Greg Careaga
University of California, Santa Cruz
Greg is Head of Assessment and Planning and the Undergraduate Experience Team at the UC Santa Cruz University Library where he has worked for sixteen years. Prior to that, he was worked at California Lutheran University and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.
Purpose:
The University of California (UC), Santa Cruz University Library partnered with the campus Writing Program and Office of Institutional Research, Assessment, and Policy Studies to participate in the 2015/16 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Assessment in Action Program in order to assess the effectiveness of an online library research tutorial for conveying relevant Information Literacy skills to Composition 2 students completing a research assignment. This case study will give an overview of the project outcomes and describe the library’s strategy for using project data and design artifacts to support campus goals for defining Information Literacy learning outcomes across the curriculum.
Design, methodology or approach:
The project team negotiated a common understanding of Information Literacy outcomes that mapped to ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, Composition 2 research skills learning outcomes, and—with varying degrees of precision—to online tutorial elements. The team used this common frame of reference to develop an assignment-based Information Literacy rubric that measured seven competencies across three domains. The rubric was informed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities Information Literacy VALUE Rubric.
During fall term 2015, 115 Composition 2 students completed a locally developed online tutorial for the database Academic Search Complete. They subsequently completed research process coversheets as part of their culminating research papers. Instructors provided these students’ assignment bibliographies. Project librarians applied the rubric to the coversheets and bibliographies.
Findings:
Students demonstrated proficiency at articulating their information needs and in deliberately selecting the types of resources that satisfied their assignment requirements. They were less adept at competencies surrounding translating information needs into effective searching strategies and managing sources. Project data proved useful for identifying areas where students needed additional support. They were less so for identifying deficiencies in specific tutorial elements.
The work of defining Information Literacy competencies in the context of a national standard while respecting the traditions and reporting requirements of campus Information Literacy stakeholders has proven to be at least as valuable as the project data. In parallel with this project, Writing Program faculty revised their program learning outcomes. Former “research skills” outcomes for Composition 2 were recast as Information Literacy outcomes based on ACRL competencies. Information Literacy outcomes were added to the Composition 1 course for the first time. The common frame, rubric, and scoring exercise serve as a model for articulating Information Literacy outcomes that are measurable and support transfer of learning across the curriculum.
Research or practical limitations or implications:
The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education superseded the ACRL Information Literacy Competencies shortly after we completed our primary data gathering. We did not attempt to redefine our negotiated understanding of Information Literacy outcomes or any of our rubric elements before we scored our data.
Conclusions:
Librarians at UC Santa Cruz are not members of the faculty and the Library has long struggled to gain a foothold with faculty efforts to describe or measure Information Literacy outcomes. Our collaboration with the Writing Program and with the Office of Institutional Research, Assessment, and Policy Studies has burnished our bona fides and given us a model to build measurable Information Literacy outcomes that fit the needs of the curriculum.
Originality and value:
This case study may be of interest to librarians looking to rationalize various stakeholders’ interests in Information Literacy around a recognized standard. It may also be of interest to those who wish to develop or apply a competency-based rubric to specific course outcomes.
Learning , Organisational issues , Relationships , Frameworks
