Information Literacy Assessment

Part 1 - TILT

In 2004 this online IL tutorial was the gold standard.  It was interactive, educational, personalized (!) and filled with sound pedagogical techniques for online learning.  It was suggested and adopted before I started but I was happy to use it for the English 102 assessment. 

It was determined that the student would email me their quiz results and I will keep a log (a database I created) for managing this data. 

I was a nightmare.

Just a sneak peek

And the detailed results

The assessment was useless because:

We couldn't determine anything useful from the results 

• Students could take the quizzes as many times as needed to get at least 75%

• The results showed only a score - even the question that was missed and the correct and chosen (incorrect answer) would have been more meaningful
• It demonstrated only the most surface level of learning
• It was perceived as busywork by the students and faculty
• It had no direct relevance (still) to their coursework

What came next was more collaboration.  More meetings with English Department Faculty, many drafts and revisions and proposals before department meetings and finally, an assignment and a pilot semester. 

Some examples:

DRAFTProposal.doc

ProposalinBrief.doc

Part 2 - Annotated Bibliography

The new assignment is one that was cribbed together from several existing assessment assignments I found while researching other similar programs.

I crafted this assignment because it seemed to best meet our objectives and subsequent changes were requested by librarians or English Department Faculty.  It was a truly collaborative venture. 

AssignmentTemplate.doc

AssessmentReport.doc

The Annotated Bibliography Assignment

Introductory paragraph describing topic

5-8 Sources

Books, Scholarly Articles, (also Popular, Trade articles in some cases), Websites, and in some cases, Interviews

Sources must be cited in MLA citation style (unless otherwise specified by the instructor)

Annotations should include at least some of the following criteria:

(I refer to this as the CRAP test)

C - content, currency

R - relevance, reliability

A - authority, accuracy

P - purpose, point of view

An brief explanation of how the sources was located - what Database, what search terms.

Photocopies of the first page of the article and the title page of the book. 

 GradingSamples.doc

 Sample Annotations

Gieldgolt, Laura. “Brand Loyalty Opportunities Abound”. Advertising Age. 69.34 (1998),

    S8-S10. Academic Search Premier. Full Text. Dominican University, Rebecca Crown

    Lib., River Forest, IL. 26 March 2006.

 

 

This article discusses the different issues the market must address in order to advertise to Hispanic teenagers. Although the article is very short and a little dated, it still presents valuable information I can use in my research paper. Most likely written for a business audience, the author, Laura Giedgolt, uses an intermediate level vocabulary that makes it for anyone to read the article. It appears to me that the magazine in which the article was included is a magazine dedicated to those in the marketing business. I really like this article because it has a bold attitude and supports my topic fully. I can use this source to support my thesis very strongly.

Momson, Todd. “Body-Image Evaluation and Body-Image Among Adolescents: A Test of

Socio-cultural and Social Comparison Theories”. Adolescents. 39.155 (2004) pg. 571-592. Academic Search Premier. Full Text. Dominican University, Rebecca Crown Lib., River Forest, IL. 26 March 2006.

 

 

 

This article written by Todd Momson who is affiliated with the Department of Psychology of the National University of Ireland, Queens University in Ontario, Canada, and the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, provides a lengthy description of the studies conducted to test two theories on how adolescents view themselves and the reasons why they view themselves in the way they do. This article is written for older, highly educated audiences that can understand statistics and the correlation in between them. I believe this article was written with the purpose of informing. Momson presents very good information that can help me support my thesis very strongly. He presents two different theories on how teens develop the way they perceive themselves and others and this is exactly what my research paper topic is about. The article contains a great deal of information and I might have some trouble sorting it out, but the relevance of the article is crucial to my research.

Field, Alison E. "Media Influence on Self-Image: the Real Fashion Emergency." Healthy Weight Journal 14 (2000): 88. Academic Search Premier. Dominican University Library, Chicago. 14 Mar. 2006. Keyword: fashion and "eating disorders".

This is a brief but informative article on the influence of fashion magazines and the media have on young girls.  It focuses on the frequency of uses and how it directly affects young women’s weight control habits.  It contains many relevant statistics and facts.  The article is from a credible journal that was released in late 2000, so the information is fairly recent.  This article uses rather simple language, which could easily be understood by someone at the high school level.  The author, Alison E. Field is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and does research on the causes and consequences of overweight and disordered eating among children, adolescents, and adult women.  For these reasons I believe that her article is very credible.  I used Academic Search Premier to find this article using the key term “eating disorders”.  Many of the stats would be very useful in my paper but other than the statistics the article is not much use to me.  The information the article provides me with statistical proof of my thesis.

Thomsen, Steven R, J. Kelly McCoy, and Marleen Williams. “Internalizing the Impossible: Anorexic Outpatients’ Experiences With Women’s Beauty and Fashion Magazines.” Eating Disorders 9 (2001):

This article is one of the most informative articles I have read regarding my topic.  The article summarizes the study that took place and the outcome of the study.  28 outpatients at an eating-disorder treatment facility between the ages of 18-25 were interviewed regarding the use of fashion magazines and the influence the magazines had on their lives.  The article also gives a great deal of background information on fashion magazines and eating disorders.  This article is written at the university level.  I really enjoyed reading the personal quotes from the young women and I got an inside look into the minds of the girls that are influenced by the disorders like anorexia and bulimia.  The authors provide many references that I will look into further. I found this article using Academic Search Premier at Dominican.  When researching the credentials for the authors, I found nothing, however their cover page of the article indicates that the authors were from Brigham Young University.  Published in 2001, the article is fairly recent and I believe that it is up-to-date for this information.  This is also coming from a journal called Eating Disorders, which leads me to be that this article must be credible considering it is part of a journal completely devoted to eating disorders.