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Information literacy assessment: moving beyond computer literacy.

Article Excerpt
Information literacy is a concept that has evolved as a result of recent efforts to move technology-based instruction and research to a level above the long-held concepts previously associated with "computer literacy"; the focus of information literacy education being the development of students' abilities to construct/collect and analyze information in a way that provides the basis for effective decision making. In this study, the authors assess the information literacy levels of some 600 college students with results of the study indicating that students' information literacy achievement levels were modest at best only 40% of the students achieved a "passing" grade on the exam. Additional results show significant differences in achievement among the various groups of students with, for example, females scoring significantly higher than males on the exam.

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For business educators computer literacy has long been a topic of interest and research. The 1990's began a concentration of study that has continued for almost twenty years as researchers studied the impact of technology on both students' education and employment (Hignite, 1990; Brock, 1992; Hignite & Echternacht, 1992; Amini, 1993; Epstein, 1993; Hignite & Echternacht, 1994; Davis, 1997). More recently, researchers have returned to this area of study as the concept of technological literacy has continued to evolve with current research being focused on the changing nature of computer literacy (Banta & Howard, 2004; O'Connor, 2007). Some researchers now contend that the very concept of computer literacy has become dated and that the emphasis of current educational and research efforts should be shifted toward a focus on "information literacy" (Brown, Murphy & Nanny, 2003; Bartholomew, 2004; Sharkey, 2006; Klusek & Bornstein, 2006; Andretta, 2008).

While computer literacy was often focused primarily on technology based definitions, concepts and skills, information literacy is much more oriented toward a higher-level set of concepts and abilities. Information literacy is concerned with a student's ability to collect, analyze and utilize information gathered via the use of information technology and to use that information to make effective decisions. The question then becomes not whether a student can simply manipulate technology to complete a given task, but whether that student make good decisions from the information now at hand.

But how effectively do our current efforts convey these newly evolved information literacy concepts? Do students gain the necessary higher level skills associated with information literacy or are efforts still geared toward the more dated concepts associated with earlier computer literacy courses? Given the continued resources devoted to efforts designed to provide students with the appropriate technology knowledge, skills and abilities, and given the rapid evolution of such technology competency concepts, it would seem appropriate that a study focused on measuring student achievement in the area of information literacy would be highly appropriate.

The Study

The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) exam was recently designed to assess student mastery of newly evolved information literacy concepts. This exam is designed to go beyond a simple measure of a student's knowledge of facts, and is intended to assess a student's ability to collect, analyze and utilize information gathered via the use of information technology. As documented by the Education Testing Service (ETS), the goal of emerging technology literacy assessment efforts is to determine students "... ability to use digital technology, communication tools and networks appropriately to solve information problems in order to function in an information society. This includes the ability to use technology as a tool to research, organize, evaluate and communicate information, and the possession of a fundamental understanding of the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information" (Katz, 2008).

Utilizing the ICT as the assessment instrument, then, the primary product of this research is a basic assessment of current student information literacy performance. Additional statistical analyses are designed to reveal differences in student performance related to such factors as race and gender which could...

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