Information Literacy Core Curriculum Course Development

These scaffolding ideas can help you design activities and assessments that build students' information literacy skills. Each stage includes assignment ideas and the related learning outcomes, making it easier to integrate these concepts into your course.

Topic selection

Possible assignments:

• Topic proposal
• Research question development

Related learning outcome: IL 1

Preliminary research

Possible assignments:

• Concept map
• Identify contextual information
• Refine broad topic
• Revise initial proposal, thesis, or research question

Related learning outcomes: IL 1 , IL 2

Source evaluation

Possible assignments:

• Critique a source
• Investigate authority of creator(s)
• Compare source types

Related learning outcome: IL 2

Research phase

Possible assignments:

• Compose a research strategy
• Research log or journal

Related learning outcome: IL 1

Peer feedback/draft

Possible assignments:

• Outline
• Peer discussion
• Preliminary bibliography

Related learning outcome: IL 3

Final product

Possible assignments:

• Summative self-assessment
• Research reflection

Related learning outcome: IL 3

• IL 1 : Students will use appropriate search strategies and tools to locate information relevant to their information need, refining strategies based on search results.
• IL 2 : Students will critically evaluate sources of information, considering both the expertise and credibility of the creators and the contextual factors that influence the information’s creation, dissemination, and purpose.
• IL 3 : Students will give credit to the original ideas of others through proper attribution and citation and contribute to the scholarly conversation at an appropriate level.