OK, I said I wasn’t going to blog CAL2005 to death, but I did take some notes during today’s first session on online information literacy instruction. See my notes after the jump.

In other news, my camera battery is inexplicably dead, so photos will have to wait until tomorrow.

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“Partnering for Success: Information Literacy and Program Assessment” by Judith Rice-Jones and Suzanne Byerley, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

Library Instruction ONline for Information Literacy (LiONiL); password protected. Contact Judith or Suzanne if you want a peek (they gave out the password at the presentation, but I wouldn’t feel right posting it here).

Faculty assumptions about what students know are frequently exaggerated; indeed, faculty often overestimate their own library skills, as they get so much of their information from their professional/social networks. Students take what the faculty say very literally.

Every year we talk about the importance of core skills, and the importance that students take the courses that give them these skills early in their degree program; in reality, students continue to put off these requirements, often taking these classes near the end of their career.

Presenters were surprised to find that this very basic tutorial was very useful for graduate instruction.

Recommends article “Information Literacy as a Liberal Art” (Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shelley K. Hughes, Educom Review Volume 31, Number 2, March/April 1996)

Tutorial: a never-ending project under constant construction.

Modular structure to the tutorial with post-tutorial quizzes for instant feedback to the student.

Tutorials include animated visualizations (Boolean Venn diagrams in motion!). Split-screen effect with EBSCOhost on the bottom of the screen and the instructional section at the top (neat!). Online pre- and post-tests used for assessment.

SPSS analysis of the pilot project indicated areas where students were having trouble, and even those areas where students were doing worse on the post-test than on the pre-test.

A small majority of students preferred the online format to in-class instruction: self-paced, 24-hour access. Those who preferred a live librarian appreciated the demonstrations and librarian’s ability to answer questions.

Recommends Friedman, “The World is Flat” if you doubt the importance of information literacy today.