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SKYCTC Learning Commons

Information Literacy – Core Faculty Guide

A faculty and staff guide to Credo's Information Literacy–Core.

What is Credo's Information Literacy–Core?

Credo's Information Literacy–Core is a set of online videos, tutorials, and quizzes covering information literacy. Your library has subscribed to Information Literacy–Core and it is free for you and students to use, on campus or off.

The resource aims to:

  • Help students learn how to find relevant and reliable library and other research materials
  • Formulate appropriate, workable research questions
  • Synthesize what they learn into a final product such as a research paper, including citations that are apt for their field

Wondering how Information Literacy–Core works in real-life classrooms? This brief case study illustrates how Teri Catanio, an instructor and Director of the Career Center at Cairn University, PA, used Information Literacy–Core to increase her students' research and writing abilities. The gains were immediate and persisted long-term, making the professors work easier and the students more successful.

Why is Information Literacy Important?

Information Literacy (IL) refers to the ability to recognize a need for information and to find, analyze, and synthesize related material from books, articles, websites and more.

How Can IL Benefit Students?
A 2017 survey of 42,000 students in more than 1,700 courses at 12 major research universities showed that:

  • Retention rates were higher for students whose courses included IL instruction.
  • Students whose courses included IL instruction reported higher average first-year GPAs than those whose courses did not.
  • Students who took IL instruction successfully completed 1.8 more credit hours per year than students who did not.

How Can IL Benefit Faculty?

Students who are information literate are better able to come up with workable topics for their papers, research those topics independently, and write papers that conform to rigorous academic standards.

Why is Critical Thinking Important?

An ability to think critically is essential to a student's time in school and is a vital life-long skill.

Employers highly value critical thinking skills too, with a 2013 AAC&U study showing that “a candidate’s demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than their undergraduate major."

It's not easy to teach students to adopt a new thinking style; in today's polarized environment, it can even be difficult to impart to them the importance of deliberate and critical thinking.