Member Sharing Session presentation delivered at the 2007 BBSLG Conference hosted by the University of Northampton, 27-29 June

1. Assessing information literacy
skills within a core module
at the University of Teesside
Presented by
Yvonne Cotton
Carol Dell-Price

2. University of Teesside
•Located in the North East
•20 000 students
•POPE – Providing Opportunity,
Pursuing Excellence

3. Business School & Library and
Information Services (L&IS)
•c.200 first year undergraduates
•c.100 post graduates
•Supported by L&IS Business
Information Team (2 members of staff)

4. Learning and Teaching
Business Information Team regularly
teach on both undergraduate and post
graduate programmes – offering:
–basic induction sessions
–advanced literature searching
–individual tutorials
–drop in sessions

5. Professional Development and
Employability (PDE)
•Core module delivered to all 1st year
undergraduates
•Developed 2 years ago in order to
equip first years with key skills e.g. IT,
numeracy, group working, research
methods

6. L&IS Input
We deliver 3 sessions on this module
which include the following:
•How to search the catalogue
•Understanding databases
•Citing and referencing techniques

7. Assessment
•Asked by module leader to provide
some way of testing knowledge
acquired from library sessions
•Previous similar task set by School was
unsuccessful

8. Why assess?
•Opportunity to teach some literature
searching skills and embed them into 1st
year programme
•Most students are assessment driven
so improves attendance figures (previous
years pretty hit and miss)

9. The task
Students are asked to select a search topic of
their own choice:
Then, using a template:
•Provide evidence of searching the catalogue
and online databases for relevant materials
•Produce a bibliography of 4 books and 4
journal articles using Harvard referencing
style
• Write a short reflection of the process

10. A few figures
•137 attended out of a possible 170
(79%)
•154 submitted
•129 passed (84%)
•25 failed (16%)
•35 didn’t attend sessions and 8 of
those failed (78%pass/22%fail)

11. What did we learn?
•Marking takes 3 times as long as you
expect !
•Repeat, repeat, and repeat again what
you want the learner to do as most don’t
pay enough attention to marking criteria
or instructions

12. What else did we learn?
•In the age of the internet students do not
understand the difference between a
catalogue search and searching full text
documents
•Students found it difficult to apply any quality
control when viewing results
•They expected searches to produce fewer
and more relevant results very quickly

13. Feedback (what did they say!)
•Feedback forms were handed out after
they had submitted but before they had
received their marks
•Most students felt they could now carry
out competent searches of our online
databases and the library catalogue

14. More of what they said
•They liked the use of templates
•Found the idea of using different
keywords very useful
•Timing was important – many would
have liked the assignment to be earlier
in the academic year

15. Programme Evaluation
•Most useful element of the module
•Academic staff wish to retain it as
integral part of programme
•Already planned to be first task of 2007

16. Further information
•Carol Dell-Price
•Subject Information Team Leader
•carol.dell-price@tees.ac.uk
•Yvonne Cotton
•Senior Information Officer
•y.cotton@tees.ac.uk