Information Literacy (IL) refers to the ability to recognize a need for information and to find, analyze, and synthesize related material from books, articles, websites and more.
How Can IL Benefit Students?
A 2017 survey of 42,000 students in more than 1,700 courses at 12 major research universities showed that:
How Can IL Benefit Faculty?
Students who are information literate are better able to come up with workable topics for their papers, research those topics iindependently, and write papers that conform to rigorous academic standards.
Critical thin
king is that mode of thinking — about any subject, content, or problem — in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it.
An ability to think critically is essential to a student's time in school and is a vital life-long skill.
Employers highly value critical thinking skills too, with a 2013 AAC&U study showing that “a candidate’s demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than their undergraduate major."
It's not easy to teach students to adopt a new thinking style; in today's polarized environment, it can even be difficult to impart to them the importance of deliberate and critical thinking.
The source of the above definition of critical thinking comes from The Foundation for Critical Thinking, https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766.
The links below go to 1) an original MCC Library guide on information literacy skills, conceptualized as superpowers, and 2) a series of "How To Research" guides created by the MCC Library Services on basic research skills from start to finish. Students can go through these with an assigned topic from your course or use a topic of interest to learn in advance of a research project.
