Subject Guides: Information Literacy Toolkit: Assessing Information Literacy Skills

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Assessment Resource Description

Students often benefit from rubrics for their assignments. The rubrics linked below cover a number of foundational information literacy skills, including:

Finding information appropriate to their needs and discipline
Evaluating information with an awareness of authority, validity, and bias
Demonstrating an understanding of the ethical dimensions of information use, creation, and dissemination

Consider pulling relevant elements and sharing your rubric with students with the assignment prompt.

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Suggested Information Literacy Rubrics

National Organizations

American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) VALUE Rubric
AAC&U's information literacy rubric was developed to evaluate and discuss student learning, particularly on an institutional level.
Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Sandbox
The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy Sandbox is a searchable resource for rubrics, lesson plans, and instructional materials. Librarians use the Framework to guide library instruction sessions and student learning outcomes.
Rubric Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (RAILS)
RAILS helps librarians create and use rubrics for information literacy assessment. The organization's site links to several recommended rubrics sorted by institution and/or outcome.

Examples from Universities

California State University, East Bay
Information literacy is defined here as the knowledge and skills developed to find, evaluate, synthesize, and use information to communicate ideas clearly. The rubric can help to evaluate 6 information literacy skills on a scale from 1-4.
Mount Saint Mary's University Los Angeles
This rubric evaluates 2 learning outcomes similar to SUNY's information literacy outcomes: (1) to demonstrate the skills required to find, retrieve, evaluate, and use information effectively and ethically; and (2) to demonstrate research skills and methods through the ability to gather, document, investigate, analyze, interpret and evaluate information.
University of New Orleans
The rubric evaluates 4 information literacy skills on a scale from 0-3. The student learning outcome is to evaluate the extent to which undergraduate students demonstrate the ability to identify, find, evaluate, interpret, manage, and responsibly use information to answer questions as well as develop new ones.
University of Texas
Information literacy skills addressed in this rubric include: (1) Evaluating authority and credibility of a source, (2), Evaluating the use of evidence in a source, and (3) Citing a source with correct formatting.