Information literacy instruction at King's College prepares students for independent, lifelong learning.

King's College Takes a Multitiered Approach to Information Literacy Assessment

King's College, a small, Catholic institution in northeastern Pennsylvania, has long recognized that information literacy is an important outcome of a liberal education. The college cultivates information literacy skills throughout the curriculum, and today King's is one of a growing number of colleges to develop assessments that reflect the changing demands of information literacy.

These changes have been spurred by the rapid evolution of library technologies and the wealth of information--not all of it trustworthy--now available on the Internet. But King's College also stresses that information literacy, though affected by technological developments, encompasses a more general set of transferable skills. As is made clear in a 2000 report by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, these skills--which include the ability to locate, evaluate, and effectively and ethically apply information--are cornerstones of lifelong learning.

King's College has adopted a multitiered assessment plan to prepare its graduates for such independent learning. By teaching and assessing information literacy throughout the core curriculum and in the major, the college seeks to ensure that students have both the general and the discipline-specific skills they will need to find and use information of all types.

Information Literacy in the Curriculum

Present efforts to cultivate information literacy at King's College can be traced back to 1984, when a series of conversations between faculty members and Vice President for Academic Affairs Donald Farmer culminated in the development of a new core curriculum. Central to this curriculum are what the college terms "the seven transferable skills of liberal learning": critical thinking, effective writing, effective oral communication, quantitative reasoning, technology competency, information literacy, and moral reasoning. While separate courses were deemed necessary for the initial development of the first four of these skills, the last three--including information literacy--are fostered throughout the curriculum.

King's College has experimented with various information literacy assessments in the years since the establishment of the new curriculum. Jean O'Brien, a professor of psychology who has been deeply involved in the college's assessment planning, notes that as early as the 1980s, King's administered pre- and post-tests for information literacy in two required courses. Later, the college introduced assessments based on the Texas Information Literacy Tutorial in a required first-year course. But such assessments, according to O'Brien, were never fully embraced by faculty, and the focus on single classes provided an inadequate picture of students' information literacy skills.

More recently, O'Brien says, King's College has refocused its efforts on "on assessing the transferable skills of liberal learning, including information literacy" by "emphasizing course-embedded, faculty-designed assessments to improve student learning, teaching strategies, and curriculum." Rather than relying on pre- and post-tests or on a single required course, the school's current Comprehensive Assessment Program stresses the development of transferable information skills, first within the core curriculum and then in the major. This program is complemented by a general information literacy survey based on ACRL standards, which is administered in four core courses and again in the senior year.

Students conduct research at the D. Leonard Corgan Library.

The Comprehensive Assessment Program

Four elements of the Comprehensive Assessment Program at King's College are particularly relevant to information literacy: the educational goals for the major, the competency growth plan for the major, the sophomore-junior diagnostic project, and the senior capstone course. Together, these elements constitute a coordinated approach to planning for, teaching, and assessing the achievement of "the seven transferable skills of liberal learning."

The first element of the program, the development of educational goals, brings faculty into the process of identifying and articulating how the transferable skills apply to their discipline. While the college expects every student to be able to find, assess, apply, and cite information from a variety of sources, departments can tailor their description of that goal according to the demands of the major. Sociology majors, for example, are expected to "be able to make effective use of sociological research literature by proficiently locating, selecting, critiquing, and integrating this literature as it applies to a given project or concern," whereas biology majors are expected to have similar facility with "the varieties of published sources of biological and other scientific information."

More significant faculty planning is involved in the second element of the program, the development of competency growth plans. In framing these four-year plans, faculty map out how students will transfer skills from the core curriculum into the major and then design pedagogical strategies and assessment criteria to ensure cumulative student growth. As a result of such work, the college is able to provide students with what Donald Farmer referred to as "a plan for learning rather than a smorgasbord of courses."

The first assessment of information literacy in the major occurs in the sophomore-junior diagnostic project. This diagnostic allows faculty to evaluate how students transfer skills as they move from the core curriculum into the major. At the same time, it introduces students to the demands of their discipline. In the history department, for instance, students complete a major research project that requires the sophisticated use of information from a range of sources. In the course of writing a twelve- to fifteen-page research paper, students draft a prospectus; compile an annotated bibliography containing tertiary, secondary, and primary sources; produce several drafts of a paper that integrates their research; and defend their findings before the class in an oral presentation.

The fourth element in the assessment program, the capstone seminar, provides a final opportunity for faculty to assess student achievement of key liberal learning outcomes. In addition to providing a picture of student progress, the capstone projects allow faculty to reflect on shortcomings in student performances. And as Biology Professor Robert Paoletti reports, these reflections can yield real curricular change. In the biology department, Paoletti notes, faculty found that many students were unable to adequately analyze primary literature in preparation for the culminating projects; as a result, they decided to add a new research component to all classes in the major.

Faculty Involvement

One striking feature of the assessment program at King's college is its emphasis on the role of the faculty. By allowing faculty to design their own assessments, as Jean O'Brien points out, the school encourages a sense of "faculty ownership" in the program. At the same time, by requiring individual departments to plan for and assess information literacy, the college encourages continuity between classes and empowers departments to make curricular and pedagogical changes in accordance with the needs of their students.

Brian Pavlac, a history professor who headed King's Information Literacy Project Team, notes that the most significant challenges faced by the program also hinge on the involvement of faculty. For faculty even "to think of skill-building explicitly" while they are focused on teaching content can require a significant effort, he says. The biggest challenge for the college, according to Pavlac, is learning how to "help busy professors find the time and energy to develop new aspects of instruction."

Pavlac and O'Brien both cite faculty development opportunities and collaboration between the faculty and the library as ways to ensure the continued strength of the information literacy component of the Comprehensive Assessment Program. They recommend a combination of incentives and support for faculty: even small grants can provide time for professors to develop new pedagogies and review existing practices; library workshops can help faculty stay on top of developments in information technology; and library visits by classes can enrich student learning while also assisting faculty with information literacy instruction. Such support helps faculty respond to changes in information literacy and, in the end, may be the key to sustaining an assessment program that is driven largely by faculty innovation.

Further information about the Comprehensive Assessment Program is available on the King's College Web site. For more on information literacy, download the 2000 ACRL report Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.

AAC&U also has many assessment resources available online. The Association's recently released board statement, Our Students' Best Work: A Framework for Accountability Worthy of Our Mission, specifically addresses assessment plans that improve student learning, capstone learning experiences, and integrative assessment opportunities.