Incorporating Information Literacy
into the Curriculum
Information literacy is fundamental to academic success
Information literacy begins with the set of skills needed to find,
retrieve, analyze, and use information. The integration of these
competencies into the curriculum challenges students to improve
both the quality of their assignments and their thinking abilities.
It will also help students meet the VSC Information Literacy Graduation
Standard requirement. The librarians at the Vermont State Colleges
encourage your involvement in this process. To this end, we have
identified ten information literacy proficiencies that we believe
to be crucial. The purpose of this guide is to provide you with
practical suggestions and strategies for ways to incorporate information
literacy into your courses. The first section outlines and discusses
proficiencies; the second provides ideas for assignments that incorporate
these concepts.
Information Literacy Proficiencies
and Strategies for Addressing Them
The concepts of information literacy fall into two areas: the research
process and the understanding of scholarly communication. In the
first year of their college careers, students will begin to learn
the basics: to recognize the need for information, formulate a search
strategy, and acquire the ability to locate, evaluate, and use resources
effectively. As work progresses in their major, students then become
familiar with the sources, search strategies, and information issues
that are particularly important to that area.
The Research Process
A. Research Strategy
An information literate student is able to:
• Formulate a strategy, and understand the way questions can
be refined and redefined in the course of research.
Strategies:
• Focus on the iterative nature of the research process and
the idea that research can involve many trajectories – some
even unfruitful.
• Walk through the process of topic formulation, from general
interest to statement of the research question/problem.
• Share experiences where research was stymied or blossomed,
based on that found while researching; help dispel the myth that
the perfect answer exists for every question, even the “obvious”
ones.
• Have students submit bibliographies at various stages of
the research process. This has multiple benefits:
o It deters procrastination.
o They find out sooner rather than later how much material is available
on a given topic.
o They will get used to keeping track of bibliographic data as they
go along rather than scrambling to produce bibliographies at the
end of the process.
B. Searchable concepts/keywords/synonyms
An information literate student is able to:
• Distill a complicated research question into a set of search
terms.
Strategies:
Emphasize the importance of being flexible; research is a creative
process!
Teach searching savvy.
o Help students understand that search language which may work in
a search engine like Google will probably not work in the library
catalog and databases.
o Importance of keeping a list of key terms/synonyms while investigating
a topic. As new terms are learned, research tools may need to be
re-checked.
o Value of saving search histories from database searches
o How Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) are used to combine key terms
in ways that narrow and broaden results.
o The difference between keyword and subject searching.
C. Choice of resources and databases
An information literate student is able to:
• Select appropriate resources to answer the question.
Strategies:
• Teach tool savvy. Make students aware of the existence of
various types of resources – reference material, databases,
indexes, etc. – and their roles/uses.
• How do these sources differ? What are their strengths and
weaknesses?
• What determines the selection of resources: timeliness,
authoritativeness, format, etc.?
• Make sure students understand the difference between an
Internet web site and an online electronic database, especially
one that offers full text articles.
• Remind the students that not everything is available online.
• The current generation of college students may not be accustomed
to or comfortable with using print sources.
D. Evaluate information
An information literate student is able to:
• Evaluate resources for usefulness, bias, currency and authority
(including Internet resources).
Strategies:
• Emphasize resource evaluation as critical thinking.
• Help students understand that any and all resources, regardless
of format, should be judged and evaluated with a particular set
of criteria.
• Help students set criteria upon which sources should be
evaluated.
• Discuss where information can be found that could help to
evaluate sources.
Sample list of Evaluation Criteria:
• External factors: author’s credentials, publisher’s
credentials/reputation, date/currency, documentation (bibliographies,
foot/end-notes).
• Internal factors: evidence to back up assertions, clear
& logical arguments, are all contributing factors considered,
are all/most ramifications considered
E. Citations: documenting sources
An information literate student is able to:
• Understand different types of bibliographic citations and
using a style manual correctly document information sources in many
different formats.
Strategies:
• Make your expectations clear. Tell students which is the
preferred style manual for this course or discipline (APA, MLA,
etc.)
• Map it out.
o Outline the basic elements of citations.
o Distinguish between citing an article in a print and electronic
source such as Academic Search Premier.
o Demonstrate the way sites from the Internet should be cited.
o Require students to submit all citations in correct format. Discuss
why it matters.
• Modeling expected citation practice on your syllabus can
make a difference. Provide complete citations for all course materials,
recommended readings, etc.
• Emphasize the importance of gathering citation information
at the time the source is used.
F. Plagiarism
An information literate student is able to:
• Understand intellectual property issues (quoting, paraphrasing,
attributing ideas).
Strategies:
• An ounce of prevention. Help students understand the nature
of intellectual property and when credit is due.
o When do we need to acknowledge another person’s ideas?
o What are “common knowledge” and “original thought”?
o What is good paraphrasing? How does it differ from a direct quotation?
o In what ways does research in an electronic ‘cut and paste’
environment impact issues of intellectual property?
• How do the College’s rules address plagiarism?
Scholarly Communication in a Discipline
A. Types of publications: format/focus/currency
An information literate student is able to:
• Understand the nature of different types of publications,
and why and when they are useful.
Strategies:
• Explain format and examine some of the different types.
• Examine the relationship/relative roles of different types
of information sources.
o Various formats: how their differences relate to their potential
usefulness.
o Difference of focus: narrow in many journal articles, broader
for books.
o The factor of timeliness: when it is important, and why?
o How do the roles of books, journal articles, and other types of
publications differ in different disciplines/fields?
• Trace the progression of an event from publication in informal/popular
sources to formal/scholarly sources.
o The Information Cycle, an online presentation from Penn State
University Libraries, uses the Columbine killings to demonstrate
this process: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/instruction/ (Under “Tutorials.”
Flash and Sound required).
• Reverse the process by tracing the progression of scholarly
research to popular/informal coverage.
B. Popular vs. scholarly
An information literate student is able to:
• Distinguish between popular and scholarly material and understand
that any topic can be covered in both; determine when it is appropriate
to use each type and why.
Strategies:
• Work with students to help them understand why being able
to distinguish between these types of material is important.
• Consider the source of information and its intended audience.
• Examine a scholarly and a popular source: how do they differ
in terms of authorship, content, and editorial policy?
• Use examples to identify ways scholarly or popular sources
can be identified.
C. Primary vs. secondary
An information literate student is able to:
• Distinguish between primary and secondary resources and
determine when it is appropriate to use these types of resources
and why.
Strategies:
• How might different fields of study (biology, English literature,
and politics, for example) have different “rules” about
what constitutes primary and secondary sources?
• How does context determine whether a source is primary or
secondary in a particular instance?
• What does primary/secondary mean in your discipline?
• What potential ambiguities arise when a source can be considered
primary in one situation or discipline and secondary in another,
based on the question asked and when it is asked?
D. Communication within a discipline
An information literate student is able to:
• Understand that each discipline may have its own way of
generating, controlling, and using information.
Strategies:
• Make the invisible visible by using your own process as
example.
o How/why you selected course readings.
o Do these particular articles demonstrate the scholarly communication
in your discipline?
o Highlight your own critical thinking process in relation to the
assigned readings.
• What is the current state of research in your field? How
does your discipline structure information?
o What kinds of topics are being written about, discussed and presented?
o How do people disseminate the information? Online, in print, at
conferences, etc.?
o How do research methods and contexts vary in different disciplines?
Potential Exercises for Specific Information Literacy Standards
1. Research Strategy
• Have students keep logs on the ways their topic changes
and evolves as they do research and encounter more (or less) information
[allowing the option for a visual mapping of this process may be
helpful for some students]
• Have students state the question/research problem and then
consider what kinds of information sources will be needed to answer
the question (i.e., primary/secondary sources, books, articles,
videos, statistical sources, reference works, etc.)
2. Searchable concepts/keywords/synonyms
• Have students describe their topics in a few sentences.
Have them “diagram” their research statement, picking
out the most important key word(s), brainstorming synonyms and related
concepts.
• Have students demonstrate how Boolean operators are used
to combine key terms in ways that narrow or broaden results.
• Ask students to keep a research log, charting the changes
in their thinking about the topic based on the results of their
searching.
3. Choose resources and databases
• Have students state which resources they will use to find
the kinds of information they said they needed, e.g., “I will
use the VSC Online Catalog to find books and videos. I will use
X and Y databases to find articles in scholarly journals.”
• Have students consult two reference sources to answer a
particular question, one a general encyclopedia and the other a
subject encyclopedia, and compare treatment of the topic in the
2 sources; have them note what else the tool could be used for.
• Have students conduct a search for the same topic in two
different databases and compare/contrast the results.
4. Evaluate information
• Have small groups examine texts/Web sites etc. and evaluate
them according to agreed upon criteria
5. Citations: documenting sources
• Provide copies of books [single author, edited essays, etc.],
journals and magazines, full-text printouts from library databases,
and Web site home pages. Have students identify the parts needed
to create a citation.
• Have students turn in citations in the proper format with
early drafts of papers. Alternately, require a bibliography early
in the semester with citations in the proper format.
6. Plagiarism
• Give students excerpts from books/articles, etc. and have
them practice paraphrasing and quoting, and properly citing the
material.
• Provide both acceptable and unacceptable paraphrases of
the same excerpt. How do they differ?
7. Types of publications: format/focus/currency
Have students compare and contrast treatment of a specific topic/question/issue
in a book and in an article.
Take a contemporary account of an historic event and compare it
with current discussion of the same event.
Have students identify a topic for which the majority of published
information would be in article form [a recent trend or field of
exploration for example.]
Have students apply the flow of information discussion above to
a given event/trend/theory.
8. Popular vs. scholarly
• Have students identify and compare a scholarly article and
a popular article that treat the same topic.
• Give students several scholarly articles and ask them to
identify the common features among the articles.
• Provide students with a variety of resources (articles,
Web sites, etc.) and have them make arguments about whether, and
why, they would classify each as being scholarly.
9. Primary vs. secondary
• Give students several research questions/theses, and have
them make a list of the kinds of primary resource materials scholars
might seek in each case.
• Have students evaluate a primary source: what was the purpose/intent
of the source, who was its author/originator?
• Ask students to consider a particular source (e.g. book,
journal article, conference proceeding, Web site) and think about
whether there are circumstances under which it might be considered
a primary source, and other circumstances under which it might be
considered a secondary source.
• Have students consider various kinds of writing they have
done [autobiographical/experiential, essays, research papers], and
discuss whether these materials would be considered primary or secondary
sources, and under what circumstances.
10. Communication in a discipline
• Write a brief outline of the ways in which the ordering,
production and dissemination of research might shape the development
of new knowledge.
Credits:
This is an adaptation of Incorporating Information Literacy into Oberlin’s
First Year Seminars Faculty Guide by Janet Thorn at LSC Library. http://www.oberlin.edu/library/programs/fys/guide.pdf
Oberlin College Library, May 2002. [Rev. May 2003]. We thank the librarians
of Oberlin College Library’s Reference Work Group for permission
to use their guide as a template. |
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