Information Literacy Guide, Pollak Library
California State University, Fullerton

CSUF IL Initiative

Jump To: Grant Proposal CSUF Information Competence Initiative

California State University, Fullerton

Information Literacy Initiative Grant Proposal

Faculty Development Center

Dr. Ellen Junn, Director (ejunn@fullerton.edu; 714 278-4285)

Dr. Sorel Reisman, Academic Technology Coordinator

Dr. Patricia Szeszulski, Assessment Coordinator

Academic Affairs

Dr. Ephraim Smith, Vice President

Pollak Library

Richard Pollard, University Librarian

Suellen Cox, Library Instruction Coordinator

California State University, Fullerton

800 N. State College

Fullerton, CA  92834

Funds Requested:  $30,500

Submitted:  February 22, 2001

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this proposal is to initiate a two-year comprehensive campus-wide Academic Affairs plan to encourage, assist, and support departments in enhancing and integrating student information literacy (IL) within departmental program curricula.  This systematic plan seeks funds from the CSU Chancellor’s Office for the first year only.  California State University, Fullerton  (CSUF) will provide funding for the second year in order to meet the final goal of all departments having produced the expected deliverables (departmental student learning IC outcomes, syllabi for required courses with IL assignments, and examples of representative assignments that promote IL).  Twenty-five departments will be recruited to participate the first year, with the remaining departments participating in year two.  This will be accomplished with 3 activities:  (1) a campus retreat of departmental teams convened by the Vice President for Academic Affairs in collaboration with the Library and the Faculty Development Center (FDC), (2) workshops, ongoing consultation, and assistance for departments by the Library and the FDC to facilitate departmental consensus in developing and integrating IC into the curriculum, and (3) follow up meeting on progress prior to submission of final reports.

The purpose of this proposal is to initiate a comprehensive campus-wide Academic Affairs plan to support departments in enhancing and integrating student information literacy (IL) within departmental curricula.  This two-year systematic plan seeks funds from the CSU Chancellor’s Office for this first year only California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) will provide funding for the remaining year in order to meet the final goal of all departments having produced the expected deliverables (departmental student learning IL outcomes, syllabi for required courses with IL assignments, and examples of representative assignments that promote IL).

II. Background

CSUF is poised particularly well for this initiative for a number of reasons:

III. Project Activities

This proposal is composed of two related, but separate project requests with funding being sought from two different CSU sources:  (1) CSU Information Competence Initiative (headings in blue) and (2) CSU Academic Technology Services (headings in red).  While the two parts of the proposal are related, they are independent insofar as either project can stand alone should only one project receive funding.  Thus, readers of this proposal should concentrate and deliberate on that part of the proposal that is relevant to them, while remaining cognizant of the relation between the two requests.  Should only one of the projects be funded, some minor modifications (described below) will be necessary, though ideally the combination of funding would greatly enhance the outcomes of the project in its totality.

PART 1:  CSU Information Literacy Initiative Project ($30,500)

This part of the proposal seeks to involve and encourage all departments campus-wide in an Academic Affairs plan to encourage, assist, and support departments in enhancing and integrating student information competency literacy (IL) into their departmental program curricula.   This will be accomplished over a two-year period by 3 activities:  (1) campus retreat of departmental teams, (2) workshops, ongoing consultation, and assistance to departments from the Library and the Faculty Development Center in facilitating departmental consensus for developing and integrating IL into the curriculum, and 3) follow up meeting prior to submission of final reports.  These 3 activities are described in more detail below.

1. RETREAT:  The Vice President for Academic Affairs in collaboration with the Library and the Faculty Development Center will host an off-campus retreat convening 3-person teams (including the chair) from each of the 45 departments and programs.  The purpose of the retreat is to encourage and recruit departmental faculty to examine and explicitly integrate information competency into their curricula.  A tentative agenda for the retreat (see appendix) will feature keynote speaker, Susan Curzon, Dean University Library, CSUN, who will discuss the definition and importance of information literacy, followed by a session by Suellen Cox, CSUF Information Coordinator regarding the American Colleges and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Information Literacy Standards with specific examples of assignments, followed next by librarian-facilitated small group discussions of information literacy efforts at the departmental level.  The retreat will close with additional information on the specifics of the project, departmental guidelines, deliverables, funding, and timelines.
   Prior to the retreat, all Chairs will be asked to consult broadly with their department or programs in order to complete and bring with them 2 checklist surveys (see appendix) asking them to identify 2 target core courses (1 early in the major and 1 senior or capstone equivalent) that either already incorporate or might be appropriate for integrating information competency.  The checklist will ask faculty to identify assignments in the target courses that enhance student information competency.  This checklist will serve as the basis for the small group facilitated discussions during the retreat.  Following the retreat, funding will be made available to 25 departments who volunteer to participate in this program ($1,000 for each participating department for activities supporting this initiative).
2. ONGOING SUPPORT FOR DEPARTMENTS:  Participating departments will have access to ongoing workshops and individual consultation support from the FDC Assessment Coordinator, FDC technology staff, as well as from specially designated Library faculty.
   Important Note: Facilitating departmental consensus in developing and integrating IC into the curriculum will be substantially enhanced if the request for secondary funds in Part 2 is granted.  The second request that follows would fund the purchase and use of online Decision Support Systems (DSS) software and hardware that has the potential to make departmental dialogue and consensus on this issue both speedy and efficient.  Indeed, similar software has been used successfully on our campus for consensus building by departments and other University committees.   Should funding for this request not be granted, this project will still proceed, with departments using more conventional means of reaching consensus.
3. FOLLOW UP MEETING: Participating departments will convene at a follow up meeting to report on progress and share challenges, prior to submission of their Final Reports in the Fall of 2001.
   NOTE:  In year 2, the same process will be repeated for the remaining 20 departments.  Funding for year 2 will come from Academic Affairs.

CSU IL INITIATIVE PROJECT BUDGET

OVERALL PROJECT TIMELINE

 *Schedule assumes notification of approval by March 20, 2001.  Schedule can be moved up if approval is earlier.

** Should funding for the DSC not be granted, departments will rely on more conventional means of reaching consensus.

PART 2:  CSU Academic Technology Services Project ($41,000)

In a second grant to be submitted to Dr. Gerry Hanley, Senior Director of Academic Technology Services, we propose establishing a Decision Support Center (DSC).  The DSC will utilize the principles of online Decision Support Systems (DSS) for real-time collaborative decision-making (Reisman, Johnson & Mayes, 1994) by networking local area workstations managed through proprietary client/server DSS software (e.g., Ventana or Facilitate).  Using the DSC, the FDC and Library will assist departments in developing student IC learning goals and assignments based on teaching best practices. In addition, the FDC will also provide training to faculty interested in using the DSC for teaching students.  This proposal asks for matching funds to support the DSC; see budget below.

CSU ACADEMIC TECHNOLOGY SERVICES PROJECT (DECISION SUPPORT CENTER) BUDGET

Reisman, S., Johnson, T. W., & Mayes, T.B. (1992). Group Decision Program: A Videodisc-based Group Decision Support System.  DecisionSupport Systems Journal. Vol 8, pp. 169 -180.

APPENDIX

QUALIFICATIONS OF STAFF

Ellen Junn is the Director of the Faculty Development Center (FDC).  She earned her B.S. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Michigan and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Cognitive and Developmental Psychology from Princeton University.  As Director, she oversees 6 full-time staff, 7 Faculty Coordinators and Liaisons, and serves a 17-member Advisory Board.  Her office provides support programs to faculty in the areas of:  instructional technology, assessment, research and creative activity, teaching and learning, service learning, department chair support, new faculty support, diversity issues, part time faculty support, and other campus events.  The FDC has successfully coordinated a variety of programs designed to support faculty in the use of instructional technology, the assessment of instructional technology, enhancing writing across the curriculum in GE courses, and hosted 3 system-wide disciplinary conferences on assessment (all funded by Lorie Roth’s office).

Patricia Szeszulski is an Associate Professor of Child and Adolescent Studies and earned her B.A in Psychology from California State University, Long Beach and her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Southern California.  A long-time advocate of classroom assessment activities and instructional innovation, she has played a leadership role in program-level assessment of student learning in her department and she serves on the Academic Senate ad hoc Assessment Committee.  The primary agenda of the assessment component of the FDC is to facilitate a learning-centered culture at CSUF by hosting workshops and seminars for the University community and scheduling appointments to work with individual faculty or academic units on assessment-related issues.

Sorel Reisman, Professor of Management Science and Information Systems is the Academic Technology Coordinator for the FDC. His Ph.D. is in Computer Applications from the University of Toronto. Before coming to our campus, Dr. Reisman held executive management positions in academic technology with IBM, Toshiba America and Thorn EMI. More recently, he has worked with Extended Education as Director of Information Systems. He has numerous publications and presentations and is author of the book, Multimedia Computing: Preparing for the 21^st Century.

Ephraim Smith is the chief Academic Affairs officer at California State University, Fullerton.  As Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Smith oversees over 1,700 faculty and 45 departments and programs.   He earned his B.A. in Accounting from Providence College, his M.S. in Accounting from University of Massachusetts, and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.  Prior to becoming Vice President, Dr. Smith served as the Dean of the College of Business and Economics at CSUF.

Richard Pollard is the University Librarian at the Pollak Library at California State University Fullerton.  He earned his BA and MA in History from Stanford and his MLS from the University of Southern California.  As University Librarian, he oversees over 60 library faculty and staff and a collection of over one million items.

Suellen Cox is Library Instruction Coordinator at the Pollak Library at California State University Fullerton, where she teaches approximately thirty faculty requested library instruction sessions each semester.  She coordinates and co-teaches the four-week library component of the Fullerton First Year Program “Introduction to Information Technology and Presentation” course. Together with her colleague, Elizabeth Housewright, she has presented at several workshops and conferences, including the California State University Symposium on University Teaching, Syllabus99, the California Clearinghouse for Library Instruction Open House, and the California Academic Research Libraries 1998 Annual Conference. She was selected to participate in the ACRL Institute for Information Literacy Immersion 2000 program. In addition to her M.L.S., Ms. Cox has an MA in English from CSUF.

APPENDIX

CSU Information Literacy Initiative Project

CSUF Academic Affairs & Departmental Retreat Agenda

Friday, April 20, 2001, 8-2 p.m.

Marriott Hotel

APPENDIX

ESTIMATE OF MARRIOTT HOTEL RETREAT CHARGES

APPENDIX

Checklist for Measuring Assignments for Information Competence

PLEASE CONSULT WITH DEPARTMENT, COMPLETE FORMS, AND BRING TO RETREAT.

Information  competency is a set of abilities requiring individuals to “recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.”  An information literate individual is able to:

Choose one early entry core course and one senior level capstone or equivalent course (use separate sheets for each course) that either currently includes student information competency goals and assignments or would be amenable to information competency goals and assignments.  For these 2 courses, please consult with your departmental faculty before filling out the checklist below.

Department: _____________________________________

Departmental Team Members: ________________________________________________________________

Course Name and Number:____________________________________________________________________

Does this course explicitly state learning goals that focus on student information competency in the course description or on the syllabus?  YES   /   NO.    If yes, please list these learning goals: ___________________

Does this course require:

1. ________assignments that ask/encourage students to articulate a research or theoretical question issue or problem?  Describe and/or list assignments:
2. ________assignments that ask/encourage students to make multiple and different determinations about the types of sources?  Describe and/or list assignments:
3. ________assignments that ask/encourage students to conduct research using scholarly sources such as books, journals, etc.?  Describe and/or list assignments:
4. ________assignments that ask/encourage students to conduct research through electronic data retrieval systems?  Describe and/or list assignments:
5. _______ assignments that ask/encourage students to analyze and evaluate the credibility of information sources?  Describe and/or list assignments:
6. ________assignments that ask/encourage students to make selections from, integrate, and synthesize information retrieved in their search?  Describe and/or list assignments:
7. ________assignments that ask/encourage students to utilize computer literacy skills to communicate their results of their assignment?  Describe and/or list assignments:
8. ________assignments that ask/encourage students to demonstrate an understanding of fair use of copyrighted material and intellectual property (e.g., plagiarism)?  Describe and/or list assignments:
9. ________assignments that ask/encourage students to develop long-term, adaptable, cross-disciplinary scholarly and/or creative activity skills? Describe and/or list assignments:

CSUF Information Literacy Initiative

Jump to: Grant Proposal Activities Participating Departments

During the Spring 2001, California State University, Fullerton received funding from the Chancellor's Office for their Information Literacy Initiative (see attached proposal). Spearheaded by Vice President Ephraim Smith, our proposal was unique in asking for funds to support approximately half the departments at CSUF to participate in a program to implement information competency standards into department program curricula. This proposal was a collaboration among Academic Affairs (Ephraim Smith), the Faculty Development Center (Ellen Junn, Sorel Reisman, Patricia Szeszulski), and Pollak Library (Suellen Cox, Richard Pollard).

Prepared by Suellen Cox scox@fullerton.edu and Margaret Hogarth (2001).
An instructional page of the Paulina June & George Pollak Library at California State University, Fullerton.
(c) 2001 California State University, Fullerton. All rights reserved.