At Purdue University, librarians, instructional designers, and faculty members are working together to incorporate the concept of information literacy across the curriculum. In the past few years they have revised several key foundational courses, including “Elementary Statistical Methods” and “First-Year Composition,” in ways designed to better engage students. Sharon Weiner, a professor of library science, spoke with The Chronicle about Purdue’s efforts to bring information literacy into the classroom through its Impact program. (The name stands for Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation.) This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Q: What are some particularly effective methods of teaching information literacy?
A: The best ways to teach information literacy are in the context of a course or some other learning activity. If you do it in isolation, it becomes very skills-oriented. But if students are learning about something, and the instructor has the opportunity to insert better ways of finding information or evaluating information in that learning activity, it’s more likely to stay with the student and become a habit.
Q: At Purdue, librarians, IT staff, instructional designers, and faculty members have worked together to reimagine some foundational courses. How did those partnerships begin?
A: The partnership began about five years or so ago, when the provost’s office emphasized transforming large foundational courses at the university into courses where students would have a better likelihood of success. They used to be large lecture-hall courses. Now they’ve integrated a lot of active learning and success metrics into the teaching of those courses. When that initiative started, the librarians were at the table in the discussion, and we became partners in the transformation program, along with instructional-design people and information-technology people.
Q: What kind of information-literacy assignments are there?
A: A professor might have an assignment where students have to write a paper. Instead of just assigning the paper and expecting students to hand it in at the end of the course, there might be multiple stages throughout the semester. One thing they could do is, before the class, view a video about some resource that is important for them to know about to write their paper. And then during the class they discuss the pros and cons of that resource; they discuss how to search that resource effectively and what is missing from that resource that they could find elsewhere.
Q: What tips would you give to students or faculty members to identify fake or misleading information online, or to build up their information-literacy skills?
A: I would say work with experts in information, and work with them continually. Don’t just work with them one time and expect then to know everything about these resources. Librarians are the people who keep up with the information resources out there. It’s their job to know what’s available, and those things are changing all the time. Also, build up your own skill set in terms of how to evaluate information, how to find information, how to seek out everything that’s out there, because we know that what’s on Google is not the extent of all the information that’s available in the world. So challenge yourself to look beyond what’s easy to find.
Q: Students are used to getting information — and their movies and music — on demand, in small bites, when they want it. Do they have the patience to sort through and verify different sources of information like this?
A: Our studies show that they’re not doing that. It’s very likely that they’re not doing it because they don’t understand how to do it. I think there’s a time and a place for everything. But if they’re looking into something more seriously, like for their own personal financial or health decision making, or for their academic work, it’s good for them to understand that it may take a little more time and effort, but it’s going to be well worth their effort in the end.
Q: Is there anything you want to add?
A: People often view information literacy as something that they don’t have time for. But if they embed it within assignments that they already have, and work with an expert or librarian to help them embed it, it’s really not something extra or onerous. It’s something that enhances instruction.
Shannon Najmabadi writes about teaching, learning, the curriculum, and educational quality.
