Information Literacy in the Natural Sciences

Day 1-2: Information Literacy Overview

I. Definition

The term information literacy is discussed a lot in higher education. It has even been added as a requirement for accreditation. What does it really mean and why is it so important to the teaching and learning process?

II. Faculty/Librarian Collaboration

Classroom faculty and librarians are partners in this process. Alison Paglia and Annie Donahue, of the University of New Hampshire at Manchester, have written about how teachers and librarians can collaborate to help students achieve information literacy:

Faculty address the intersection between the core knowledge of the discipline and library research skills while the librarian focuses on the strategies and tools to conduct the research. Library research instruction linked to course curriculum has the potential to maximize relevancy by creating a learning opportunity that enhances both discipline-specific and library-specific skills.

Source: Paglia, A., & Donahue, A. (2003). Collaborating works: Integrating information literacy into the psychology curricula. Reference Services Review, 31(4), 320-328.

The classroom instructor provides information literacy instruction from the special vantage point of his or her subject knowledge. The librarian, though not necessarily familiar with a given subject, can help students choose research tools, form search strategies, evaluate sources, and more. Information literacy instruction, either in a WebTycho class or face-to-face, is enhanced by a three-way conversation among students, instructor, and librarian.

Accreditation

Evidence of information literacy integration into the curriculum is also a requirement of UMUC’s accreditation agency, Middle States Commission on Higher Education. The publication Characteristics of Excellence in Higher Education addresses these requirements in standards 11, 12, and 13.

III. Integration into the Curriculum

How is information literacy integrated into the curriculum of a natural sciences class? There are a variety of methods to employ, depending on your particular course requirements.

 Excellent sources to serve as guides in this process are:

1. The UMUC Information Literacy FAQ for Faculty provides a framework with undergraduate and graduate student information literacy objectives and student competencies. In addition, there are assignment suggestions for developing information literacy competency.  

2. The UMUC Library’s Information Literacy and Writing Assessment Project: Tutorial for Developing and Evaluating Assignments has definitions and useful information on developing objectives and designing assignments.
   
   
3. Information Literacy Standards for Science and Engineering/Technology drafted by the Association of College and Research Libraries Science and Technology Section’s Task Force on Information Literacy for Science and Technology. This group used the officially recognized definition of information literacy, Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, and geared the standards, performance indicators, and outcomes specifically to science and engineering/technology,  providing examples that could prove useful in developing information literacy learning outcomes and assignments for your own courses.

In addition, the UMUC librarians are also here as a resource to work with you on integrating information literacy into your courses. You can contact the UMUC Library via Ask a Librarian or by pho ne (301-985-7209 or 1-800-888-UMUC x7209). The UMUC Information and Library Services welcomes an opportunity to collaborate with you!

Conference: Information Literacy Overview

For the final deliverable in this course (days 7-10) you will either design a totally new assignment or revise an existing one in order to incorporate information literacy objectives. Keep in mind that, depending on the assignment, you may be addressing only one information literacy objective or a combination. There will be more instructions on this final deliverable as we progress.

This first activity will begin preparing you for the final deliverable. As you begin to think about it consider these aspects of the process:

• Learning outcomes (what your students should be able to do as a result of the learning experience)
• Curriculum (what do you want the student to know)
• Pedagogy (what learning activities will reinforce what is being learned)
• Assessment (how will you know the student has learned)
• Rubrics (what criteria will you use to determine at what level this has been learned) 

Source: Hansen, C. (2005, July). Improving student experience: Assessment-as-learning. Presentation at the Association of College and Research Libraries Institute for Information Literacy Immersion ’05, St. Petersburg, FL.

Discussion Topic:

Proceed to the Information Literacy Overview section in the Conferences area and post your responses to the following questions. It may be helpful to review UMUC information literacy skill requirements and School of Undergraduate Studies information literacy objectives before responding:

1. Which skill(s)/concept(s) do your students lack in the scientific research and writing process?
2. Which skill(s)/concept(s) do you find the most challenging to teach?
3. Describe an assignment you currently use that addresses one or more of these skills/objectives.
4. Identify one or more information literacy objectives that you want to incorporate into your final deliverable for this course. Why did you choose it?

Day 3-4: Library Resources

I. Introduction

Library databases provide citations to, and frequently the actual full-text of, articles, book chapters, and other materials. Although some of the UMUC Library databases include a mix of popular and scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed, there are many subject-specific databases that include only the scholarly literature of that particular discipline or subject area.

If you are relatively new to UMUC you may have used a database by the same name at another institution. However, the same subject databases may be produced by different vendors, which can alter the specific content as each database vendor has its own inclusion criteria, such as subject scope, journal quality, customer requests, journal availability, budget, etc. The Library also has to make vendor choices based on ease of use, budget, accessibility, subject scope, coverage dates, etc.

II. Choosing a Database

UMUC subscribes to more than 140 different databases on a variety of subjects. If you know the name of the database you can access it from the alphabetical listing available via the Articles and More: Library Databases (Figure 1.) of the UMUC Library and Information Services home page. If you are uncertain of which database to choose, you may want to consult the Guide to Physical and Life Sciences Resources, which also provides an annotated listing of relevant library databases and web sites geared to these subject areas. This guide is available from the UMUC Library and Information Services home page under the Find Articles, Books, More..: Search by Subject(Figure 2.). Click the image below to move to the page.

Figure 1.	Figure 2.

III. Critical Thinking Aspects

Critical thinking is an important aspect of information literacy. Critical thinking encompasses such activities as analyzing a case study, designing and testing a hypothesis, interpreting statistical data, and deciding which approach to use in a software program.

Critical thinking is also necessary in using library databases. With the plethora of database choices available, the critical user must make decisions based on subject content, scope, material type, scholarship of the included resources, and date coverage. Each UMUC database, available from the A to Z database listing or included in the various subject guides, provides an annotation describing the subject and date coverage as well as any relevant technical issues. Each database annotation also has a "more" link, which leads to additional information.

In addition, critical thinking is required in conducting the actual literature search. Determining search vocabulary, creating a search strategy, evaluating search results for relevancy and scholarship, locating the identified resources, and refining the search all require critical thinking skills. For additional assistance in helping your students to be able to locate scholarly publications, see Identify and Locate Scholarly Journals, a resource created by the UMUC Information and Library Services.

For example, the database General Science Abstracts includes the subjects of anthropology, astronomy, biology, botany, chemistry, computer science, earth science, environmental issues, mathematics, medicine and health, physics, and zoology. The content features citations and abstracts of American and British journals and magazines, including articles, biographical sketches, symposia, conferences, review articles, selected letters to the editor, special and supplementary journal issues, laboratory guides, and book reviews. The date coverage is 1984 to the present.  Although full-text is not directly available, the subject coverage is strong in the sciences, and Find It , which will be discussed in more detail later, provides linkage to available full-text via other UMUC databases or DocumentExpress, UMUc's document delivery service.

Compare this with the database Academic Search Premier. The subjects covered in this database include biological sciences, physics, economics, communications, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts and literature, medical sciences, ethnic studies, and women's studies. The content has citations, abstracts and full text articles from a large number of journals. The date coverage is 1965 – present.

Although Academic Search Premier (ASP) does include some science resources, has earlier coverage, and contains full-text articles, the sciences are not its main focus and therefore it may not contain as much useful science-specific information as General Science Abstracts. However, ASP is useful to locate quick results on a broad array of topics. This strength can be especially useful for the student who may not have a clear focus on his/her topic as the quick results may trigger an idea for a topic not considered before. Then, the more specific topic can be explored in General Science Abstracts or another science-related database that is more relevant to that particular topic. If the full-text is not available it can be requested using DocumentExpress. However, you will need to plan for enough time in your assignment schedule to allow students to identify and obtain articles.

IV. Review of Searching

For students, understanding how to search (section IV) and read a citation (section V) are some of the most difficult hurdles to overcome in the research process. These sections are included as a "refresher" and are available for you to use i n your courses.

1. Finding and Combining Search Terms

2. Keyword and Subject Searching

If you are unsure of the correct vocabulary for a particular database, try conducting a keyword search, sometimes also referred to as default.  A keyword search looks for the term anywhere in the record, which means the word could be included in the title, abstract, full-text or be the subject term. Although this type of search usually brings back too many records, many of which may prove to be totally unrelated, it may be the only option when a concept is so new that standardized vocabulary has not yet been developed. Think of this approach as the “fishing expedition.”

You are looking for the correct vocabulary, usually referred to as a subject or descriptor.  Once you locate the subject term the database is using you can use that term to narrow your search to find the resources that are focused on that specific subject. A subject/descriptor search looks only for results with the specified terms in the subject/descriptor field.  

For example, if we were to conduct a keyword search in the database General Science Abstracts using (fruit flies OR drosophila melanogaster ) AND genetics, we get back 1522 results that include these terms somewhere in the citation (Click next arrow to move to next picture).

However, after skimming the top few possibilities you discover that an article that looks like a possibility used the descriptor [subject term] drosophila—genetic research. You can click on the link to that term and now have narrowed your search to 322 results, which are more focused on this topic.

Now that you have a more focused search term, the descriptor, you can use the Advanced Search function in order to use the pull-down menu to select descriptor. If you want to combine this term with other terms in the search box, think of the hyphen as AND so that your subject search will now be drosophila AND genetic research. AND [whatever other terms you want to include].

Not only do you use critical thinking skills to evaluate the possible merit of the article (e.g., authorship, relevancy to the topic, depth of scholarship, currency), but also to determine whether the vocabulary used for that article may prove useful to find other related materials.

3. Thesauri

Some databases also include an online thesaurus, which provides a way of entering a possible search term to determine what term(s) the database uses for your suggested term. This is especially useful as a way of including related terms that you may not have considered.

4. Truncation

V. Database Citations: A Field Guide

The information-literate student can gain valuable knowledge about an article by examining its citation within a database. Looking at a citation, a student can begin to judge the article's usefulness for his or her research and evaluate the article's currency, credibility, etc.

Not every database presents citations in the same way, but the skills of reading a citation in one database are easily transferable to other databases and to other parts of the research process. For example, some databases do not give the author's institutional affiliation as part of a citation. But a student who knows that the author's affiliation is a key to evaluating the article's credibility will remember to look for the affiliation in the full-text of the article, since it was not available in the citation itself.

1. A Brief Citation

A student can learn a lot about an article simply from the brief citation that appears in the results list of a database search (Click next arrow to move to next picture).

2. A Detailed Record

By clicking on the article title in the brief citation, a detailed record appears that contains further useful information:

3. Caveat

The PURL or Persistant URL does not work in all databases as the ezproxy prefix, which is necessary for the Persistant URL to work, does not automatically appear in all databases. If it does not appear you will need to precede the URL with the following: http://ezproxy.umuc.edu/login?url=

4. Other Tips

Many databases allow you to establish your own user account so that you can save searches, and in some cases, depending on the database, your search results. Some databases also have an alert feature, which automatically emails you when new material has been added to the database based on your search criteria. Check the database HELP information to determine the availability of these features.

VI. Locating Full-Text

1. Full-text availability

Although more and more vendors are making full-text available electronically, not all potentially-valuable research materials may be available in this format. Some major vendors, such as Elsevier, one of the major publishers of scientific journals, will not allow full-text access to volumes/issues of certain journals for the most current six months or year. This is known as embargoing. Limiting your research to only those materials available in full-text may cause you to miss a critical piece of research. If you have identified possible articles of interest and there is no full-text available from that database, the next step is to determine if the full-text is available from another UMUC source. There are different ways to do this.

2. (Find It)

The first way to locate the full-text is to click on the  icon included with each result.  This will then open a new window specifying the location of the full-text and the links to access it. If the full-text is not available, you are provided with a link to request the material via Document Express. After logging onto Document Express with your last name and 14 digit barcode, you will be pleasantly surprised to find that the Document Express form has been automatically filled out for you and all you will then need to do is click on submit request.

3. Journal Finder

You can also enter the journal title using Journal Finder, located on the UMUC Library and Information Services home page from the Articles and More section: E-journals by Title (Figure 3.). From here you will be directed to either the full-text or Document Express. However, in this case the request form for Document Express will not be filled out and you will have to manually enter the necessary information. 

4. Document Express

Through Document Express (Figure 4.), the UMUC document delivery service, you can obtain research materials not available at UMUC. Journal article requests made through Document Express will be delivered to your desktop in full-text format usually within a week.  See the Document Express tutorial for more information on how to obtain materials not available at or from UMUC.

Figure 3.	Figure 4.

VI. Books

Books are still an important source of research. As a UMUC faculty member you have access to the book holdings for all University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions (USMAI) libraries. Use the library catalog, CatalogUSMAI (Figure 5.), to locate individual book titles or to search for books on a particular subject. The Find Print Books, Media and More: Using the Library Catalog guide will provide assistance in using CatalogUSMAI.

WorldCat, a catalog of library holdings throughout the world, is an excellent resource to search for books on a particular subject. WorldCat is accessible from the Articles and More: Library Databases section of the UMUC Library and Information Services home page (Figure 6.). Titles that are available at UMUC will have that designation. Books located via WorldCat and not available at UMUC or through USMAI may be requested using Document Express.

Figure 5.	Figure 6.

VII. Citing Sources

UMUC subscribes to Refworks, a citation management software. This product allows you to import references from the various databases as well as manually entering the information yourself in order to create your own database of references. In addition, you can export specific citations into your documents and create stand-alone bibliographies, with your references automatically formatted using one of the hundreds of citation style formats available. See the Refworks help for more information.

To assist your students in using correct citation methods see the UMUC Information and Library Services Citation Resources guide, which provides citation examples and links to other citation helps.

Summary

Here is a recap of what has been covered in this module and how it relates to information literacy.

Table 3. Locating the material

Catalog (USMAI)	locate books available within USMAI libraries
WorldCat	locate books not available from USMAI libraries
	automatic linker between journal citation and full-text article
Journal Finder	search box available on Library homepage to determine availability of journal title
DocumentExpress	service provided to obtain materials not available at UMUC (articles) or USMAI libraries (books)

Day 5-6: The "Free" Web

I. Introduction 

In the last section we discussed library resources, in particular library databases. There are now an increasing number of scholarly research materials also available on the World Wide Web, including those that are “born-digital,” such as government-issued publications. This module will focus on the freely-available aspect of the World Wide Web.

There is another part of the World Wide Web, often referred to as the deep Web, which is estimated to be 500 times larger than that of the free Web, that will not be discussed here. Web-based databases, such as those discussed in the previous section, are considered part of the deep Web. For more information on the deep Web, see the Internet Tutorial on the Deep Web created by the University Libraries, University at Albany, SUNY.

As you know, the various search engines “crawl” the free Web searching for Web sites and Web-based documents and publications, which they then index.When you query the Web, the search engine goes through the pages that are found and matches them to the search, ranking them according to relevancy determined by the criteria of that search engine.  Because each search engine has its own criteria for relevancy ranking, it is important to remind students to use more than one search engine when conducting research in order to be as comprehensive as possible.

The World Wide Web provides unprecedented access to a plethora of information. Locating targeted information and then separating the “wheat from the chaff” can be daunting. However, using more specialized search engines and evaluating the results based on established criteria will serve to make this process easier and more reliable.

II. Search Engines

1. General Search Engines

Google is probably the most popular of search engines. When you enter a search query into Google it searches by first matching all your keywords as a phrase. Then it measures the adjacency between keywords and the number of times the keywords appear on the page. There are also other variables involved. Page rank is decided by the number of hyperlinks pointing to it from other pages. The Google Help Center’s Web Search Features is an excellent source for search help with Google.

Yahoo! is another popular search engine and operates much like Google. Yahoo! also uses relevance ranking and has its own query analysis of the documents and linking it locates. See Yahoo! Search Basics for additional help.

2. Meta-search Engines

There are also various search engines, called meta-search engines, that allow you to enter a search term and then run a simultaneous search through various other search engines, compiling one listing of results. Meta- search engines also have their own mechanisms for searching and relevancy ranking results and the search engines they search vary according to meta-search engine. There are a variety of meta-search engines. Included here are two popular ones.

Dogpile meta-searches using the search engines Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask.com, About, MIVA, and LookSmart. Using its own technology, Dogpile will then remove duplicates and sort by its perceived relevancy. In addition, it will cluster results. For example, if you do a search on the term fruit flies, the results page includes a section entitled “Are you looking for?” with a series of subcategories. One of the subcategories for this search is Fruit Flies Genetics. If you click on this subcategory, you will be presented with a results list pertaining to this topic as well as a choice of even more specialized subcategories.

Clusty is a relatively new addition to meta-searching and follows the same patterns of searching and relevancy ranking, based on its own system. Clusty clusters the results according to various related categories, but goes an extra step and includes the number of results per subcategory. For example, if you once again enter fruit flies as your search term, your results will be automatically clustered by topic. One topic cluster result is Drosophila with 25 possibilities.

3. Subject-specific Search Engines

Depending on the subject matter, there are times when a more-targeted Web search may be necessary. Using those search engines that are geared to particular subject areas provides for a more focused Web search. There are many to choose from, but given the subject matter of this workshop, here are two that may prove to be especially useful.

Scirus is an award-winning science-specific search engine. According to its Web site Scirus “…is the most comprehensive science-specific search engine on the Internet. Driven by the latest search engine technology, Scirus searches over 250 million science-specific Web pages,…” (http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/aboutus/). The advisory board for this search engine is comprised of science scholars.

This search engine divides the results into journal articles and Web sites. It also provides additional term possibilities to further refine the search.  The articles received may not be available in full-text from this search engine. However, using the Journal Finder feature, you can enter the journal title and determine if full-text access is available from other UMUC online resources.

Firstgov, billed as the U. S. government’s official Web portal, is an excellent source for government information. Government agencies, as you know, are major producers of scientific information.  According to the Firstgov Web site “… you can search millions of Web pages from federal and state governments, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. Most of these pages are not available on commercial Web sites. FirstGov has the most comprehensive search of government anywhere on the Internet.” (http://www.firstgov.gov/About.shtml). For example, a search on the term fruit flies brought back results from the National Institutes of Health, the U. S. Department of Agriculture, the Human Genome Project, and other agencies.

4. Google Scholar

Google Scholar, currently in beta test, searches the free Web for scholarly resources. The content comes from those publishers who allow Web crawling. Google Scholar’s access to scientific literature is especially strong. However, unlike databases, Google Scholar does not do a good job of informing users of the indexed titles, disciplinary area coverage, and date coverage. The comprehensiveness of the coverage is also undetermined. In addition, there are questions about the number accuracy of the cited by sections.

Google Scholar has made it possible for universities to link their holdings to records located in Google Scholar. UMUC has chosen to provide this service. Note however, that only those articles available via the free Web are included and represent a small portion of the full-text articles available via UMUC database subscriptions.  You can limit by year using the advanced searching option, but the results are not arranged chronologically, even within the same year.

For assistance with finding full-text articles linked from Google Scholar to UMUC see the Tips for Searching Google Scholar via UMUC guide.

III. Search Techniques

Search engines have their own idiosyncrasies in searching. The HELP section is a good place to go to find out the specifics of searching for that search engine. However, here are few tips to help you along the way:

• The more terms you include the better targeted the search.
• Search engines automatically put AND between the terms so AND is not needed.
• Exact phrases should be entered with quotation marks around the phrase.
• Limiting by domain may exclude useful information. For example, although .com designates a commercial site, there are commercial sites which provide reliable research information.

IV. Evaluating Web Sites

As you know, there is no “gatekeeper” on the World Wide Web. Rich sources of scholarly research information and absolute junk can both be located when conducting a search because there is no automatic filtering system. However, through the use of critical thinking skills your students can be encouraged to critically evaluated Web results using such criteria as:

• Primary or secondary source
• Authority
• Purpose
• Scope and coverage
• Accuracy and reliability
• Currency
• Bias
• Relevance
• Usefulness

The Learn How to Evaluate Internet Sites guide, created by the UMUC Library and Information Services, is a useful source to consult in evaluating Web sites. It provides a checklist of evaluation criteria to consider in determining the validity of a Web site and using it is highly recommended!

Conference: The "Free" Web

Proceed to the Conference Area for this section and post your answer to the discussion topic.

Discussion Topic:

Do you encourage, discourage, or put an outright ban on the free Web in your research assignments? Why?

Day 7-10: Sample Assignments

I. Introduction

Integrating information literacy into your course can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Such simple tasks as locating one outside source to support a position in a class discussion or to further document an experiment and summarizing the readings and highlighting what the student understands to be important can serve as methods of integrating information literacy into your curriculum and meeting one or more of the information literacy objectives.

There are also more involved assignments that serve to meet the information literacy objectives in ways besides the traditional research paper. Four different types of assignments are included here as possible examples and each one can be adapted to meet your particular needs. Many more possibilities exist and both the UMUC Information and Library Services' Information Literacy and Writing Assessment Project: Tutorial for Developing and Evaluating Assignments and UMUC Virtual Academic Integrity Laboratory’s Preventing Plagiarism Resistant Assignments: Best Practices provide a wealth of additional ideas.

II. Digital Learning Materials

As you begin to create or revise assignments, and even create/revise course content, the inclusion of Digital Learning Materials (DLMs) should be considered as a method of augmenting the content and assignment.

1. Definition

2. DLM Locating Source: MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)

MERLOT is a peer-reviewed source for locating DLMs. MERLOT, the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching, provides access to a variety of DLMs in a variety of formats. Science and Technology is a category of DLMs within MERLOT. Within this broad category are more focused subcategories including general science, astronomy, biology, chemistry, and physics. You can browse the collection and its subcategories as well as search for specific types of materials in specific formats. 

The DLMS that are included here have been peer-reviewed by at least two higher education faculty members. The evaluation criteria they use consist of three ranking categories: quality of content, potential effectiveness as a teaching tool, and ease of use.  Each category has to receive at least a 3 out of possible 5 points. MERLOT also seeks contributions to its ever-growing collection from faculty members such as you.

3. DLM Locating Source: iLumina Digital Library

The iLumina Digital Library is a collection of DLMs is made available by the University of North Carolina-Wilmington through a National Science Foundation grant. Materials included here focus on the areas of chemistry, biology, computer science, mathematics, and physics. Like MERLOT it allows for both searching and browsing. There is no information, however, given as to a review process for the resources that are included.  Each entry provides authorship, description and link, and technical information and requirements.

4. DLMs and Information Literacy

The inclusion of DLMs into course content and assignments provides opportunities to further integrate information literacy objectives into your curriculum. The various tutorials, simulations, animations, etc. can be used to reinforce learning experiences and demonstrate concepts. Your students can even be tasked with locating, evaluating, and using DLMs to supplement the course content. 

For example, in MERLOT, under the Science and Technology category, is a simulation entitled Ideal Gas Law Simulation (See below). It has been given the highest ranking (5) and is classified for college general education use. Created by John Gelder, Department of Chemistry at Oklahoma State University, in February 2001, it was modified in August 2006.

Using simulation to explain concepts of gas law, this DLM also provides "guided inquiry activities." Using this DLM as part of an assignment reinforces all of the SUS Information Literacy Objectives. The simulation is used to answer a problem statement (the information need) through locating and observing (locating information) and then recording, interpreting, and drawing conclusions (using the information) based on this experience.

III. Wikipedia

As you know more and more students are turning to Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, which allows anyone to edit any entry, as an authoritative source for research. Although there is some excellent material included, the idea that anyone can post and edit articles and that no attribution is given for articles to determine credentials of the author(s) presents major issues in authenticity and reliability of the material. The following exercise provides an opportunity to demonstrate this first-hand to your students. Through this assignment you will be able to reinforce all of the School of Undergraduate Studies information literacy objectives through locating and accessing the information (#1 and #2); through evaluating the original entry for accuracy and determining what has merit in order to improve the entry (#3); using the information to complete and/or rectify inaccuracies (#4); and through the understanding of the ethical and legal use of information (#5).

For this assignment you can either pre-determine an article or, as part of the assignment, have your students identify an article, related to your subject area, that is incomplete or contains inaccuracies. Then, either as a class, study group, or individually have your students locate links and/or add text to this article to make it more complete and/or clear up inaccuracies.

Through this process the students get a better sense of the inconsistency of quality in Wikipedia as well as reinforce the understanding of scholarship, research, and writing.

IV. Research a Specific "Thing"

Although this example is chemistry-specific, it can be adapted to another subject area The purpose is to locate, evaluate and use information for a specific purpose, in this case pertaining to a hazardous substance.You can substitute a virus, a planet, a species, etc. This assignment meets all the School of Undergraduate Studies information literacy objectives.

Choose a hazardous substance, such as dioxin, selenium, aldrin, etc. Then have students, either individually or as part of a group, search for information on that substance and address one of the following topics in this process:

• The physiological effect of the substance
• The environmental effect of the substance
• Policy, laws, or regulations pertaining to the substance

This part of the assignment addresses the information literacy objective of "determines the nature and extent of the information needed. "

To locate resources the students can be required to search two or more databases such as Science Citation Index Expanded, GeoBase, ScienceDirect, and/or General Science Abstracts as well as searching for, evaluating and using authoritative Web sites. Through this process your students will have to demonstrate search techniques and strategies in developing the vocabulary, creating the search statement as well as critical thinking skills in choosing appropriate databases and Web sites, evaluating the resources, and selecting those which best answer the questions.

This aspect of the assignment pertains to the following information literacy objectives: accesses needed information effectively and efficiently; evaluates information and its sources critically; and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base.

Finally, the student can then post a citation, in correct citation style, for one resource, for either a journal article or Web site, which was located through his/her search. In addition, they can go a step further and post answers in a Conference to such questions about the resource as :

• In what database/search engine did you find the resource?
• What keywords/subjects did you use?
• Were you able to obtain the full-text of the article and print it out or email it to yourself?
  

This last section of the assignment pertains to #3, 4, and 5 of the SUS information literacy objectives:
" incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base"; "individually or as a group uses information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose;" and "understands many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and accesses and uses information ethically and legally."

If preferred, you can make this into two assignments, with one focused on using just the databases and the second on just the Web. If you use this approach the UMUC Library's Learn How to Evaluate Internet Sites guide can be incorporated into the assignment to serve as the Web site evaluation criteria. Your students can locate information about a particular hazardous substance using either pre-determined Web sites or, as part of the assignment, have the students locate the Web sites using various search engines.

Conference postings can address such questions as:

• Who are the authors of the Web site and what are their credentials?
• When was the Web site last updated and by whom?
• What types of research materials, articles, or studies are cited? Do they seem professional or scholarly, or of a more popular nature?
• Is there a particular bias or agenda visible? Is the Web site trying to sell you something?
• Would you use this Web site for your research. Why or why not?

V. Investigate a Claim

As you have no doubt encountered in your own research experiences, scientific claims and frontier research have been put forth that proved to be invalid. This exercise provides an opportunity to identify and dispute a specific example. Numbers 3 and 5 of the SUS information literacy objectives: "evaluates information and its sources critically" and "understands many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and accesses and uses information ethically and legally" can be met through this assignment.

The following example focuses on astronomy, but it is also adaptable to other subject areas.

For this assignment you can either assign or have the students, individually or as a small group, select a fantastic claim that has some relation to astronomy. This should be something that someone is seriously trying to claim is true. The Web provides a wealth of such claims and will be a good source to consult in locating such a claim.

The student can begin with a summary of the claim, explaining it in the author's own words. If possible, they should quote the author exactly. They will not alter or belittle the claim but instead try to state it in a way in which the author would approve.

The next step is an examination of the claim asking such questions as:

• Is the author's claim fully open to analysis, or is it somehow hidden or unclear.
• Could the claim be a simple mistake?
• Could the claim be a hoax? What would it take to create this hoax?
• Does the author of the claim have anything to gain if the claim becomes accepted? Money? Fame? Power? Attention? A good laugh?
• What do other critics, if any, say about this claim?
• What do you personally believe is the truth? Do you believe the claim? One of the explanations above? Something else? Why?

The various library databases will serve as the tool to research the particular claim. The results can either be written and then posted to the Assignments Folder or you can create a Conference in which the results can be posted and the other students and/or groups can post their responses.

VI. Annotated Bibliography

Understanding how to locate, evaluate, and synthesize research into an annotated bibliography can be used as a pre-cursor to a research paper or as a way of gathering information in order to better understand a topic. Assigning an annotated bibliography can be a useful way to incorporate all of the SUS information literacy objectives and provide your students with a better understanding of the types of resources available, how to locate a variety of resource types, how to evaluate the resources in meeting the focus of the topic as well as the parameters set, how to synthesize the information into an annotation, and how to correctly cite each annotation.

In creating this assignment the following are suggested parameters that you can set in order for the student to experience different aspects of research without having to create an in-depth final product.

• Specified number of references from the last five years to the present with specified number from the most current year
  
• Specified number of references from an earlier time period
• Specified combination of journal articles, books, and Web sites
• Specified number of peer-reviewed journal articles
• Specified number of different/same authors to be represented
• Specified minimum and maximum words allowed for each annotation.

The following are possible additional parameters, which pertain to the actual annotations. These are included as an exercise in critical thinking, another important aspect of information literacy. These suggested parameters are:

• Scope and main purpose of the work
• Importance of its contribution to that subject area
• Biases that are detected
• Intended audience and reading level
• Relationship to other works in that area of study, where appropriate
• Summary comments

For additional assistance on annotated bibliographies see the University of Maryland University Libraries' guide Preparing an Annotated Bibliography.

Summary

Final Deliverable

I. Introduction

The course content and assignments thus far have provided opportunities to understand what information literacy is and its importance for the success of your students as they proceed through their academic careers. The discussion and assignments for the Library Resources and "Free" Web modules gave you exposure to the various resources and how they can be integrated into your course content in order to reinforce the information literacy objectives. The sample assignments module contains a variety of assignment examples as suggestions of how you may want to design your assignment.