Updated 26 July, 2006

[Spanish edition] Traducción al castellano por Cristóbal Pasadas Ureña, Biblioteca, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Granada para el Grupo de Bibliotecas Universitarias de la Asociación Andaluza de Bibliotecarios. July, 2004

Information Skills Survey for Assessment of Information Literacy in Higher Education

Information Skills Survey.  Technical manual.  First Edition July 2005 [by] Ralph Catts PhD.  Published by Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) ISBN 1-876008-04-0 (26/7/06)

The Information Skills Survey (ISS) is being developed to assist librarians to measure the effectiveness of teaching strategies and the development of student’s skills and understandings with regard to information literacy.  The project team included librarians from six universities: Central Queensland University, University of New England, University of South Australia, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, University of Melbourne, and Queensland University of Technology, and received support from ANZIIL and CAUL.  The research has involved librarians, academic staff and students from each of the participating universities.  As principal researcher Dr Ralph Catts, previously University of New England now based at the University of Sterling in Scotland, has provided scholarly and professional leadership to the project.  The research has increased our understanding of how students learn to access and use information and provided a measurement tool for improving the quality of our teaching programs.

Two survey instruments have been developed using the Australian Information Literacy Standards (link) and benchmarked with students studying education and law.  While the survey developed with students in education can be used in a range of social science contexts, it has been shown that scholars use information differently in different discipline contexts.  The research project will continue to develop information literacy surveys specifically for students in other disciplines, eg engineering and medicine and commence benchmarking studies using particular teaching strategies.

The documentation for the survey will consist of an Administration Manual to assist in delivering the survey and which also includes some trial survey questionnaires, and a Technical Manual to assist in interpreting the results.  While the Technical Manual is still being finalised (as of January 04), institutions may obtain a copy of the Information Skills Survey Administration  Manual from the CAUL Office.  Institutions wishing to use the surveys will be required to sign a “user agreement” before the secure copies of the survey will be released.  Order Information

For more information, contact ILWG Convenor, Ruth Quinn, Charles Darwin University, email: ruth.quinn@cdu.edu.au, phone: +61 8 8946 6192

The original proposal to CAUL was presented to CAUL Meeting 2001/2.
 

A subgroup of ILWG consisting of Margaret Henty (Chair, ANU), Wendy Abbott (Bond), Charmian Eckersley (Newcastle), Bernadette Lingham (Deakin), Judy Peacock (QUT), and Karen Visser (ANU) has developed a brochure to document the characteristics of information literacy that illustrate best practice.  The guidelines provide characteristics, principles and ideas that will support the development of excellence in information literacy within an institution, and across Australia.  The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in the US had developed a similar document, and permission was given to adopt their guidelines (link provided elsewhere on webpage) to the Australian environment. 

The guidelines have been produced as a brochure in both 2-fold and 3-fold format (link to both).  It is only being made available online – organisations are welcome to download their preferred format and print off the number of required copies. 

For further information please contact ILWG Convenor, Ruth Quinn, Charles Darwin University, email: ruth.quinn@cdu.edu.au, phone: +61 8 8946 6192