Strengthening connections between information literacy, general education, and assessment efforts

Library Trends, Fall, 2002 by Ilene F. Rockman

BACKGROUND

Library instruction within the college and university setting has long been recognized as an important aspect of higher education (Evans, 1914). Over the years, academic librarians have consistently discussed the important role they can play by partnering with discipline-based classroom faculty to integrate library instruction programs into the university curriculum (Breivik and Gee, 1989; Rader, 1975).

This partnership, an evolutionary process of forging strategic alliances to advance library instruction goals, has included such pioneering efforts over the past several decades as:

* Working with first-year students through a two-term humanities course which places emphasis on competence in the use of the library for research purposes (Farber, 1974);

* Funding pilot projects, such as those sponsored by the Council on Library Resources, to enhance library services by integrating library instruction into established courses offered by academic departments (Dittmar, 1977);

* Creating a separate credit-bearing library instruction course (taught by librarians, working closely with various discipline-based faculty members) for first-year students as an integral part of their undergraduate core learning experiences with the goals of integrating coursework and improving retention of underrepresented students (Rockman, 1978);

* Including library skills in a discipline-based English composition course (Ball State, 1979).

The rise of the library instruction movement in the 1980s saw librarians heavily involved in course-integrated library instruction activities. The goal of these activities was to move beyond the traditional lecture model to one of an information-based or resource-centered teaching model (Pastine & Wilson, 1992). As such, academic libraries sought to parallel developments occurring elsewhere in higher education that placed greater emphasis upon integrated learning than on teaching specific library research and retrieval skills. As libraries mounted databases and online public access catalogs (OPACs), the opportunity to educate patrons about the effective use of these electronic systems provided a new means to enhance and integrate library instruction into the campus curriculum as an important tool (Rockman, 1989).

Some progressive voices have also suggested that librarians integrate library skills into the general education curriculum (Pastine, 1995). With the reform of university general education programs in the 1990s coinciding with the rise of technology (Lanham, 1997), reports of general education "gateway" courses linking library instruction and technology training appeared in the library literature (Varner, Schwartz, & George, 1996). Such courses helped students to use electronic information resources (Fenske, 1995), especially as complex choices and multiple database interfaces emerged.

The 1990s were an unprecedented time of change for libraries as it became clear that for students to function in a dynamic information environment they needed information literacy skills and strategies that could be applied to any information need (McCartin, 2001).

The reform movement of the 1990s saw some universities develop first-year experiences and seminars for undergraduates with courses focused on communication and composition skills (reading, writing, and critical thinking) as one method to deliver information literacy instruction (Higgins & Cedar Face, 1998). Such efforts supported the tenets of the Carnegie Foundation's report, Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities, with its emphasis on inquiry, problem-solving, and linking communication skills to course work in a holistic fashion (Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates, 1998).

Other paths included the establishment of a lower-division, general education, course-integrated information literacy program (Sonntag & Ohr, 1996), professional development workshops targeted to discipline-based faculty members to integrate information literacy principles across the curriculum (Rockman, 2000), and a Web-based information literacy assessment tool (Rosen & Castro, 2002).

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, reports of activities such as reaching out to distant learners by including information literacy within the general education program (Wright, 2000), and increased focus on faculty partnerships (Raspa & Ward, 2000) were reported in the literature, bringing a renewed emphasis to these important topics.

All of these efforts recognized that for "on ground" and "online" students to acquire necessary information literacy skills, discipline-based faculty must be collaborative partners in the learning process across the curriculum, courses must be intellectually linked to each other whenever possible, information literacy skills must be reinforced and developed over time, and students must have built-in opportunities for success from freshman to senior levels.

RESTRUCTURED GENERAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS

With internal and external public pressures for students to graduate with skills commensurate with the academic rigor of a comprehensive program of study, universities in the last decade have sought to restructure their curricular offerings to bring them more in line with current societal needs, to attract and retain students, and to help students progress toward graduation with critical reading, writing, thinking, and speaking well developed. Such restructuring would integrate the cocurriculum with the undergraduate experience; emphasize information literacy as an active learning process; inspire intellectual desire in students; promote the importance of continuous lifelong learning; and document to accreditation agencies, professional associations, legislative bodies, and other entities that undergraduate students are graduating with skills, knowledge, and abilities viewed as valuable assets in the workplace, in graduate school, and in society at large.