Overview

The Economics department outlined two ways in which the Mellon Information Literacy Grant was successful. It raised awareness of information literacy issues, which resulted in an alteration of assignments and courses to better meet the challenges of the information age and improve student facility with data and other information sources. The grant also, unexpectedly, served as a platform for wider curricular changes.

Activities Under the Grant

Information and data literacy are key components of the economics major. Perhaps this is no more evident than in the capstone experience of the Comprehensive Paper (or "comps").

Discussions of information literacy began with the comps process. The department participated in the following activities under the grant:

• Identified skills students needed before senior year to be successful in their independent research.
• Examined curriculum to determine when it would be appropriate to teach these skills.
• Revised or created assignments or shifted emphasis of courses to address information literacy goals.
• Created plans for annual department conversation about successes and failures in information literacy.

Outcomes

The department identified the following two suggestions as the most important they would give to other institutions considering information literacy initiatives:

• Engage in the information literacy discussions in a broad curricular context, working to make information literacy an organic part of course work rather than "tacking it on" as an additional objective.
• In order to increase the pace of change and to facilitate the identification of cross-departmental conceptions of information literacy, it is probably best to drive the initiative from the department level.

The importance of the reference librarian.
It is important that the reference librarians have a clear sense of what the department's goals are and how they see library assignments fitting in to the larger curricular aims. Increasingly, the availability of data on the Internet has reduced the role of reference librarians (for better and worse) in many of our assignments. As technological changes cause innovations in assignments and the way students complete them, it is even more important that the department and library staff are on the same page.

The ongoing nature of assessment.
As technology changes, old problems quickly disappear while new, unimaginable problems emerge. Efforts to address one problem can exacerbate other difficulties. Efforts to improve student facility with any one source may be wildly successful, but there is a need to continue assessment to see how this improvement is impacting other elements of informational literacy.

The importance of other departments in the discussion.
There is value of conversations between departments as they take on information issues in their own departments because oftentimes other departments have already created innovative means for handling the problems we face. Due to differences in disciplinary norms, there are times when another discipline is struggling enormously with a problem that is only just emerging in a different field.

The importance of full department involvement.
Information literacy cannot be taught in a three-week unit. The area is too broad and the learning too incremental for this approach. Furthermore, many information skills build on earlier skills. For information literacy gains to be realized, the department must commit itself to somewhat coordinated changes throughout the curriculum from introductory courses through advanced courses in the major.

Definition of Information Literacy

Information literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, present, and use existing knowledge to a) understand the existing knowledge, b) make a persuasive argument and/or c) create new knowledge.

Outline of Skills/Courses