Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

For almost 20 years, instruction librarians have relied on variations of two models, the CRAAP Test and SIFT, to teach students how to evaluate printed and web-based materials. Dramatic changes to the information ecosystem, however, present new challenges amid a flood of misinformation where algorithms lie beneath the surface of popular and library platforms collecting clicks and shaping content. When applied to increasingly connected networks, these existing evaluation heuristics have limited value. Drawing on our combined experience at community colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, and with Project Information Literacy (PIL), a national research institute studying college students’ information practices for the past decade, this paper presents a new evaluative approach for teaching students to see information as the agent, rather than themselves. Opportunities and strategies are identified for evaluating the veracity of sources, first as students, leveraging the expertise they bring with them into the classroom, and then as lifelong learners in search of information they can trust and rely on.

The people who developed the WASSAIL assessment tool have launched The Information Literacy Assessment & Advocacy Project (ILAAP). They have a multiple choice question bank mapped to the ACRL Standards and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy. You can use the questions freely under a Creative Commons lisence, or you can register and also get free access to the web based WASSAIL interface and reporting tool.

You will be expected to research information to write assignments. Knowledge of how to do this efficiently is essential.

Read the following statements and follow the action list below if you can't answer yes to all the questions.