students will need robust information literacy skills to excel in their chosen career as well. Plus, a good set of information literacy skills enables college graduates to make wise choices in their personal life and helps them become knowledgeable and effective members of democratic society.  

In other words, information literacy skills are just as essential after college as they are during college. 

Lots of instructors think they are teaching information literacy skills, but...

You may assume your students are learning information literacy skills when you give them assignments that require them to find and cite sources. However, it appears students aren't absorbing many information literacy skills from these types of assignments. How do we know that? 

https://projectinfolit.org/

A study conducted by a research group called Project Information Literacy investigated how employers view the research skills of newly hired college graduates:


This study found that employers were unhappy "that college hires rarely conducted the thorough research required of them in the workplace." Employers said their new hires "were prone to deliver the quickest answer they could find using a search engine, entering a few keywords, and scanning the first couple of pages of results." 

In other words, these employers were unhappy that newly hired college graduates approached research like it was something to get over and done with as quickly as possible – instead of taking the time to do it right.


*There are more recent studies on career-readiness, but most are discipline specific, such as:
  • Phillips, M., Fosmire, M., Turner, L., Petersheim, K., & Lu, J. (2019). Comparing the information needs and experiences of undergraduate students and practicing engineers. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 45(1), 39-49. 

But, that's not the only evidence we have. Librarians regularly meet with students to help them with research, and they observe how students are struggling to find, evaluate, and use information. First and second year students have the most challenges, but upper level students also have difficulty recognizing different source types or evaluating the purpose, relevance, or credibility of different sources. Furthermore, many students aren't familiar with the databases that serve their discipline, nor can they search those databases – or Google Scholar – with much skill. 

So what are the problems with existing assignments?

So, while college research assignments do teach important skills, they can be overwhelming and leave students with little capacity to reflect on the research process and how different sources are leveraged for different types of information needs. Those skills don't just get absorbed as students make their way through college – rather, we need to intentionally and purposefully draw attention to them. 

Try aiming for this:

When developing assignments to teach information literacy skills, ask yourself: What information literacy skills does your assignment teach that students will be able to apply in the future – in their life and career? Does your assignment teach them skills they can apply to new and different situations? 





Now let's move on and talk about three problems that make it especially difficult for students to learn information literacy skills.

Problem 1: Students need a better foundation on which to build information literacy skills

Most students don't understand how new information comes into existence and then gets packaged and disseminated in primary sources, and then repurposed and repackaged into secondary sources. In fact, students have very sketchy concepts about what different sources are, how to tell them apart, what purpose they serve, or what qualities they have. 

Unfortunately, we tend to skip over these important foundational concepts and ask students to jump right in and start searching databases to find sources to write about and cite. It's as if we're teaching students how to do division and multiplication without first explaining what numbers are. 

Problem 2: We're not devoting enough time to teaching students information literacy skills.

The fact that we aren't taking the time to teach students foundational information literacy skills (see above) is just part of the problem. We also need to give students more time to absorb these skills so they sink in. In other words, we need to provide training in smaller doses, and give students time to practice their skills and get feedback. 

It's true that sometimes instructors will devote a class session to information literacy training, and the instructor might even ask a librarian to come to their class to provide that instruction. However, just look at the LENGTH of this list of content a librarian might need to cover to properly prepare students for a research assignment: 

Obviously it's not possible to cover all these skills in a 50 to 75 minute class session – let alone time for students to practice these new skills and get feedback on how they are doing.  

To the right you see what librarians are usually asked to cover in a class session, and this is just about all they have time to cover anyway. 

Again notice that it's as if we're teaching students how to do division and multiplication without first explaining what numbers are. 

So, why do we give information literacy skills such short shrift? Part of the reason is that there's no course devoted to teaching information literacy skills; instead we try to incorporate these skills into existing courses. Naturally, instructors want to prioritize teaching the subject content of their course rather than focusing on information literacy skills – and that's perfectly reasonable! 

However, there are ways to incorporate information literacy learning goals into your course without diverting students from the subject content. This guide will provide you with ideas for how to do that.

Problem 3: Assignments typically don't teach the most important information literacy skills.

There are lots of problems with the way we design research assignments and write up assignment instructions. You'll learn tips for rectifying these problems as you read through this guide. But one of the more pernicious issues is that most college research assignments don't require students to search strategically and thoroughly for sources. Students can usually get by running a fairly careless search, finding a few semi-okay sources, pulling some content from those sources, and then making that content sound relevant when they write their research paper. 

After all, most instructors focus on grading the grammar, organization, and coherence of students' writing, along with how well students' incorporate sources, whether those sources appear to be credible, and whether they're cited properly. It would be difficult and time-consuming for instructors to assess and grade how skillfully and thoroughly a student searched for information on their topic. 

In fact, since students can still make good grades on research assignments even when they don’t conduct strategic, thorough searches, many graduate thinking they’ve mastered searching and are expert searchers! That’s a perfectly logical conclusion given the circumstances, but the reality is that in college their search skills are rarely put to a true test. 

Yet, career jobs often require employees to work on projects that require strategic and thorough background research. For example, developing policy recommendations or best practices are two activities that may require tactical and robust search skills. Unfortunately, many students lack these skills when they graduate from college, as evidenced by the study conducted by Project Information Literacy (see above for details). 

The rest of this guide will examine a variety of barriers students face when trying to master Information Literacy Learning Goals A, B, and C, and how you can help. Links to assignment ideas are also included in this guide, but if you want to see all the assignment ideas in one place and how they correspond to each learning goal, then consult Part 8 of this guide. 

Comment on this content and/or collaborate with NAU librarians to find other solutions to these problems!

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