From Small step to Giant Leap in Research Ability

Undergraduate students have access to enormous amounts of yet fail to understand how to locate and use effectively and ethically. This article describes a unique collaboration that embeds the five competencies in a specific course and delivers instruction in literacy from both the content faculty and the librarian. Embedding the competencies into the curriculum transforms a complex process into a series of small achievable steps and delivers instruction at the student's point of need, resulting in improved literacy. Introduction and Justification Today more than ever before is literally at our fingertips. Undergraduate students rely solely on the widely available and easily accessible on the Web for their research needs. A student researching obesity can go to a search engine such as Google and within 0.17 seconds link to 9,240,000 websites that discuss or mention the word obesity. While easy access to infinite sources of is seemingly the stuff of dreams, the reality of the age may be something more of a nightmare. Patricia Senn Breivik (2005), Chair of the National Forum on Literacy observes: As far back as 1982, futurist John Naisbitt presciently wrote, 'We are drowning in but starved for knowledge (p. 22). Undergraduate students fail to understand the basics of retrieval and use. Many students think that Google indexes the entire Web ... Most know nothing about the 'invisible Web' that includes research tools ... that index scholarly journals (Grassian, 2004, p. 24). Both faculty and librarians report that undergraduate students often use the Web indiscriminately. They copy and paste from all kinds of Web sites (Grassian, 2004, p. 25). digital age makes it easy for students to plagiarize (Sterngold, 2004, p. 16). Undergraduates do not know the differences between popular and scholarly publishing, and are unfamiliar with the peer review process. In addition, in the face of the worldwide Web explosion, librarians are finding it increasingly difficult to promote the value of authoritative library resources. The age is rapidly transforming into an crisis because students lack the understanding and tools with which to sift through the staggering amounts of available on the Web. To begin to address this significant problem the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) have developed Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education of(ACRL, 2004). These standards identify and describe what an literate individual needs to know and be able to do to function effectively in the age. Information literacy is a set of abilities requiring individuals to recognize when is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate and effectively use the information (ACRL, 2004, p. 2). The five Literacy Standards for Higher Education developed by the ACRL specifically address these abilities. The Literate student is able to determine the nature and extent of the needed (Standard One); access that effectively (Standard Two); evaluate and its sources critically (Standard Three); use effectively to accomplish a specific purpose (Standard Four); and use ethically and legally (Standard Five). Our understanding of literacy continues to evolve. Information literacy is best envisioned as a broader concept ... In this broader perspective, literacy is a kind of critical thinking ability ... a person who is literate specifically uses critical thinking to negotiate our information-overloaded existence (Breivik, 2005, p. 23). Currently, most competency instruction is provided by librarians in the form of single library instruction sessions or invitations to classes. …