Evaluating information literacy

On the first full day of the Lifelong Learning conference in Yeppoon, Vivienne Bernath gave a presentation authored by her and Joyce Jenkin, from Monash University Library, Evaluation in curriculum development for information literacy: an Australian example using a Canadian questionnaire. They wanted to assess the skill levels of incoming students to a Health Sciences course. With permission, they adapted the multiple-choice questionnaire which was developed by Diane Mittermeyer and her colleagues and administered to incoming students at universities in Quebec, Canada. The adapted questionnaire retained a number of the same questions, but with some tweaking to make them suitable for Australian rather than Canadian students. The questionnaire targets different areas of information literacy with different questions e.g. some aim to reveal students knowledge about search strategy.

At Monash the questionnaire was administered at the start and finish of a module that included some information literacy education. The results of the first test were also fed back to students and used to lead into a session on scholarly information. This use of the results to help students reflect and understand seems to me a more valuable way of using tests like this than trying to draw too many conclusions about what the tests say about the students’ information literacy. In the paper of their talk, Vivienne and Joyce say that you have to be careful in interpreting results, as it is not certain that the questions are necessarily measuring what was intended “Terminology [used in the questionnaire], ambiguity, and a “librarian perspective” in setting questions and answers can affect the results while not discriminating between levels of information literacy”.

When comparing the pre and post tests, some students’ knowledge about scholarly literature and about acknowledging sources appeared to have improved in particular, but (as expected) it showed that understanding in all areas cannot be achieved by IL education embedded into one module. Apart from helping students to reflect on their IL, the tests were also useful in raising academics’ awareness of IL needs. The authors said that “Perhaps the most useful outcome of the present evaluation process has been its contribution to the review of IL in the curriculum of another course” where academics would otherwise make assumptions about students’ IL levels.

Monash University (2005) Evaluation of information literacy 2005. http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/reports/infolit-evaluation-2005/

Mittermeyer, D. and Quirion, D. (2003) Information literacy: study of incoming first year undergraduates in Quebec. http://crepuq.qc.ca/documents/bibl/formation/studies_Ang.pdf

Photo by Sheila Webber: Footsteps in the sand (mine) on Great Keppel Island, Queensland.