Mellon Information Literacy Initiative Grant Activities by Year
Year One Activities | Year Two Activities | Year Three Activities
Faculty within each of the five departments met for three days during winter break in December to discuss among themselves what knowledge and skills students need to successfully major in their field at Carleton. On the third day they invited the Librarian Liaison for their department and the Head of Reference and Instruction to share the results of their discussions.
A Steering Committee was established including a faculty representative from each of the five departments, the Coordinator of the Learning and Teaching Center, the College Librarian, The Associate Director for Academic Computing, Director of the College Writing Program and the Head of Reference and Instruction.
Four of the five departments were awarded summer curricular grants to initiate changes in courses and class assignments based on needs identified in the previous December faculty retreats.
The five departments began to diverge in their approaches as the needs identified for each field differed.Classics faculty held a second retreat in the summer. They combined their interest in information literacy with their work in a Bush Writing Across the Curriculum grant to establish criteria for students to establish a writing portfolio of their work in the major.
In the spring the Economics faculty in conjunction with the Librarian Liaison and Academic Computing Coordinator for the Social Sciences surveyed graduating seniors with both a written survey and oral interviews. Newly declared majors were surveyed in the fall. These efforts were intended to establish a baseline of student perceptions of problem areas in the major. During the summer three faculty worked on changing assignments in specific courses to address the need faculty see for students to get more experience in finding suitable data to answer economics-related hypotheses.
The focus of the English faculty was to increase their understanding and use of computer technology, especially the Web, as a means of incorporating a greater variety of learning experiences for students. Two faculty attended workshops in using Dreamweaver software.
The Geology Department took a two pronged approach. Because there are few Geology courses required of all majors, one faculty member began work on a departmental web site that would provide appropriate background materials to which faculty in all Geology courses could refer students. During spring term and again in the fall term, two faculty worked with the Librarian Liaison to Geology to incorporate assignments that expanded opportunities for students to increase their information literacy skills.
The History Department met in a second retreat in the spring to further refine their goals for student majors. They revised the document listing the skills a student taking history courses should be expected to have and paid particular attention to 100 level courses. Various faculty worked closely with the Librarian Liaison to History to incorporate assignments into their 100 level courses that would increase student exposure to and practice in skills needed to accomplish the listed goals.
In the second year of the Mellon grant, departments were beginning to incorporate changes into courses. The Economics initiative also incorporated a grant from the Minnesota Private College Foundation to look at how students used the Economics journal database within the JSTOR collection. They reported on their findings at a regional Project JSTOR conference called Creating Partnerships, Creating Scholarship on October 19, 2001 at Plymouth MN.
Another effort at publicizing the work of the five departments was an informal panel discussion on February 12, 2002 held on campus entitled Information Literacy at Carleton as part of a Learning in a Digital World series sponsored by the Perlman Center for Learning and Teaching, the Information Technology Services department and the Laurence McKinley Gould Library.
Proposals for summer curricular grants are currently under consideration for projects that would build on the work already completed.
The Classics Department faculty will meet in Sept. and December to focus on the senior comprehensive project and how it relates to their desire to establish a portfolio requirement. Specifically they will look at implementing the portfolio requirement, how the comps process and the portfolio could most productively relate to each other and how information literacy is incorporated into the portfolio requirement.
The Economics Department will hold a department retreat during the summer of 2002 to focus on the new configuration of the two Principles of Economics classes. Principles of Macroeconomics is no longer a prerequisite for Principles of Microeconomics. The work of the retreat will be to coordinate course designs and information literacy assignments for the Principles courses. One assignment will likely focus on the use of ECONLIT, JSTOR and Social Sciences Citation Index while another will focus on teaching students the basic data sources for economics.
The English Department will be looking at the Library's Special Collections to locate texts that could be useful in English courses throughout the curriculum and to work with the Special Collections Librarian to create an online catalog of these to make their existence more known to faculty and students. The goal is to increase the English majors' ability to access and evaluate on-line materials as well as increase their familiarity with primary texts.
In Geology the Geochemistry of Natural Waters (GEOL 370) is being revised during spring break and is open to all levels of students, from freshmen to seniors this spring term, so the students' level of preparation for the class is varied. The course assignments will be revised and a pre-test and a post-test will be administered to students to see what level of information literacy skills they develop. The results of this testing will be used to revise the course this summer for next year.
The History Department faculty will hold a retreat to examine the information literacy components of assignments in their 200 level courses. Building on the retreat they held last year that examined the 100 level courses, this retreat will continue the process of ensuring that students are exposed to the skills they need when they reach the 395 courses in which they write a primary source research paper. Course syllabi and assignments for 200 level courses will be shared among department members. Input will be sought from students taking 395 and 298 level courses about the information literacy training they received in 200 level courses.
Year Three Activities (2002-2003):
After three years of work on our information literacy initiative, we see changes within the departments and their assignments, and there is a closer collaboration between many participating faculty and their liaison librarian. Faculty participating in their departmental retreats have commented on how valuable that time has been. Not only have they been able to focus on information literacy, they have thought and talked about their students and what they need as a liberal arts graduate in the discipline. The Mellon Steering Committee met in Fall 2003 to share information with one another and discuss plans for evaluation and assessment. As we entered into the assessment phase, there was a feeling that not only are the faculty much more attuned to the research experiences students need, but that we are all collaborating to meet those needs.
The Classics faculty incorporated exercises that they had developed in 2001 into the following courses: Classics 110, Greek/Latin 204, the other 200 and 300-level courses, and both History courses. They completed their information literacy grid in relation to their new senior comprehensive project process, which they plan to implement with newly declared majors in 2003. In addition, Stacy Beckwith, professor in the Hebrew Program and associated with Classical Languages, worked independently to incorporate information literacy into assignments for her Hebrew 100, 103, and 204 classes.
The Economics Department decided to expand on the information literacy project that was piloted in 2001. The faculty examined their syllabi, textbooks and assignments in preparation for their 2002 retreat. They focused on implementing information literacy assignments in to the microeconomics and macroeconomics classes, which reach around 400 students. The document Data Literacy in the Economics Major at Carleton College was updated as a result of the discussions at the retreat. A junior and senior information literacy survey was also administered.
Two English professors and the Special Collections librarian met and identified over 1200 items in the Special Collection as English or American literature. The liaison librarian imported these records in to EndNote to be developed as a database accessible to faculty and students. The goal is to generate awareness and use of the Special Collections and to underscore issues surrounding editions and texts.
The Geology department revised the Geochemistry of Natural Waters class was revised to include an information literacy assignment and pre- and post- tests. The department met with the liaison librarians to discuss future steps. New initiatives are planned, including the submission of an EndNote library with the senior comps projects. The liaison librarian will merge the comps libraries together and analyze the number and types of sources used in the comps papers. The department also discussed integrating library instruction further into their curriculum where appropriate.
History faculty and the liaison librarian gathered and discussed the 200-level courses. They analyzed current syllabi, assignments, and projects for current examples of information literacy components. One of their major concerns is the 298 class, the research methodology seminar. Since this varies with each professor who teaches it, they want to work toward some standardization, so that all students are exposed to certain ideas and research practices. In Winter 2003, the department and liaison library administered an information literacy survey of seniors.
The Library worked with faculty members to publicize the initiative this year. Members of Mellon departments and librarians talked with the campus community about disciplinary differences in information literacy at a panel sponsored by the Perlman Center for Learning and Teaching as part of the "Cutting Across: The Curriculum, the Basic Literacies, and the Big Ideas" series. Librarians worked with the Geology faculty to create a poster on information literacy strategies and assessments. The poster was presented at GSA in the Fall 2003. Liaison Librarians also continued to provide support for changes in curriculum by presenting information literacy sessions in classes and providing individual appointments for students. The library conducted a survey of first year students' information literacy in Fall 2002 and Fall 2003. The 2003 survey questions and results are available online.