Wartburg College What do First-Year Students Know About Information Literacy and When Do They Know...

Wartburg College

What do First-Year Students Know About Information Literacy and

When Do They Know It?

IA/ACRL Panel, April 21, 2006

We Make Assumptions About First-Year Students

Is there data to support our perceptions on their level of preparation for college-level research?

Faculty give students’ Information Literacy skills too much or too little credit.

Need for Baseline Assessment of Entering Students’ Skills

Decided to administer a pre-test. Helps librarians and faculty make informed

decisions about info literacy lessons. Gained a snapshot of what incoming WB

students know (or don’t?!) about information literacy.

Practicalities

When to administer the test? Multiple choice format for scoring 290 tests. Faculty cooperation required. Assistance with test design & measurement. Administrative support via ILAC program. Started pre-testing in Fall 2000.

Two Parts to the Wartburg Information Literacy Pre-test

Demographic snapshot.

Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education questions.

Demographic Snapshot of Entering Class

Computer Background:– 2000: Do they own a computer?– 2005: How is time spent on the computer?

Use of sources: – Experts / Books / Magazines / Journals / Internet.

Information-related activities:– Papers / Speeches / Documentation / Research / Evaluation

Required use of bibliographies and footnotes.

New Demographic Questions

Added 2005 Male and female percentages. Did you attend an Iowa high school? If ‘yes,’ did you receive instruction from

the school library media specialist?

Information Literacy Competency Standards Quiz

Establish a baseline for future assessment. Questions based on ACRL’s Information

Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.

Matched selected standards to questions about info we felt incoming students should know.

Pre-test Demographic Results

Students more wired than we assumed.– 93% had access to a computer at home in 2000.

Searching for school or personal info outranks downloading or gaming in 2005.

Research choices favor online resources.– 73% start with the Internet. (rated 5 + 4) – 30% use scholarly journals last. (rated 1 + 2)

Demographic Results 2

Students DO: – write research papers, – give researched speeches, – include reference lists, and – search for personal information.

Yet, 1/3rd of them do NOT reject a piece of information because the source was unreliable.

Iowa-Specific Results 2/3rds of the students attended HS in Iowa. Of those, 38% received instruction from the

school library media specialist (2005). 61% said they did not.

– EN111 = 32% yes, 68% no.– EN112 = 41% yes, 58% no.

Did not ask if they “had” a media specialist in their Iowa HS.

Competency Standard Results

EN112 have a better grasp of research skills and terms (more AP exposure, etc.?).

English teachers will be depressed that ½ could not pick out a thesis statement. (22)

Where to start info search? (23)– 1/4th think any “book” is good.– 1/4th admit to starting on the Internet.

Competency Results 2

Good news on Boolean logic: 73% can recognize recommended search terms from choices. (25)

Narrowing terms (from too many hits) is a problem for 1/3rd. (24)– Out of the 2/3rds who get it, EN112 = 71%; EN111 = 49%.

Database selection for college research is problematic. (26)– Less than ½ chose the scholarly one from descriptions.

Competency Results 3

85% understand the concept of “help” screens (doesn’t measure if they USE them). (28)

Confusion about “scholarly” sources. (29)– Only 46% chose a research journal (EN112 again!)

– 41% chose a .com website (http://nochildleft.com) 83% know duplicating a CD is a copyright violation. (36) See question 38. OUCH!

– Is it plagiarism to use the outline of a paper found on the web…?

Competency Results 4 Citation recognition--poor. (40-41; 44-45)

– Less than half could identify a journal article.

– Only 21% could identify a portion of a book.

90% know that a book is found in an online catalog! (42)

Confusion about finding print journal articles:– 1/4th want to look in the online catalog. (39 & 43)

– 1/2 would look for a library-owned journal in the books or online.

Crunching the Numbers

It was a statistically significant sample.– 270 tests returned for a first-year class of 491

(55%)—2000.– 295 tests in 2005—518 first-year students (57%).

Significant differences between EN 111 and EN 112.– Divided by ACT English section score.

What We Learned About Test Design

2000: 3 of 15 questions had poor discrimination– Few got the correct answer regardless of ability.

– Poor correlation between item and test score vs. simple ignorance.

2005: No significant discrimination problems on pre-test.

Used the resources of Wartburg’s Assessment Center.

Where Pre-testing Led Our Information Literacy Program

Quizlet for second year to compare results. Ongoing modification to keep Information

Literacy relevant to curriculum Final assessments in departmental capstone

classes.

Summary

Work in partnership with faculty, not just a “librarian” thing.– Curriculum mapping.– Inservice to faculty on ILAC.– Use assessment tools to shape ILAC program design. – Assessment data for HLC evaluation and Gen. Ed

review. See Vogel Library Information Literacy web

pages (www.wartburg.edu/library/infolit)

My Personal Observations Pre-test results reveal students do not approach

information-seeking “strategically” on their own. State Library EBSCOhost database buy isn’t reaching

all students. In a Google world, students don’t understand the

differences between using it or other vetted resources. Expectations for HS students depend on the

information literacy of their teachers. Teaching librarians are the conduit for raising

expectations. This type of dialogue is crucial!!!