Information Literacy, Primary Sources and American History

The Library of Congress has a wealth of materials for promoting the effective instructional use of primary sources. Primary sources are the raw materials of history and culture and can be great tools for teaching.

Draft of the United States Constitution:
Report of the Committee of Detail,

ca. August 6, 1787

A number of our writing intensive courses have students analyzing primary documents, images, recordings, or maps from an earlier era.

It's a natural way to get students engaged with content. It certainly lends itself to building critical thinking skills. Obviously, it is an interesting way to use information literacy in class.

Primary sources related to U.S. legislation help students explore the writings and ideas at the core of the American experience—the documents that have made the United States the nation that it is, and that continue to shape its evolution today.

Some lessons that can be easily undertaken using the Library's resources:

• Look at the drafts of the founding documents and compare them to the final copies. Identify significant changes between the documents, and speculate as to how the nation might have been different if those changes hadn’t been made.

• As you study issues in U.S. history, use THOMAS to find and examine recent legislative documents on the same topic—immigration, poverty, the role of religion in politics, for example. Identify whether the recent documents use similar language or persuasive techniques as the historical documents, or if approaches to the topic have changed in the intervening years.

The Library of Congress Teacher Guides and Analysis Tool can guide students through analysis of these primary sources.

The gateway to investigating these landmark documents is the Legislative Resources for Teachers page from the Library of Congress, which provides free online access to primary sources that trace the legislative history of the U.S., along with teaching tools that allow educators to quickly and easily integrate these documents into the curriculum.

Creating the United States lets students examine rough drafts of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, as well as providing insights into the intellectual environment and collaborative process that saw these charters come into being.

Once students are immersed in the world of Adams, Madison, and Jefferson, Library of Congress lesson plans on the Constitution and Bill of Rights let them ask critical questions of the documents and their authors, as they consider how the smallest changes might have made the United States a very different nation today.

SOURCE:  Teaching with the Raw Materials of the Law: Primary Sources and the Legislative Process

Research and Information Literacy

The headline "Students Lack Basic Research Skills, Study Finds" in a Wired Campus post had caught my attention last year and I printed it to use in a workshop.

Information literacy is one of the components in the writing intensive courses that are part of our grant project here at PCCC and we know that students still struggle with the process.

Using information from the Project Information Literacy Progress Report, the post cited several findings that we deal with in all our classes.

1. 84% of students say that when it comes to course-based research, getting started is their biggest challenge. 
2. The three sources cited most often by students were course readings, search engines like Google, and scholarly research databases. 
3. Only 30% asked a librarian for research help. 

As an example from our WI courses, while a traditional research paper addresses all of the broadly defined information literacy (IL) competencies, we don't see that as the only - or always the best - means of assessing information literacy.

We actually encourage faculty to differentiate with students Research versus information literacy. Many of our students see research as only something that leads to a research paper.

We also encourage instructors to create assignments that may address only one or several of the IL competencies. For instance, a bibliography covers two of our stated competencies, while an annotated bibliography covers three others.

A two-part assignment from the one Western Civilization course demonstrates how our IL rubric can be used to assess competencies. Part 1 of the assignment asks the question "Does this website have an apparent bias?" for each website used. This can be assessed under the "Evaluation of Sources" criterion in the rubric, with some slight revisions tailored to the assignment. In this example, an answer on the "Beginner" level would demonstrate little or no recognition of the bias (or lack thereof) in the Web site. A "Developing" answer may demonstrate the recognition of bias but difficulty in articulating just what the bias is. A "Competent" answer would recognize the existence and the nature of the bias, and an "Accomplished" answer would demonstrate a recognition and explanation of the bias that is highly nuanced.

In the essay portion (Part 2) of the assignment, students have to compare their personal opinions (stated in a previous essay) with the opinion of others as found in the aforementioned Web sites. In this case, the students' essays can be evaluated under the "Uses information effectively in their writing assignments" criterion in the rubric. An essay on the "Beginner" level would use little or no information from the outside sources. A "Developing" essay would attempt to incorporate information from outside sources, and perhaps be off-topic at times. A "Competent" essay would use information from outside sources to support the topic and demonstrate some synthesis with their own ideas. An "Accomplished" essay would contain highly refined and articulated use of information from outside sources, as well as synthesis of this information with their own ideas.

Alison J. Head, a co-principal investigator for ProjectInfoLit.org, feels that our students "feel overwhelmed, and they’re developing a strategy for not drowning in all information out there. They’re basically taking how they learned to research in high school with them to college, since it’s worked for them in the past.”

From my own classes, I know that students do see "research" as more of a quest for the "right answer" than as a process of evaluating different arguments and coming up with their own interpretation. That aspect is also something we deal with directly in the critical thinking component of the WI course sections. Unfortunately, we also find that many instructors actually discourage looking at different arguments or including the students' interpretations in their assignments. Although encouraging those two things in all assignments wouldn't be practical, in redesigning GenEd courses as WI sections, we found there was almost no opportunities for that kind of diversity of thought in the existing assignments.

“Not being aware of the diverse resources that exist or the different ways knowledge is created and shared is dangerous,” says Ms. Head. “College is a time to find information and learn about multiple arguments, and exploring gets sacrificed if you conduct research in this way.”

Information Literacy

The Writing Initiative aims to increase achievement and program completion rates for PCCC students by integrating critical thinking, information literacy and technology into college-level writing intensive courses.

Broadly stated, we require WI courses to incorporate research requirements that exercise information literacy competencies in at least one of the writing assignments.


Information Literacy (IL), as defined by PCCC, consists of:

1. Defining and articulating the need for information
2. Information Retrieval
3. Citation of Sources
4. Evaluation of Sources
5. Using information effectively in writing assignments

These competencies have been assessed in an ongoing fashion in The College Experience course via the Information Literacy Research Project, and will be assessed further in the Title V Writing Initiative.

In general, PCCC students have fared well in retrieving information and identifying citation information, but have struggled with information literacy competencies that require more critical thinking, such as formulating a thesis statement, critical evaluation of resources, and extraction of useful information from resources. In the Writing Initiative, special emphasis is placed on the latter two competencies especially.

Courses designated as WI should have an assignment or assignments that cover a minimum of three out of the five broadly defined IL competencies. Competencies 4 and 5 are required to be covered, in addition to one of the other three competencies.

The IL requirements need not be covered in one assignment; in fact, it is often beneficial to both instructor and student to break the research process down into steps.

Each student in a WI course also must create an electronic portfolio in which are archived selected assignments from the WI course. Minimally, students must include examples of any formal writing and particularly those that exhibit elements from the critical thinking rubric and the information literacy rubric.

PCCC Librarians have developed a master IL rubric that allows instructors to assess IL competencies on a four-point scale ranging from beginning, developing, competent to accomplished. In addition to the rubric, a list of performance indicators associated with each of the five major IL competencies can be used for ideas on how to incorporate the IL competencies into WI assignments. The rubrics and more information on how we are using information literacy in the Initiative is online.