A team at the University of California, Merced, collaborated to evaluate the value of integrating information literacy into introductory composition courses through a curriculum developed by librarians and writing faculty. Using a mixed-methods approach, the team investigated the impact of the curriculum on students' learning and achievement at the end of their first semester of college. Students participating in the curriculum demonstrated greater gains than their peers in using suitable sources and presenting arguments and multiple viewpoints with evidence. This learning did not translate to higher student achievement as represented by course grades and grade point average. IntroductionAs educators and librarians at a research university, we are eager to contribute to student learning, especially to students' information literacy and critical-thinking skills. Often those contributions have been limited to one-shot instruction sessions introducing students to basic research skills and strategies. An exciting collaboration between University of California (UC), Merced, librarians and faculty from the Merritt Writing Program (MWP) focused on a course-embedded approach to information literacy in introductory composition curriculum. This project and curriculum, called TRAIL (Teaching Research and Information Literacy), 1 meant that writing faculty introduced students to content about the research process and information literacy via activities, readings, tutorials, and reflections before students had in-person instruction with a librarian. Five writing faculty members piloted the first sections of TRAIL in spring 2014, and librarians, with a desire to evaluate the effectiveness of this courseembedded model, applied for the Association of College & Research Libraries' (ACRL) Assessment in Action (AiA) program.2 Upon acceptance, they formed a campus AiA team to assess the impact of this course-integrated writing and research curriculum on student learning and achievement. Team members included the MWP co-director, an MWP faculty member, and the Director of Institutional Assessment. In addition, the campus's Principal Research Analyst from Institutional Research and Decision Support doi:10.5860/crl.77.2.164 Assessing the Value of Course-Embedded Information Literacy 165consulted with the team. The assessment project exhibited some of action research's key characteristics, including collaboration with others, systematic planning with ongoing reflection, a focus on producing change, and a flexible and adaptable practice. 3 Research QuestionsAs the team considered how it might design an assessment that could determine the impact of this course-integrated model of library instruction (TRAIL) on students' learning and achievement, team members articulated research questions. Did TRAIL students who participated in Writing 10 sections with curriculum crafted around integrating the research process with the writing process express the knowledge, skills, and attitudes representative of developing student researchers? Did they ...

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The following article outlines the University of California-Merced Library’s unfolding news evaluation campaign,1 shares our strategies, and reflects on our efforts. The impetus for this campaign came when a colleague shared Vanessa Otero’s News Quality Chart, a graphic that places news sources on X and Y axes, representing quality and partisan bias.2 Otero’s work, combined with increasing public concern and conversation about the legitimacy of news, propelled my colleagues and I to start discussing how we might emphasize media literacy, especially news evaluation. We started our discussion just prior to the spring semester, and we launched our campaign a few weeks later. Though this meant limited time for planning, we wanted to capitalize on this opportunity to promote information literacy by initiating and participating in a broader campus conversation about news evaluation.

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