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The ALAO Conference is finally here and we’re excited to see everyone this Friday at the Project SAILS table. We'll be tweeting live from the conference so be sure to follow us on Twitter to follow the conversations and topics discussed at the conference. You can also follow all highlights from the ALAO Conference on Twitter by using the hashtag #ALAO12.

Bring your questions about information literacy to us and we’ll be happy to help you.

Have questions on information literacy assessment but can’t attend the conference? Post your questions and comments here or visit www.projectsails.org.

Safe travels to ALAO!

 

ALAO 2012 is Friday, October 26 and the Project SAILS team is preparing for this event and the opportunity to showcase the importance of information literacy assessment to universities and colleges throughout Ohio.

Information literacy assessment can help to identify gaps in student learning and locate key areas for improvement. The Project SAILS individual and group online assessments  are based on ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education and can deliver the data and insights you need to document curriculum successes and areas for improvement.

ALAO is a great opportunity to visit with Project SAILS co-founder, Carolyn Radcliff at our booth. Carolyn has over 20 years experience as an academic librarian and is currently a professor of University Libraries for Kent State University. Carolyn is a published author on information literacy assessment and has actively lent her expertise to ACRL and RUSA. She will be available to offer further insights on information literacy assessment and its importance in the higher education library setting.

ALAO visitors will also have the opportunity to discover how the Project SAILS individual and group information literacy tests are:

  • Statistically reliable
  • Easily administered online
  • Respectful of your budget
  • Timely and relevant

Are you attending ALAO? Let us know what excites you about this year’s conference.

Finding clever ways to engage students (specifically college students) when teaching information literacy skills can be a tough feat. One of the easiest methods for teaching evaluation methods in the classroom is to use current events in the news. This gives students the opportunity to share what they think on a topic, what information they have obtained, and how that information has helped in forming that opinion.

Emily Gover, an in-house librarian for EasyBib, recently wrote a blog post on how librarians and faculty can use the current election season to teach students evaluation skills – a very important piece of information literacy.

Emily Gover says in her blog post, “The election season is a great opportunity to introduce the importance of evaluation skills to students. Specifically, we can stress the importance of understanding facts, propaganda and bias… and how all three play a huge role in advertising (and sometimes reporting) of the campaigns.”

She also highlights a few great resources offered by Infotopia to aid in using the election to teach information literacy skills. It’s important that students understand the importance of evaluating information – especially in regard to selecting the next president.

Click to read her full post and begin developing the information literacy skills of your students today!

Since the Project SAILS team came together in 2001, we have made it our mission to help academic librarians understand their students’ information literacy knowledge. We have made updates to the SAILS assessment, established both an individual and cohort test, and strived to keep the needs of academic librarians in mind.

Today we are building upon this mission with the launch of our blog!
Our hope is that this blog will become a resource center for academic librarians on all things information literacy. This includes:

  • Links to great resources to use in your course instruction and to share with your students
  • Tutorials and other resources to supplement one-shot information literacy sessions
  • Archiving and sharing great articles, blog posts, and more that we find on the topic of information literacy
  • Important news releases related to Project SAILS
  • Guest posts from experts on information literacy
  • Case studies of how institutions are using Project SAILS
  • Resources to share with non-library faculty to use in classroom instruction
  • Lesson plan/course instruction ideas for each skill set of information literacy

We also want this blog to be a way for academic librarians to have conversations with our team. So if you have any questions, suggestions, ideas for blog posts, or if you have specific needs for your course instruction that you would like us to address – please let us know!
Also, to be sure you don’t miss any of the great resources we will be sharing on our blog, sign-up for our email list!