Effectively integrating information literacy into courses and course assignments is key to developing students' competencies, and Goal One in LATOL's Strategic Plan calls for new information literacy competency assessment models and tools. This goal has been attained collaboratively with the leadership and faculty of the Freshmen Seminar Faculty Learning Community through their work in 2010-2011 in aligning the competency indicators with student learning goals, objectives and outcomes for the Seminars Program under the leadership of the College's Chief Assessment Officer.

The new general education curriculum created the Freshman Seminar course where information literacy skills are taught to students. This is currently the one course targeted for information literacy instruction and students' understanding of the skills are assessed. In the Junior Seminar course students are assessed and evaluated on mastery in all the six general education competencies, which includes information literacy competency.

Special Competency in Information Literacy  - Psych 101

One particular noteworthy integrated course assignment is the module developed for the Psych 101 course.  Developed as a partnership between psychology faculty and librarians, the assignment is now administered in all Psych 101 courses by the instructors themselves.  In some cases, the course also recieves a library instruction session - though not mandatory.  One of the challenges has been in retrieval of the assignments from the instructors at the semester conclusion, for the purposes of assessment and improvement of the module.  In fall of 2012, the librarians will be working with psychology faculty to make these documents available. 

The assignment is available for review in the attachments section below.

Image from the Integrative Knowledge Project, Dr. Melissa Peet, University of Michigan