Assessment of Information Literacy Skill Using Writing Portfolios

Let me repeat my disclaimer that opinion here are my own and do not reflect those of NJIT or the management of the NJIT Library.





There has been much done in the area of information literacy defined as is the ability to recognize the extent and nature of an information need, then to locate, evaluate, and effectively use the needed information. Countless hours have been spent by librarians teaching students how to effectively use information resources available to them. Much research is done on how to assess information literacy skills of students. Let me describe the activities at NJIT as outlined in this paper by several my NJIT colleagues.





Direct Assessment of Information literacy using Writing Portfolios. By: Scharf, Davida; Elliot, Norbert; Huey, Heather A.; Briller, Vladimir; Joshi, Kamal. Journal of Academic Librarianship, Jul2007, Vol. 33 Issue 4, p462-477, 16p, 2 charts, 2 diagrams;



This Fall semester we taught every student of Humanities 101 3 lectures on how to use the information resources of the library. They were required to come outside of class. The students were required to maintain a portfolio of their writings for this course. After the class, the librarians examined the research paper to evaluate the students' information literacy skills. The five criteria that were evaluated:



1. Citation - the contents of the portfolio demonstrate that the students has cited sources so that the original source can be easily found.



2. Evidence of Independent Research - the portfolio includes evidence of research independent of sourcesindicated within the course syllabus



3. Appropriateness - the sources in this portfolio are apropriate to the topic the student addressed.



4. Integration - the sources cited in the portfolio have informed the course work. The researched work will demonstrate that the student has incorporated information in order to deepen critical thought.



5. Overall information literacy portfolio score. The contents of the portfolio demonstrate that the student has employed an information literacy framework.

For each of these 5 criterion the information literacy assessment skills are:

Very Strongly agree

Strongly Agree

Agree

Disagree

Strongly Disagree

Very Strongly Disagree

The portfolios are evaluated after the grades for the course have been submitted. At this point the scores evaluate the program. There are a few concerns of mine:

The evaluations are very subjective and often varied greatly between two librarians who graded the respective portfolios.

The students do not get feedback on their information literacy assessment. The standards for students in this freshman writing course should not be as high as those for upper classmen or graduate students. By not getting feedback on their portfolio assessment, student can not learn from their mistakes. They must know not to find all their information by searching Google. When searching a database, they must know not to just take the first retrieved reference that looks relevant. They must take the time to evaluate many retrieed references and pick the best ones that are appropriate for their paper.

I think it is also important for librarians not to impose themselves on students. We are there to help them, but not to overwhelm with minutiae that they will never need. We are not training our students to become librarians. We want them to know when and how to integrate information resources into their professional and personal lives.