It is often impossible to assess information literacy skills

Assessment of information literacy is important for accreditation reports. But very often it is just impossible to do. Yesterday I gave a seminar to new chemistry graduate students. I gave my standard lecture where I describe the organization of the technical literature and point out the resources offered by the NJIT library. I concluded by demonstrating sample searches in Scifinder Scholar and Scopus and showing how they can retrieve the full-text of the references found to be relevant.

I stated the skills need to search and evaluate information need to be developed over a period of time. The students could not become proficient by just listening to a one hour lecture. I suggested they practice searching the databases before they actually need them for a research question. As my lecture ended a student approached me since he was having a minor problem establishing his Scifinder Scholar account. About an hour later he approached me at the reference desk and asked for my Powerpoint presentation. I just love the “eager beavers”.

I will not be able to test these students on the skills in my lecture. I will never be able to observe their using the databases. Hopefully, some of them will approach me for assistance in the future when they want to hone their skills. Thus, information literacy assessment in this case is just impossible.