Collaborative Information Literacy Assessments Strategies for Evaluating Teaching and Learning

The title explains almost everything. This collection of case studies reflects innovative and constructive partnerships between academic librarians and faculty (teaching staff) to serve effective assessment and improvement of information literacy efforts.

It is the continuation of the editors' two earlier books, Information Literacy Collaborations that Work (2007) and Using Technology to Teach Information Literacy (2008).

Contributions come from the USA, the UK and New Zealand. The collaboration of faculty‐librarian teams materialized in a wide range of disciplines, including business, political science, education, adult learning programs, and the humanities.

All eight chapters include a detailed literature review, a model for practical implementation, a discussion of the partnership process, and an examination of assessment data. The three main parts of the book (business; social science and education; humanities) are preceded by detailed introductions by the editors.

The first part of the book consists of two chapters. The first of them concentrates on using citation analysis as a tool of measurement and evaluation. As the subject may be less known (at least in these contexts), it is especially important that the authors present a comprehensive literature review about it and state that it proved to be powerful. However, they add that using citation analysis is not appropriate for all instructional efforts, because it requires high demands in time and human resources.

The second chapter describes an information literacy program in business, which is relevant to workplace literacy and uses a comprehensive and holistic and set of skills.

If the contributions of the first part were akin to one another more on the ground of their approaches than because of the underlying disciplines, this is especially true for the second, social sciences part of the book, which shows high diversity of subjects.

The first chapter here is about assessment in an undergraduate political science curriculum, giving especial attention to the link between multiple instruction sessions and of information literacy development.

The authors of the second chapter present an assessment instrument (a formative multiple choice survey) used in information literacy education for undergraduate programs in psychology and nursing, over a prolonged period.

The third chapter is about an online assessment strategy for adult learners. This program, delivered in a blended from relied heavily on the experience and competences of its part‐time students, as any similar course should. It was thought‐provoking to see that the authors found adult learners having a lack of confidence about their academic skills and that academic sources of information and the idea of critical thinking were relatively new to them.

All three chapters in the humanities part are related to writing courses. This approach itself may seem unusual and in the same time intriguing for many readers from a number of European countries.

The opening chapter piles on top of this student self‐assessment actualized through reflective writing assignments. It is thus not surprising that we find again the detailed review of literature valuable. We can learn that these exercises were not graded and that this fact made it a low stakes activity, which intended to foster candid responses.

In the next chapter we can read about a first‐year theme based writing course. This contribution informs about discussions on the development of a rubric, a topic that often comes up in other chapters of the book, as well.

The last chapter gives an example of evaluating information literacy skills over a longer period.

The lessons learned form these case studies are first of all self‐explanatory: Collaboration should be valued. On a more concrete level we can see how much systematic effort it requires. From these rules information literacy is no exception.