Cal Maritime's limited enrollment size and general curriculum structure provide a unique opportunity to ensure that all of its  students receive effective, uniform instruction related to core information fluency skills. To meet this goal, strong assessment practices are essential.

 

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the American Library Association (ALA) have identified a core set of skills and understandings that lead to efficient use of libraries and information resources as "Information Literacy".  The California  State University (CSU) has defined a similar concept as   "Information Competency" These two documents are used as a benchmark for all of our internal assessment practices. 

 

Currently, our Information Fluency Program uses the following methods of assessment:

¯Annual surveys designed to gauge the information fluency skills of incoming freshmen

¯Routine surveys used to gauge student and instructor perception of the existing program.

¯iSkills Literacy Assessment Exam (Previously the ICT)

 

iSkills Literacy Assessment:

 

The iSkills Assessment was developed and tested by the Educational Testing Service.  This innovative online exam uses real-time, interactive, scenario-based tasks to assess students’ computing and information-fluency skill sets.

 

The Cal Maritime Library has recently administered the iSkills Assessment as part of a grant project undertaken in the 2006-2007 academic year. At this time, iSkills was administered to 150 freshmen students prior to any instruction in the fall semester. The test was then administered to approximately 100 graduating seniors from all disciplines in the spring semester.  The results of this assessment will be compared to a sampling of senior-level students in all majors during the 2009-2010, with the intent of gaining longitudinal information on the development of information fluency skills among our students.

 

Since the 2007-2008 academic year, the Information Fluency Program has continued to make use of this fundamental assessment tool through the LIB 100: Information Fluency in the Digital World course.