What is Information Literacy?: A Short Answer

IL is more than "research training" to teach students how to locate, use, and document sources. Information-literate students understand the production of intellectual property in all media, print or electronic, including the history and rationale for conventions governing its making, owning, sharing, etc.  They also know how network-based search engines work, how scholars use them to explore expert bibliographic databases, and how scholars use what they learn from sources they find there, all of which enables the IL student to evaluate information that results from research and to use it properly.

• What do experienced print-taught readers take for granted about how expert knowledge is different from amateur knowledge?  How do those differences affect how printed expert knowledge is guarded from corruption and bought, sold, or shared?

• How has Internet technology altered the way this year's students will understand and use modern information technology and the information they locate using it?  What typical misunderstandings have students brought to class?  How does their preparation seem to be changing from year to year as each cohort's experiences differ?

• How can we teach IL in appropriate stages during English 103, 104, 105, 201, 203,  206, and 208?  Especially, what can typical freshmen be taught from the list of things they eventually will need to know, and when and by whom and how best can they be taught?  What should we leave to upper-division instruction and why?

        Click here for some observable differences between students who learn to read and write on paper, and our more recent students whose most common reading and writing take place on a digital monitor and a keyboard.