SAILS Information Literacy Assessment: What We Have Learned and Recommended Next Steps
The SAILS (Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) project is a North America-wide Information Literacy assessment project undertaken by Kent State University in collaboration with the ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) to respond to the need for a reliable, standardized, and valid tool that assists librarians and faculty to determine how successful undergraduate students are in negotiating the enormous amount of information from so many sources. The test is based on the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education and provides a large pool of multiple choice questions to assess a wide range of student information literacy competencies.
To date, York’s participation in SAILS involved a small scale project, staged at one point in time (Spring 2005) during Phase III of the development of this tool. Once SAILS is launched in its final version in the fall of 2006 (learn more at www.projectsails.org), the potential exists to apply SAILS in more extensive and meaningful ways. For example, if administered early on in a student’s academic life, SAILS can help us to understand what skills have been obtained prior to starting university. Are students prepared to cope with the multitude of information sources and formats available to them? Can they distinguish between good research and mere propaganda on the Internet? When subsequently administered to students towards the end of their degree program in a longitudinal study, SAILS can indicate whether students’ skills have increased over time in university.
What SAILS Tells Us
In 2005, SAILS enabled the testing of information literacy skills among 276 York students in comparison to some 42,000 others from over 80 institutions.
The results demonstrate that while undergraduates' information literacy skills are not strong, the scores obtained by York undergraduates are comparable to those of other institutions.
At each stage of the research process – from defining a research topic, to identifying relevant information sources, to constructing an effective search strategy, to retrieval, evaluation, and citation – student scores at York fall around the mid point. A detailed analysis of the results at York will help provide guidance for our information literacy (IL) programs so that we produce graduates who are well-equipped to navigate the Information Society in their personal and professional roles.
What Can We Do With This Information?
The conclusions we draw from SAILS provide a great opportunity for faculty and librarians to collaborate, by designing information literacy instruction in tandem with research assignments that focus attention on content. SAILS allows us to pinpoint at a high level of detail those skills and concepts where students demonstrate difficulty. Data is available to show us average scores on each of almost 300 questions in the SAILS databank. As such, SAILS is set to play an important role in gauging the effectiveness of research skills, instruction and assignments. For example, it can help provide insights regarding our success in:
Reinforcing the development of information seeking strategies
Providing contextual guidance in evaluating information
Facilitating the integration of information into a student’s knowledge base
SAILS results, where used to inform needed enhancements to teaching, can play an important part in helping librarians and faculty alike meet the key goal of producing students who are confident, independent learners who take responsibility for their own education. Indeed, this ties into the University Academic Plan 2005-2010 and reinforce its focus of providing excellence in research and teaching and promoting lifelong learning.
If you are interested in learning more about Project SAILS:
Consult this recent powerpoint presentation titled “Charting the Course of Information Literacy with SAILS” focusing on the experiences of York University and University of Western Ontario. This was presented by librarians from York University and the University of Western Ontario at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference in Feb. 2006
Don’t hesitate to contact Ilo Maimets (ilo@yorku.ca) or Sophie Bury (sbury@yorku.ca) at York University Libraries.
