Assessing Information Literacy In Engineering: Integrating A College Wide Program With Abet Driven Assessment

Abstract

As part of a college-wide effort, the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College developed a curriculum-integrated information literacy plan, and adopted information literacy criteria drawn from ACRL standards and faculty input. A review of the plan with an eye to assessment as well as a revision of our ABET outcomes criteria and assessment plan led us to a second round of information literacy criteria development. We sought to integrate the information literacy assessment plan with the overall ABET assessment plan for engineering. This process enabled us to streamline our criteria and facilitated the development of a realistic and rigorous assessment plan. ABET outcomes criteria do not explicitly mention information literacy, but it is apparent that students cannot achieve many of the ABET outcomes without developing information literacy skills. Still, it is not common for these skills to be assessed as part of ABET outcomes assessment. Several mappings of information literacy criteria to ABET outcomes are available in previous work, connecting with several outcomes including lifelong learning, communication, and ethics. Because each institution develops their own set of outcomes, we did not simply adopt another's mapping but developed our own based on our understandings of our outcomes criteria. This paper describes our process in developing our information literacy criteria integrated with ABET standards and our ABET assessment process. We also share the emergent assessment criteria, expected measures of achievement based in student work, and our assessment plan which utilizes electronic portfolios, reviewed by a team that includes librarians and others skilled in assessing information literacy.

Assessing Information Literacy Skills Demonstrated in an Engineering Design Task

“…For example, Shuman et al (2005) assert that critical attributes of lifelong learning include the abilities to "demonstrate reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills; demonstrate an awareness of what needs to be learned; follow a learning plan; identify, retrieve and organize information; understand and remember new information; demonstrate critical thinking skills; and reflect on one's own understanding" (p. 49). Riley, Piccinino, Moriarty, and Jones (2009) mapped lifelong learning and several other ABET EC2000 criteria to the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (ACRL, 2000). Together, these studies emphasize that information skills are critical components of lifelong learning.…”

Information literacy of doctoral students in engineering and the librarian’s role

“…There are many lifelong learning attributes, such as to identify, retrieve and organize information; understand and remember new information; demonstrate critical thinking skills; etc. In their publications, Riley et al (2009) and Shuman et al (2005) emphasized that information skills are critical components of lifelong learning.…”

Information literacy and engineering design: Developing an integrated conceptual model

“…Rather than being relegated to a 'professional development' role, IL needs to be integrated into the fundamental problem solving process for engineers. Riley et al (2009) were the first to map the ACRL IL standards to the ABET accreditation criteria for undergraduate engineering programs. However, even they did not explicitly tie information activities to the design process for engineering.…”