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 most recently administered the
iSkills Assessment
as part of a grant project undertaken in the
2006-2007 academic year. During 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. A comparison of the
test results from both groups will be invaluable
in evaluating the current status of campus-wide
information fluency instruction.
During the 2007-2008
academic year and beyond, the Information
Fluency Program will continue to make use of
this fundamental assessment tool through the
LIB 100: Information
Fluency in the Digital World course.
