Friday, Sept. 23 - 4:00 pm

Required reading of credit-bearing information literacy undergraduate classes [4:00]

In preparation to create a credit-bearing IL course, the presenters analyzed course syllabi of 100 current credit-bearing IL courses at other universities. They generated a list of the articles most commonly included on the reading lists. The handout for this one pretty much sums it up, so I'm going to defer to that, rather than list all of the citations here.

They also mentioned the five most commonly-used IL textbooks, and I'm very curious as to whether the one this institution (the Citadel) chose is the one used for Amy's online IL workshop?

Another interesting observation is that most of the books only touched on ~35% of the ACRL IL standards (the book they chose included ~65%, but that was significantly more than the others). So the question is whether the ACRL standards are adequate, if textbook authors are having difficulty including them in classroom exercises. One of the presenters mentioned that these standards have recently been revised - I was not aware of that, so want to pursue that further to consider the updates.

AND

Critical thinking as information literacy: a model for the core curriculum? [4:30] - presenters from GA Southern

The recent revision of Georgia Southern's core curriculum provided the impetus for this session. During the process, the committee wanted to include critical thinking skills into the new core curriculum. The authors drew parallels between IL and critical thinking. The critical thinking outcome, acc. to Georgia Southern, is described as "student will interpret, analyze, and evaluate information and ideas using logical and ethical framework" (very similar to the crux of ACRL's IL definition). They analyzed the IL/critical thinking outcomes of other institutions in the University of Georgia System, and found very similar parallels between the definitions of critical thinking and IL. (As a side note, I have a handout with a table showing critical thinking/IL definitions and outcomes - thought this may be helpful in including IL in VC's goals/mission, the component missing for our ARL survey).

A couple of questions generated in the discussion:
Can a one-course assessment plan adequately capture students' knowledge of critical thinking (IL)? Can a multiple choice test? (These are currently the methods for assessment.)

Also, why is it so difficult to find the definition of IL in the state's college? I commented that the ARL survey asked about whether IL is included in the institution's mission statement, and perhaps this will bring to the fore that many institutions do not explicitly mention IL.