Faculty Perspectives on Information Literacy as a Student Learning Outcome

Information literacy is a popular and widely-written about topic in the literature of library information science, and is widely identified as an essential competency for college students. Nevertheless, recent research indicates that students largely lack the competencies associated with information literacy and that many colleges and universities are not moving beyond one-shot, course-level library instruction sessions to integrate information literacy into their curricula at the program and institutional levels. One reason for this lack of progress may be that discipline faculty—those who have the most direct contact with students, as well as the most direct oversight of and responsibility for the curriculum—have been largely missing from the conversation. This study aims to fill this gap by surveying and interviewing a nationwide sample of teaching faculty in six disciplines for their perspectives on the importance and relevance of information literacy competencies for their students. The results of this study provide academic librarians a broader insight into faculty understanding of information literacy and will help to advance the discourse of information literacy further into the disciplines.