For Dead Week, the Downtown Campus and Evansdale libraries will open at 9 a.m. Sunday and remain open until 10 p.m. Friday, Dec. 10.  They will be open from 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11.

For Finals Week, the Downtown Campus and Evansdale libraries will open at 9 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 12, and remain open until 10 p.m. Friday, Dec. 17.

For more information, check out the Libraries’ calendar: www.libraries.wvu.edu/hours

Carroll Wilkinson, Director of Instruction and Information Literacy for the WVU Libraries, expects a closer examination of what the Libraries’ students are learning about finding and using information following participation in the program. This will in turn help to enhance the academic experience throughout the University.

“Campuses that establish a good assessment plan, including learning outcomes that focus on information literacy, are able to measure learning and prepare for upcoming accreditation reviews. Assessment is a strategic leveraging tool,” Wilkinson said.

This month, Wilkinson attended a training session titled Rubric Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (RAILS), funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It is an offshoot of the larger Association of College and Research Libraries Assessment Immersion program, which Wilkinson also attended.

RAILS is based at Syracuse University School of Information Studies and led by Assistant Professor Megan Oakleaf. The three-year project seeks to measure information literacy skills of college students. It is designed to help librarians and academic faculty develop and test rubrics that evaluate student learning and information literacy.

“Previously, librarians have been relying on tests to assess student work and skills and not looking at their research papers and projects,” Oakleaf said. “There are limitations on what we can test, and students aren’t always motivated to really work hard on a test that doesn’t impact their grade.”

Wilkinson will use what she learned as she reviews work samples by about 100 students from introductory, discipline-specific, and graduate level courses. Part of the study’s overall goal is to normalize evaluation of student information literacy and establish rubrics to measure teaching effectiveness in libraries.

Her goal is to determine if students are valuing and using what they learn from librarians in library science classes and if what they learned is linked to the University’s mission to provide a challenging academic environment. To assistant in the process, Oakleaf will visit the WVU campus in the spring.

“What it will all boil down to is that this learning will help me identify best practices in information literacy education. Then we can link the Libraries’ educational program to the new strategic plan’s objective of insuring a more challenging academic environment at WVU,” Wilkinson said. “I definitely want to contribute to that and so do my colleagues.”

Dr. Tim Warner, a geology/geography professor, and Linda Blake, science librarian, were one of five teams to participate in the WVU Libraries’ Information Literacy Course Enhancement Program, a joint effort between the Libraries and the Provost’s Office, during the 2010 academic year. The program’s goal is to incorporate information literacy concepts into the curriculum.

Their results will appear in the Winter 2010 edition of Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship, an online journal published by the Association of College & Research Libraries, Science and Technology Section.

“People associate information literacy more with the humanities, where there is often a strong emphasis on term papers and writing,” Warner said. “I thought they’d be interested in how we’re doing it in a science class.”

Warner, who uses the Libraries heavily in his teaching, understands that students can often be overwhelmed by the flood of available information available online when they undertake a research project. He considers the ability to find quality materials a priority for students.

“It’s not like you can go to one or two places to find information and then you’re done,” Warner said. “There’s so many different sources. They vary so much in reliability and quality, and they can be in obscure places. That’s how a professional librarian helps me.”

The pair collaborated to provide students in his Introduction to Remote Sensing class with an understanding of how to evaluate scholarly literature, how to develop a more sophisticated approach when researching a topic, and how to avoid plagiarism. Warner dedicated two class sessions and two labs to the project.

In his teaching, Warner focused on assessing the reliability of materials. He explained the peer-review process and the role of publishing in a scholar’s career. He also touched on non-peer-reviewed material such as general Internet sources, the popular press, and gray literature.

Blake focused on the process of searching for information and explained that the Libraries maintain subscriptions to thousands of electronic journals indexed in hundreds of databases. Rather than using Google to scour the entire web, she directed them to the Libraries’ digital holdings. She also explained how to craft searches to net the best results.

“There are just so much information out there, and it’s not going to get less; it’s going to get more,” Blake said. “It’s largely uncontrolled on the Internet. That’s why it’s real important in the sciences to use library-funded sources to weed through it.”

The final piece was a lecture on plagiarism. Prior to the lesson, most students said they were aware of what constitutes plagiarism and were confident they were working within the rules. Afterwards, students said they will be more cautious when writing papers.

“Plagiarism is more complex than students realize,” Warner said. “Even professionals can get blasé. It’s easy to not think through something.”

Blake and Warner evaluated their efforts by surveying the class before and after sharing the information literacy curriculum.

Across the board, the comments were extremely positive, and almost all students expressed that they felt their information literacy skills had improved.

Warner and Blake saw a significant change in how students approach library resources. Students said they would previously go first to Google or Google Scholar. Now, the first place they go is the Libraries’ website. They will still use Google Scholar, but it will be a supplemental source.

Students’ enthusiasm about what they learned pleased Warner. He noted a student who said one of the research tools she discovered changed her life.

“She was obviously indulging in a little bit of hyperbole, but I think it shows that if you’ve been struggling and then see something that handles the concern so well, it really is life-changing,” Warner said.