Information Literacy Toolbox for Faculty  

Use this worksheet to document your research process as you are completing an assignment.

The Information Literacy program at Neumann University is run by the Library. It aims to teach students the critical thinking skills and ability to locate, retrieve, analyze and use information. In this academic setting, these are the skills needed to find, understand and appropriately use resources to complete papers, assignments, and other school work. However, these skills have a lifelong application and will be invaluable as students search for jobs and begin their professional careers.

ACRL Information Literacy Standards

The Library has an established relationship with the Freshman Writing Program and currently sees each ENG 101 and ENG 102 class once a semester. The following are examples of learning outcomes and methods that have been used in recent semesters in ENG 101 and ENG 102 classes.

While students have likely had at least one Information Literacy session by the time you have them in class, research skills need to be fostered and the resources are always changing. You might observe that particular research or writing skills are lacking in your students' assignments. The links below can be given as assignments in your classes to work on research skills that your students need to improve.

To assess students' proficiency in these skills, you can collect the exercises and provide grades and/or feedback to the students.

And remember, you can always contact a librarian to come to your class and conduct a session with your using one or more of these exercises!

We often make assumptions about students' information literacy and technology skills that are not true. The fact that our students are 'digital natives' does not mean that they are adept at every part of the online research process. The following are assumptions that many people make about college students:

• They understand what research is, and have successfully searched for supporting materials before
• They understand citing, and what the different 'parts' of a citation are (volume, issue, access date, etc)
• They know not to use Wikipedia as a source
• They know how to turn a topic into a thesis
• They have taken a book out of a library, or searched an online library catalog before
  

Have a question? Submit a question below and a librarian will email you a response!

Are you interested in having a librarian come to your classroom for an Information Literacy session? We work with all disciplines and all levels and would be happy to cater the session to your students' needs.

Please contact Maureen Williams, Coordinator of Information Literacy, at williamm@neumann.edu or ext. 5541 to schedule a session.