Integrating information literacy into the virtual university: A course model

THE VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY ENVIRONMENT provides librarians with new opportunities to contribute to the educational process. Building on the success of team-teaching a traditional liberal arts core course with composition and communications faculty, librarians and a communications professor worked together to integrate the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (2000) into the online environment. The resulting graduate-level course in multimedia literacy assembled faculty and curriculum resources normally untapped in traditional classrooms. All five information literacy standards covering need, access, evaluation, use and the social, economic, legal, and ethical issues surrounding information use were addressed. Readings and threaded discussions about intellectual property, fair use of copy righted materials, the evaluation of free and fee-based Web information and Web page design and construction prepared students to work in groups to design and construct Web sites. Students also completed a capstone project in the form of individual Web portfolios, which demonstrated the information and multimedia principles they learned in the class. Assessment of information literacy skills occurred through the analysis of student discussion, evaluative annotations, Web site assignments, perception surveys, and a master's level comprehensive exam question. What was learned in this course will serve as a model for future collaborative partnerships in which faculty and librarians work together to ensure that students who learn from a distance truly master information literacy competencies.