To get down to brass tacks: students engage most deeply with information literacy when they undertake research assignments that require them to find, evaluate, and synthesize information sources that are external to the course.
The SLOs themselves are arranged in stages that we commonly engage with early on in the research process:
When a student must develop a scoped, substantive topic to investigate further and identify context surrounding that topic, they are
1. Identifying an information need.
When the student has to search for sources using keywords identified from the topic, and incorporating these in search strategies in a variety of tools, they are
2. Accessing needed information.
When the student evaluates sources they consider using in their work with respect to currency of publication, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose of the sources, they are
3. Evaluating information sources critically.
When the student then uses their selected sources strategically in their work, presumably citing the sources, they are
4. Using information ethically and effectively to accomplish a specific purpose.
Bonus:
- It is likely that you can easily align your already-created research-related tasks with these five SLOs. Students at this level need guidance, so highly-structured research task are a best practice.
- Even a brief annotated bibliography assignment with a few detailed source requirements hits each of the SLOs. Sample attached.
- The SLOs listed above can also be broken into individual brief low-stakes activities.
- Whatever IL actvities you use, AAC&U provides an IL Rubric that can help you to know what it looks like when students accomplish each SLO and a means of evaluating performance.
The effectiveness of an Annotated Bibliography (AB) assignment hinges on the requirements, and often the source types, that you incorporate in its design.
- First years need to practice topic development: The AB can introduce students to new ways of interrogating ideas on a scoped topic.
- First years need familiarity with a variety of source types: The AB can help students categorize different types and formats of sources that they were not exposed to in high school.
- First years need to practice critical evaluation of information: The AB can ask students to use a provided criteria to identify the most effective sources and explain how they are effective.
- The AB can help to familiarze students with tools and sources that go beyond the tip of the iceberg; students can gain familiarity with information tools beyond the Google products they've used throughout high school.
- It can introduce or reinforce the intellectual practice of incorporating and citing sources, and academic integrity concepts.