Information literacy has become a growing priority and a new core competency for the University of San Diego (USD), where it is recognized as a student learning outcome spanning all disciplines and critical to the success of all USD graduates. Information literacy is also emphasized in the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) accreditation standards as a core competency that prepares students for future careers and life-long learning.
Therefore, in 2011, USD began core revision work for assessing students’ progress in this area. The first step consisted of assessing the baseline level of students’ information literacy skills. Subsequent pilot interventions sought faculty volunteers who worked closely with a librarian in an effort to demonstrate how various disciplines could incorporate information literacy into their courses. To raise faculty awareness of the need for information literacy training, these faculty-librarian teams assessed the strategies employed during the pilot stage.
In 2015, USD appended the Experiences with Information Literacy Topical Module to their NSSE administration. The module’s findings served two main purposes. First, they represented a baseline for how students perceived information literacy and responded to the institution’s prioritizing of information literacy. Second, the findings could be used to encourage faculty and staff across the institution to recognize the importance of focusing on this area. For example, one module finding was that many first-year students did not perceive that key information literacy outcomes or skills were embedded in their courses. USD considered this problematic, as students should be developing these skills in all of their courses.
As follow-up interventions, USD librarians developed a set of curricular offerings to help faculty and their students acquire information literacy skills; USD core curriculum faculty incorporated the teaching of information literacy skills into the historical inquiry requirement; and, specifically to address the development of these skills in the first year, USD hired a writing director to work closely with librarians to ensure information literacy becomes a core piece of the first-year experience.
USD is also working with faculty to explicitly deepen students’ awareness of the importance of gaining information literacy skills. For example, a faculty member in engineering identifies and describes information literacy skills to students as a part of the course and carves out time to articulate to students what to focus on to gain these skills by completing course assignments (e.g., research paper). When these connections are made explicit, students appear to be more engaged in the learning process. It is important to USD that faculty members as well as staff across the institution are involved—making increasing students’ skills truly an institutional effort.
USD plans to implement the Experiences with Information Literacy Topical Module again to monitor progress in student awareness since designating information literacy an institutional core value. These results will also be incorporated into future accreditation reports in the discussion of WSCUC’s five core competencies. The evidence gleaned from this NSSE module will strengthen USD’s goal to equip students with the knowledge and skills foundational to 21st-century higher education.
