Information literacy is the ability to use critical thinking to create meaningful knowledge from information. The information literate student: engages in a process of inquiry in order to frame intellectual challenges and identify research needs; accesses, evaluates, and communicates information effectively; provides attribution for source materials used; develops insight into the social, legal, economic and ethical aspects of information creation, use, access and durability.
Related tips:
Information Literacy: In-Class Activities
Action:
- Ask students to create an annotated bibliography of 5-8 articles on a particular topic in which
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Each annotation is no more than 100-250 words
- Explains the authors’ views
- Explains how the authors’ views relate to one another
- Explains how the authors’ views relate to the student’s own views
Reason:
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This work can help students synthesize the key literature as they develop their thesis.
Action:
- Pick a sufficiently narrow topic or term and ask students to:
- identify 3 articles that are likely to be relevant to that topic
- list which database(s) they used and why they found those databases appropriate
- list their search terms
- provide the bibliographic information, properly formatted, for all 3 articles
- Build on the former activity by asking students to read and summarize the abstracts of the papers they found during their research process.
- An alternative assignment: after students have written a brief response paper to an issue, text, artwork, etc. ask them to write a second paper, based on their research of the issue/text/artwork, in which they
- choose 2 or 3 sources
- summarize the views in those sources
- properly cite those sources
- and state how their own views are in line with or contrary to the scholarly views.
Reason:
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An assignment that makes the steps of a research process explicit helps students better master these skills.
Action:
Reason:
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This resource can serve as general background allowing the instructor to focus on disciplinary specific aspects of research.
Action:
Reason:
- Rubrics are helpful for both evaluating the display of information literacy in a paper and communicating expectations to students.
Action:
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Provide students a paper that does a good job of making claims that are supported by cited evidence. Either in class or in a written assignment, ask students to summarize the arguments made within the paper and what cited evidence the authors used to make each argument.
- Ask students to identify the following:
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Text that situates this question within the literature
- Cited evidence
- Explanations of how the cited evidence supports a specific claim.
- When possible, use a previous student’s anonymized assignment as a model for current students.
Reason:
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Deconstructing examples of how authors construct an argument through citing previous work provides students a model of how to connect existing literature to their topic.
Action:
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Explain to students that the formatting of references varies for different disciplines
- Provide students guidelines for how you want references formatted
- Direct students how to consistently and completely label figures and graphs.
- Have students’ bibliography due before the final version of the paper so that students spend enough time completely and consistently formatting their references.
- Many resources exist online to help students completely and consistently format that references. Purdue Resource
- When possible explain the rationale behind formatting rules. For example, explain table titles appear above the table because tables sometimes span multiple pages.
- Document and share disciplinary expectations regarding what does and what does not require a reference.
- The Claremont Colleges Library provides an “Exploring Academic Integrity” tutorial that provides information about appropriate Attribution and Citation
Reason:
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Disciplinary standards vary and it may be difficult for students to identify guides to develop complete and consistent references.
Action:
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Contact the library as you develop your syllabus to identify appropriate points for library class sessions and discuss possible assignment design.
Reason:
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Greater levels of engagement by librarians make for greater student learning gains in information literacy. However, librarians need not be embedded in a class for students to make significant gains; faculty-librarian assignment and syllabi collaboration and then one or two strategically placed library class sessions can produce great gains in students’ information literacy.
