Information Literacy Best Practices

Do you have a classroom assignment that engages students in an imaginative or creative use of information? Join the discussion and post some of your activities or assignments. Here are some starters:

• Compare and contrast an event through time or by point of view using historical documents or primary resources
• Discuss the differences between and rationale for free and fee-based information, i.e. books, magazines, journals, www, government publications, film, interviews, newspapers
• Compare an event or topic through the flow of time in broadcast media, newspapers, magazines, journals, books, reference sources
• Identify types of knowledge products: scholarly, professional or popular
• Write an editorial that presents personal perspective on a contemporary issue
• Provide the rationale for decisions to keep or discard information for a research paper
• Explore statistics through examples of how they can change public opinion
• Explore a culture through the use of photographs or pictures
• Use a case study to describe it's importance to research in a broader context
• Follow a news story in several sources, i.e. New York Times and Palm Beach Post and compare the news content

Information Literacy Initiatives

Many colleges have information literacy outcomes written for individual courses. If you have a course with information literacy outcomes written, please post.

California State University, Fullerton

Rubrics for Information Literacy Assessment

Generic Assessment Rubric (PBCC)

Guidelines for Assignments

Guidelines for Assignments that Build Information Competence (PBCC)

Best Practices for Creating Effective Library Assignments (CSU, Long Beach)

Standards-Based Tools and Assignments

Check out the book Information Literacy Assessment: Standards-Based Tools and Assignments. Published by ALA in 2006 and written by Teresa Y. Neely, this is an excellent resource for incorporating outcome-based assessments into your assignments and teaching.