Gauging growth in undergraduate information literacy: A case study in library-faculty collaboration

Abstract

How do academic librarians and teaching faculty assess the impact we exert on students' capabilities as researchers? This paper describes the authors' unique six-week approach to incorporating library instruction into a research assignment for students in introductory Teacher Education and American Politics classes. We constructed a pre- and post- instruction survey that measured change in students' attitudes toward 1) their own level of information literacy, 2) their skills as researchers, and 3) the usefulness of the library's resources. The survey consisted of statements regarding students' attitudes toward the aforementioned categories, measuring agreement on a 6-point scale. We conducted this survey over three consecutive semesters (N = 208). We find that students began the project with high degrees of confidence in their own knowledge and abilities, but also increased their confidence in all categories. Moreover, the change between the pre- and post-project survey was statistically significant on all questions, as assessed by a difference of means test.