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Information Literacy Requirement

Require a unit on Information Literacy for graduation from all community colleges, covering how to find accurate, objective and timely printed, digital and online information.

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Submitted by Community Member 2 years ago

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Comments (12)

  1. Community Member

    Only if you make students who are on the traditional 4 year track take the same exact test.

    2 years ago
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  2. Community Member

    This should not be a requirement for the student to pass, but a segment in many courses presented in various disciplines from junior high school (at least) right through any form of college and graduate study.

    2 years ago
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  3. Community Member

    Many states have information literacy standards for K-12, but the teachers don't get around to including it in their teaching. Students, if they are coming right from high school, should have these skills, so essentially the states are dropping the ball here by not structuring info literacy into the curriculum. The only people needing information literacy classes at a community college should be nontraditional students. The fact that traditional students are coming to community colleges with none of the skills necessary to interact with information in a responsible way is a reflection of the fact that information literacy, like critical thinking skills, has not be recognized as a major component of a good education or made a priority.

    2 years ago
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  4. Community Member

    I agree with the person saying that it should not be a requirement for passing a course. It should, however be a part of the curriculum and it should start at the primary grade levels, running through any form of college.

    2 years ago
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  5. piotrows

    Info Literacy needs to incorporated into all levels of education. Instructors need to be information literate as well - unfortuantely, not all are!!

    2 years ago
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  6. Community Member

    Information literacy classes don't transfer, and students don't want to take a class that doesn't. I agree that information literacy should be embedded into other courses, and that students should come to us already information literature, but the sad truth is, they don't. In K-12 teachers are "teaching to the test," even though most of them hate it. School librarians and sometimes even libraries are the first to go when funding has to be cut. No one has the time/education to teach good information literacy skills. They expect it to come through osmosis. Besides, what does "information literacy" mean to the average citizen? Sadly, not much.

    2 years ago
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  7. Community Member

    Information literacy should be a credit class and should be incorporated in each class that is taught.

    2 years ago
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  8. Community Member

    If you want information literacy to be a requirement, community colleges need to hire a lot more librarians. If it's a credit class, I would imagine that the average CC would have to triple or quadruple the number of librarians it currently employs.

    2 years ago
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  9. Community Member

    This is an important issue, but it needs to be tackled through collaboration between library faculty and instructional/faculty. There are opportunities everywhere to build information literacy into the curriculum.

    2 years ago
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  10. redwass

    Integrating info literacy into courses is a good thing, for sure, but it seems almost inevitably to lead to a one-shot presentation by a librarian or a stand-alone tutorial. These are worthwhile but can't provide the depth that a dedicated info lit course can and which the topic deserves.

    2 years ago
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  11. Community Member

    Basic concepts of information literacy need to be identified, included in curriculum in an organized way, and assessed like any other area of instruction. It doesn’t matter who is teaching it -- at our institution, we have some English instructors who are covering information literacy in English classes and doing a great job, but it’s hit-or-miss. I have both a library degree and high school teacher certification, so I see both angles. Whoever teaches it, I think it should be embedded in the curriculum and not isolated as a specific class, unless a student wants in-depth knowledge. Basic learning theory shows that point-of-need-instruction is more successful for the majority of students than taking something out of context and teaching it in a one-size-fits-all session, which will be quickly forgotten.

    2 years ago
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  12. Community Member

    Working in a comprehensive, open-door community college, we enroll many students who are under-prepared for the rigors of college. In addition, the 21st century student arrives with techno-tools they believe have prepared them for research. But they are not. We should lobby for a graduation requirement in Information Studies by adding Information Literacy courses to the curriculum.

    As a CC librarian, I have been teaching a 'transferable' Information Literacy course. Unfortunately, administration is always reluctant to offer the course each semester, refuses to acknowledge the evidence which clearly shows its' importance to student success and has chosen not to add it to our Teaching/Learning Goals within our AQIP (Academic Quality Improvement Program)review.

    2 years ago
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