Information Literacy in the First-Year Experience

The widespread introduction of Information Literacy skills to first-year students at Passaic County Community College during the Fall of 2001 resulted from the redesign of the College's required one-credit freshman seminar course. What was for many years called Freshman Orientation, falling under the area of Student Affairs, was renamed The College Experience in 2001 and re-situated under the division of Academic Affairs. The Academic Council approved this change in the Spring of 2001.

Whereas Freshman Orientation, organized and overseen by counselors, was mostly non-academic in nature and concerned with issues such as advisement, registration, adjustment to the College, getting along with people, and time management, The College Experience was designed to focus on the development of academic skills. This new academic course, extended to an hour and twenty minutes, and taught by an increased number of full-time faculty and administrators, covers note taking, test taking, reading strategies, critical thinking, general study skills, career exploration, problem solving, and, most significantly, Information Literacy.

To prepare for the introduction of Information Literacy into all of the English-speaking sections of The College Experience in Fall 2001, the Library staff ran training sessions for all of the Information Literacy presenters. The majority of the Information Literacy presenters came from the Library staff, other full-time administrators also participated as presenters. The Information Literacy component was integrated into the 15-week College Experience course during two consecutive weeks early in the semester, and has been scheduled thusly since.

Students are given an orientation to online library resources during the Information Literacy component of the College Experience, and are asked to complete a written exercise based on these resources. In the first few semesters of the Information Literacy component, students were also asked to take a brief quiz in WebCT based on the Library Virtual Tour. In Fall 2002, the WebCT quiz was discontinued, and an Information Literacy Research Project became College Experience students' final project for the semester. In Spring 2002, Library staff began to assess 5 standards of Information Literacy competency as adopted from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). Finally, students are asked to assess the Information Literacy component by filling out an anonymous 10-question survey.