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Information Fluency Task Force Report: Standards

2001

Group members:
Stanley Campbell, Centre College-Moderator
Gary Lindquester, Rhodes College-Moderator
Robert Frizzell, Hendrix College
Eloise Hitchcock, University of the South
Jeff Overholtzer, Washington and Lee
Elise Friedland, Rollins
James Jennings, Hendrix
Debra Bagwell, Millsaps
Bruce Reinig, Trinity
Derek Rodriguez, Davidson (minutes)

Report submitted by: Derek Rodriguez, Systems Librarian, Davidson College

Stanley and Gary introduced the topic and suggested two objectives:

(1) we each share our experiences and the state of affairs with regard to IF on our campuses
(2) decide how ACS as a consortium can help the colleges.

1) Awareness of the issues regarding Information Fluency is present on each campus, however standards of competency or programmatic efforts are not existent yet.

Information fluency as a distinct skill set encompassing BI and IT skills has not yet been articulated on any of the campuses present, with the exception of W & L and Millsaps. W & L's Library and IT depts are cooperating on setting standards (see Barbara Brown's talk).
Millsaps College has a freshman orientation to the library and the campus computer system over the summer taught by library and IT personnel.
They have followups in the Fall.
They also currently do a survey of skills/knowledge in this course.

2) All libraries have bibliographic instruction (BI) programs in place that receive support from at least part of the faculty on each campus.

Different academic departments are involved at varying levels.
Some BI programs are part of the GEN-ED curriculum, others are taught in conjunction with academic classes in the disciplines.
"Learning is task oriented and BI programs are most effective in context." (Campbell)
Another way to put it is that BI works best at the point of need.
The library literature supports this thesis.

3) Academic Deans are typically in support of these activities.

Millsaps Dean is strong on increasing IT skills among student body.

4) Most Colleges have adequate infrastructure to support computing in the 90s.

Accessibility to technology is not an obstacle although "wired classrooms" are heavily scheduled and sometime hard to get.
All agreed ACS should pay attention to infrastructure when making recommendations.
[DAR: We didn't address the human resources issues but they are real too. Should be included in the audit.]

5) Lindquester, "These are the skills upon which a Liberal Arts Education is based."

General discussion on standards or guidelines:

1) We thought any ACS statement on standards should be entitled "guidelines" so as not to be "prescriptive."

They should be open to interpretation at each school. Brown: "Look to your mission statement."
Guidelines should enable collaboration among Library, IT, Faculty as well as among academic departments.

Guidelines and outcome measures.

An information literacy kit of examples or modules would help.
ACS should define guidelines, identify performance indicators or skills expected, devise examples for teaching, and deliver an assessment mechanism.
"The guidelines describe competencies and models illustrate success.""
Guidelines should be open so that Colleges could incorporate them into IF programs, the introductory curriculum, or higher level discipline specific courses.
There should be two levels of performance expectations: introductory and advanced, [DAR: Do we mean something like boolean logic on the OPAC vs. subject searching across discipline specific databases or basic spreadsheet skills vs. the ability to create data models in Excel for Advanced Biology courses?]

Guidelines should not be too fuzzy. They should be succinct and easily understood by administrators.

Bruce suggested that the TEK.XAM skill sets may be a good bulleted list to start with.
[DAR: At Davidson, we may position the TEK.XAM skill sets as a subset of IF skills, as the VFIC is very focused on technology. I think the fact that we see Information Fluency as encompassing traditional Information Literacy skills and IT skills came through in the closing session. Agreed?]

Also, ACRL has defined pretty good guidelines that we could draw from. [DAR: See below for links ]

Bullets might be:
Access
Evaluate
Assimilate
Organize
Present

Ground rules for standards were discussed. We should build into the guidelines:

* An understanding of the information architecture (Lindquester) in which we operate.

How do materials get published?
What is an index?
What is a controlled vocabulary?
What is peer review?
Who mounts these databases?
Who pays for them?

* Fundamental ability to use currently accepted tools is critical.

What ACS can do as a consortium:
We have two lists. The nine items we identified in the meeting and the four items Gary presented.

ACS can provide (Gary's points I think):

1) Guidelines for colleges to set local standards, performance indicators, tools to teach competencies (theory informing practice), and tools for assessment.

Principles should be more succinct than those in the preliminary document.
Guidelines would be models for best practices, not mandates.

2) The framework for the success of an IF program includes support at the Dean level and eager departments to provide model successes.

ACS can Define what Deans can do to support IF activities.

Why is this important?
How is it different that Information Literacy?
Why is collaboration across campus important?

3) Funding for IF fellowships and workshops.

[DAR: This came through as funding for pilot programs in the closing session.]

4) Facilitate collaboration among schools.

5) ACS Web site pulling together IF projects, papers, and statements.

Other sources for standards, outcomes, and programs:

[DAR: see the following web sites for other sources on this topic. IMHO we should build on these.]

National Information Literacy Initiaitive of ACRL (links to many other sources): http://www.ala.org/acrl/nili/resources.html

ACRL's Information Literacy Guidelines:Standards, Performance Indicators, and Measurable Outcomes: http://www.ala.org/acrl/ilstandardlo.html

NILI panel discussion of AAHE standards, closely paralleling our work: http://www.ala.org/acrl/nili/integrtg.html

Focus is generally library, but includes links to guidelines, performance indicators, measurable outcomes, and identifies a few sites with "best practices."

ACRL Immersion '00, University of Washington August 4-9, 2000:http://www.ala.org/acrl/nili/2000invitation.html

Workshop on developing best practices for Information Literacy programs. Library focused, yet technology infused.