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Teaching information literacy to at-risk students.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Academic libraries play a pivotal role in the success of at-risk students by helping to develop their information literacy skills. This paper describes the experience at the University of Northern Colorado where librarians teamed with the campus program supporting at-risk students to tie a one-credit information literacy course to their freshmen English composition class. The team taught, hands-on course structure is described, along with a discussion of exercises and practical tips.

Introduction

The James A. Michener Library at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) offers a one-credit information literacy course structured to introduce freshman to an academic library and the variety of resources available for their research needs. Specific sections of the class are designated for at-risk students. The authors of this paper team taught two of these sections, the first in 2002 and the second in 2003. Based on the outcomes of the 2002 class, the course was restructured to better meet the needs of the at-risk students and, as a result, a laboratory approach to the class was developed.

'At-risk students' is a phrase broadly used in higher education to identify students who, for a variety of reasons, are less likely to succeed in the academic arena than their traditional counterparts. These individuals often lack the study skills, background knowledge, or self-management strategies to be successful (Weinstein 1994, 375). The National Center for Educational Statistics reported that in the fall of 2000 80% of public four year colleges provided remedial classes and programs to assist these students. (Parsad and Lewis 2003). UNC developed such a program within the academic support center for undergraduates known as the Center for Human Enrichment (CHE). In addition to offering tutoring, advising services, technology support, and workshops for all undergraduates, CHE has developed a curriculum for at-risk freshmen. Librarians at UNC worked closely with CHE to link Introduction to Undergraduate Research (LIB 150), the library's one-credit eight week course, with the CHE English classes. Students in the CHE sections of LIB 150 are required to create an annotated bibliography for the paper they are writing in their English composition class.

Information Literacy Course

LIB 150 meets twice a week for fifty minutes during the first eight weeks of the semester in the UNC Libraries' electronic classroom. The classroom contains twenty-five computer work stations and an instructor's demonstration station. Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

* formulate a logical plan to search for information, including development of a thesis statement and identifying appropriate search terms for their topic.

* use access tools to identify information sources, including searching the catalog and indexes using both keywords and controlled vocabulary terms.

* understand that information sources vary in content and format, which includes differences between popular and scholarly resources and the ability to evaluate the quality, relevance and appropriateness of sources.

* know how the collections of information sources in the UNC Libraries are physically organized and accessed, including the Library of Congress Classification system.

The course is designed to help students develop a familiarity with a...

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