A Baseline Information Literacy Assessment of Biology Students

Jessame E. Ferguson, Teresa Y. Neely, and Kathryn Sullivan

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The University of Maryland, Baltimore County Information Literacy Task Force developed a survey primarily based on the Association of College and Research Libraries Information Literacy Standards to gather baseline data about the skills of incoming students. Although multiple departments were involved, the biological sciences provided the highest number (151) of initial participants for the 51-item online survey. Findings indicate that the majority of students have some understanding of information literacy skills; however, a significant number were not familiar with important concepts such as search techniques, identifying print citations, how to determine bias or quality of sources, and correct citation behaviors when using research or copyrighted works. These data are being used to further develop an information literacy program that focuses on faculty development and targets areas where students lack the necessary skills for academic success and lifelong learning.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) Information Literacy Survey is based on the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (the Standards) and offers a model for future studies of this type.¹ The results of this survey can provide some interesting insight into the information literacy abilities and attitudes of incoming undergraduates in the biological sciences.

UMBC is an honors university located in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. corridor. A member of the University System of Maryland, UMBC has programmatic emphases in selected areas of sciences and engineering, mathematics, information and computer science, social sciences (particularly public policy studies), and the arts and humanities. UMBC is a diverse, medium-sized campus, with an undergraduate and graduate enrollment of approximately twelve thousand students. The administration and faculty endorse a philosophy that emphasizes an institution-wide commitment to student-centered learning.

In fall 2001, the UMBC Information Literacy Task Force was formed in the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery to address the need for a stronger approach to information literacy for the campus.² Although there was a bibliographic instruction program, including a three-credit elective course taught once a year entitled Methods and Materials of Research, little effort had been made to assess the information literacy skills of the student body or to increase awareness of the issues across the campus. The task force decided to investigate exactly how well the students fared with all aspects of the Standards, and endeavored to develop questions to assess as many performance indicators as possible.

In this article, a literature review looks at similar studies that specifically used the Standards to assess information literacy skills of college students. There is a description of the general method used for the study, select results of the survey arranged by the Standards, a summary of the results, and finally, the future directions to be taken to further develop information literacy skills and awareness on the UMBC campus.

Literature Review

There is evidence, published and unpublished, of information literacy survey assessment efforts prior to and since the adoption of the ACRL Standards in 2000. Overall, the majority of these efforts have not been based on the Standards.³ Consequently, a body of empirical research based on the Standards is almost nonexistent. A recent review of more than seventy information literacy and library research skills-based survey instruments, identified primarily via the Web, revealed that very few were developed based on the Standards.⁴ A review of the literature since 2000 shows some use of the Standards in evaluating the information literacy skills of students and for information literacy program development.⁵

At the ACRL 10th National Conference in Denver, Colorado, Gratch-Lindauer presented selected case studies that used the Standards.⁶ Of the thirteen cases reported, one was a dissertation that used only Standard II and one described the state of Washington’s Information Literacy Assessment Group.⁷ The others were institutionally based programs that did not generate research or survey instruments.

Researchers taking part in the Project for the Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (SAILS) at Kent State University have developed their own set of information literacy standards that resembles a mix of the Standards and the earlier American Association of School Librarians (AASL) standards.⁸ This project is an attempt to develop an instrument that is standardized, easily administered, and can be used to test information literacy skills–thus providing data on a national level. As of June 2004, Project SAILS had 126 items developed, tested, and in use, and most of the outcomes from the Standards have been covered. Similarly, the Bay Area Community Colleges Information Competency Assessment Project, a collaborative project among faculty librarians in the San Francisco Bay Area, has developed and field-tested an information competency assessment instrument that is based on specific performance outcomes, and is criterion referenced to national standards. The Bay Area Project’s purpose was to develop a challenge-out or credit-by-exam instrument that can be used at community colleges that have an information competency requirement. An executive summary that details the development and field testing of the instrument was made available in September 2003.⁹

In 2003, Mark and Boruff-Jones demonstrated that librarians can apply results of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) for the purpose of assessment.¹⁰ The authors assert that NSSE provides a useful but underused tool for measuring the degree to which information literacy is incorporated into the curriculum at a particular campus. Brown and Krumholz used the Standards as a guide in designing a survey and checklists to measure information literacy levels of students in an upper-level biology course.¹¹ A pre-instruction survey was given, followed by two instruction sessions. The survey was again administered at the end of the session and revealed a slight increase in some, but not all, of the information literacy skills addressed by the authors. In 2003, Costantino developed and conducted a survey based on Standard II, which deals specifically with search methods and information retrieval systems. The purpose of her study was to investigate whether the academic community perceived information literacy skills as important and whether these skills were being learned. Participants overwhelmingly agreed that information literacy skills are important, but faculty assumed students were learning these skills elsewhere, while students reported not knowing the skills or having been self-taught.¹² In 2001, Seamans used the Standards to develop interview questions to ask students about their use of information at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University for her dissertation.¹³

These findings show that there have been only a few attempts at developing an instrument based exclusively on the Standards to test the information literacy skills of college students. The UMBC Survey provides a model for future information literacy assessment using the Standards.

General Method

To determine baseline information literacy levels of incoming UMBC students (freshmen and transfer), the task force identified those academic departments with a history of working with the library as targets for the survey. In fall 2003, the survey was made available to five academic departments on the UMBC campus: biology, computer science and engineering, English, history, and psychology. Freshmen and transfer students enrolled in required, core and other courses were identified as the target population. A total of 427 individual students from the targeted courses logged in to take the survey, but only 424 began the survey and answered any questions. One hundred and fifty-one students who began the survey identified themselves as biology students. This group represented the largest number of students from a single department participating in the survey, likely the result of professors in the biology department who awarded extra credit to students who took the survey. The survey was automated using a Web interface and a Microsoft Access database was constructed to facilitate data collection and analysis.

Research Questions

In addition to specific outcomes within the Standards, the task force investigated a number of research questions, several of which fall within a particular standard. Select survey results and relevant findings will be discussed elsewhere in this article. Detailed findings and a discussion of research questions for the entire population can be found in the UMBC Information Literacy Survey–2003–Executive Summary.¹⁴

1. What are the attitudes of college- level students about Christina Doyle’s information literacy skills?¹⁵
2. Do students who self-report a high level of confidence with information literacy skills perform well when responding to questions that represent those skills?
3. To what extent do students tend to overestimate their information literacy ability levels?
4. To what extent are students able to identify the basic elements of a bibliographic citation?
5. To what extent are students aware of what constitutes plagiarism?
6. To what extent are students familiar with the concept of fair use?
7. To what extent are students familiar with the concept of copyright?
8. Do students who self-report a high level of confidence with computers perform well when responding to questions that represent information literacy skills?
9. To what extent do faculty encourage students to use the library?

Instrumentation

With the input of a representative group of faculty and other campus leaders, the Task Force developed a fifty-one item survey based on the Standards. The majority of the questions for the resulting survey were adapted from the Neely Test of Relevance, Evaluation, and Information Literacy Attitudes.¹⁶ Many of the questions had no right or wrong answers. Most were designed primarily to solicit student perceptions about information literacy skills and the use of information. The sections that make up the UMBC Survey are:

• Standard I–The information literate student determines the nature and extent of the information needed. The survey included questions about resource types and asked students to select those with which they were familiar. For example, one question contained a list of sources including some commonly used materials, such as magazine and journal articles, and some less commonly used, such as conference proceedings, dissertations, and manuscripts.
• Standard II–The information literate student accesses needed information effectively and efficiently. Questions in the survey investigated students’ ability to select appropriate resource tools, develop successful search strategies, and extract needed information from their results. For example, one survey question asked students to specify how frequently they use search strategies such as Boolean operators, truncation, and proximity operators.
• Standard III–Information literate students evaluate information and its sources critically and incorporate selected information into their knowledge base and value systems. The survey included questions about students’ capabilities in evaluating materials and selecting those most appropriate for a specific purpose. For example, one question asked students to specify how they select the best articles in a list of results from an article database.
• Standard IV–The information literate student uses information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose. The survey included questions about students’ abilities to synthesize collected information to produce a final product, such as a research paper. For example, a series of questions in the survey asked students to specify whether they have had the opportunity to present their research using various methods such as PowerPoint, visual projects, or personal Web pages.
• Standard V–The information literate student understands many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and accesses and uses information ethically and legally. Questions in the survey examined students’ views and understanding of copyright, plagiarism, and fair use. For example, one question offered specific writing scenarios (such as rewording someone else’s information and using it without giving credit to the author) and asked students to indicate whether they consider it plagiarism.
• Relationship with Faculty–A very important element of information literacy involves students’ relationships with their instructors. The survey contained a number of questions that investigate student and faculty relationships, including whether students are comfortable asking their instructors for assistance, and whether students have participated in directed research with a faculty member.
• Attitudinal–A number of questions on the survey gather information regarding students’ attitudes about doing research and the information literacy skills themselves. Students were asked to indicate their comfort levels in working with various types of resources, and seeking information from a variety of sources, such as the library homepage.
• Demographics–The survey gathered a great deal of demographic data regarding the participants. In addition to such basic demographic information as academic status, undergraduate major, and previous academic experience, the task force was able to obtain additional data from the UMBC student record system via myUMBC, the university’s portal, including gender, age, race, ethnic heritage, country of citizenship, and native language.

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