Assessment

Without assessments, how can we accurately gauge students’ learning?  Proper assessments provide instructors with a means for determining the amount of learning/understanding that has taken place in a given course.  However, not any old assessment will do.  Oftentimes, assessments fall into the realm of multiple-choice or short answer/fill in the blank questions.  How can these show any evidence of understanding or transfer?  The use of assessments has to be carefully tailored to evince the desired outcomes of a course or unit. 

At the university where I work, we are attempting to implement the program-wide use of standardized rubrics so that we might be able to determine the level of student learning that takes place over the course of the entire curriculum.  Moreover, the use of these rubrics will create more consistency in grading as well as providing students with more concrete information as to what they are being graded on.  Additionally, the rubrics can serve as a starting point for discussions between instructor and student about individual assignments and course goals in general. 

Teaching about Information

Information is an abstraction and thus meaning has to be teased and formed from it.  The meaning underlying information “cannot be taught; it must be fashioned by the learner” (Wiggins & McTighe, p. 103).  Bruce gives us the seven faces of informed learning which “reveal different ways in which information is experienced” (p. 39).  More than that, they show us that each of us may experience information in different ways.  The seven faces then provide a common ground where teacher and student can instruct and learn, respectively, most efficiently.  Where we have standards that describe what an information literate individual might look like, Bruce’s seven faces of informed learning provides a means for reaching those standards.  This is important because as we have learned through our work with learning theories, individuals come to learn and understand in different ways; we each have our strengths and weaknesses when it comes to approaching and mastering information.  Therefore, through the seven faces, one can begin to recognize how a student might engage or respond to information presented.

Information Literacy

According to a 1999 National Research Council report, there is some misunderstanding as to the difference that exists between information literacy and information technology.  While there is, indeed, some overlap of the two, the former’s “focus [is] on content, communication, analysis, information searching, and evaluation; whereas information technology ‘fluency’ focuses on a deep understanding of technology and graduated, increasingly skilled use of it” (from Association of College & Research Libraries – Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education). Information literacy competency also augments the goal of higher education in promoting lifelong learners and increases students’ opportunities for self-directed learning.

ACLR outlines some standards for the information literate students that seem to be deficient in considering the needs of the students for that information.  The standards seem to treat all information seekers the same and seem to overlook the fact that information seeking can also be a personal, organic process.  The standards make information seeking sound cold and clinical, applying to information literacy a one size fits all set of descriptors.  A student may be information literate without ever having the opportunity to demonstrate proficiency of some of the outlined standards.   Yet, the need to assess information literacy drives the creation of these standards.  Education is about assessing learning, so there must be a method to quantify that learning.  Information literacy falls beneath that umbrella to join other areas of learning such as reading and writing.  Unfortunately, this seems like an area difficult to accurately assess as the true test of information literacy is the fulfillment of an information need.