Overview
Mission
Information literacy is essential in all disciplines. Acquiring information literacy skills positions students for academic, professional, and personal success. Woodbury University requires that all students demonstrate a certain level of information literacy at the time of graduation. The library offers several one- unit courses that provide a foundational mechanism through which students may begin to satisfy this requirement. Students only need to take one of these courses. When taken early in a student’s career, LSCI courses provide a strong benchmark foundation for information literacy skills. With continued instruction and practice in other GE and discipline courses, students will be prepared for the more complex and sophisticated applications of information literacy assessed in their majors at the capstone level.
Learning Outcomes
Program Learning Outcomes
By teaching LSCI courses, providing guest lectures, and conducting point-of-need instruction on an individual basis, Woodbury University Library faculty facilitate the achievement of the following learning outcomes, which are derived from the Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education established by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL):
• Demonstrate ability to use Woodbury Library resources which may include using the library’s online catalog and databases, locating items in the Woodbury Library’s collections, and utilizing student services offered through the library.
• Recognize and describe the processes that create information and how they impact the varying purposes and formats of information.
• Identify and differentiate between various information types which may include scholarly, popular, trade, primary, secondary, tertiary, qualitative, quantitative, editorial, opinion, etc.
• Assess and evaluate information (of any type) for credibility, accuracy, authority, context, quality and relevance to an information need.
• Articulate an information need through a process of definition, analysis, modification and revision.
• Develop effective strategies for locating information which may include evaluating and selecting appropriate search tools, selecting and revising keywords and search terms, and successfully analyzing and revising the search strategy relative to the information need.
• Recognize what constitutes plagiarism and successfully apply guidelines from a style manual to construct accurate bibliographic citations and avoid committing acts of academic dishonesty by engaging in scholarly discourse in an ethical way.
Assessment
Methods for assessing the level of mastery of the above learning outcomes include student self-assessments, peer-to-peer (student-to-student) critiques of assignments, and detailed feedback from professors on written assignments, tests/quizzes, presentations, and annotated bibliographies.
At the departmental level, within the context of periodic program review and interim review by the library instruction coordinator, a data-driven approach to evaluating the success of the library instruction program employs the analysis of student course evaluations, data related to student performance in LSCI courses, professors’ self-reflections, and faculty-peer teaching observations. The purpose of these efforts is to maintain the highest level of academic quality and to ensure that the program continues to meet the needs of the students it serves.