Integrated Information Literacy and Student Outcomes in Foundational First-Year Writing

Information literacy is becoming widely established as an assessed and reportable student learning outcome in higher education, yet it is often poorly integrated into the undergraduate curriculum at points where applied knowledge in particular is measured. The current study discusses a collaboration between a librarian and several English Studies faculty to integrate information literacy content more thoroughly into an undergraduate foundational writing course and to assess information literacy outcomes in student artifacts from a pilot group versus a control group using an information literacy rubric. The results indicate that significant gains occurred in all aspects of information literacy when these concepts were broadly integrated into course content and reinforced at multiple points in the course.