Examining the Relationship between Faculty-Librarian Collaboration and First-Year Students’ Information Literacy Abilities

Abstract

Using surveys, interviews, and a rubric-based assessment of student research essays, the St. Mary's College of Maryland Assessment in Action team investigated the relationship between faculty-librarian collaboration in a First Year Seminar (FYS) course and students' demonstrated information literacy (IL) abilities. In gathering information on the experiences, attitudes, and behaviors of faculty, librarians, and first-year students, the project team uncovered additional questions about the integration of IL in the FYS, the ways in which faculty and librarians work towards educational goals, and just what should be expected from students in their first year of college.

Enhancing Information Literacy Using Bernard Lonergan's Generalized Empirical Method: A Three-year Case Study in a First Year Biology Course

“…Average grades for the quality and use of references in the formal lab reports increased by about 25% in each of semester. This contrasts with the findings of Douglas and Rabinowitz (2016), who reported no correlation between faculty-librarian collaboration and students' use of sources in research essay assignments. It is unclear how much of the improvement in scores was due to the librarian's intervention and how much was due to students simply improving with practice.…”

“…The majority of students entering college have little experience in finding, retrieving, understanding, evaluating, incorporating, and citing scholarly sources in their scientific research papers. One factor may be a lack of library instruction and research experience in high school (Head, 2013;Smith et al, 2013;Douglas & Rabinowitz, 2016). Even for those with prior instruction, transitioning from high school level assignments to college level research can be a formidable challenge (Bent, 2008;Warwick et al, 2009;Varlejs et al, 2014;Loesch, 2017).…”

“…Arp et al, 2006;Brasley, 2008;Douglas & Rabinowitz, 2016). The practice of having an embedded librarian working in partnership with teaching faculty has gained traction with the rapid expansion of digital information resources (Abrizah et al, 2016).…”

Documenting the Value of Librarians in the Classroom: Results from a Mixed-Methods Research Collaboration with Campus Partners

“…31 Philip Smith employed an IL test, rubric, focus groups and a survey, finding higher IL proficiency at the end of curriculum integration. 32 Conversely, Veronica Douglas and Celia Rabinowitz used surveys, interviews, and authentic rubric assessment to research the correlation between faculty-librarian collaboration and students' IL abilities. 33 They found none.…”

University Libraries and Its Role in Undergraduate Students Learning: The Challenge of Listening to All Voices

“…The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in the United States, as a division of ALA, has developed since 2013 a program called Assessment in Action (AiA) oriented towards evaluation processes on the different fields of action within a library. Because of this program, the ACRL has found a body of evidence from research showing results on the positive contributions of academic libraries in student learning [4], [5]. These approaches have been valuable to us because of the concrete evidence showing the impact of the library in the academic results of students, as well as for the methods designed and already used to build this type of evidence.…”