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Information Literacy Online

Navigating Information Society


Course Outline


Course Description


This course is designed to help you become a more comprehensive participant in our information society. It will enable you to be able to think more critically about research and research strategies, recognize when and what information is needed, locate and critically evaluate information, and use information effectively.

Objectives


  • Differentiate between the concepts of knowledge and information
  • Develop a definition for Information Literacy
  • Identify, examine, and justify the steps necessary to process information in an “information literate” way.
  • Develop definitions of intellectual property and intellectual property rights
  • Discuss the differences between industrial properties and copyright
  • Discuss different aspects of academic honesty including plagiarism
  • Properly cite a resource in APA style
  • Compare and contrast qualitative and quantitative research
  • Discuss the characteristics of good research
  • Construct an outline for a properly designed research project
  • Compare and contrast primary and secondary sources of information
  • Construct a chart listing and describing resources available in a library
  • Discriminate between popular and scholarly publications
  • Justify the use of scholarly as opposed to popular publications in research
  • Compare and contrast the four ways to search for information online
  • Discuss Boolean Operators and why they are helpful when searching
  • Compare and contrast search directories and search engines
  • List and describe factors to look at when determining the credibility of online resources
  • Verify the credibility of an online resource
  • Defend the credibility of an online resource
  • List and describe reasons for organizing information
  • Describe strategies that will help you organize information
  • List and describe the steps involved in writing a research paper
  • List and describe the steps involved in making a PowerPoint presentation
  • List and describe the necessary steps to produce a good lesson plan
  • Create an Information Literacy lesson plan
  • List and describe the reasons why the Invisible Web is ‘invisible’ to normal search engines.
  • Select and evaluate Invisible Web sites on a chosen subject.

Curriculum Design & Time Requirements


This course will emphasize the importance of information literacy in our society and prepare the student to be a competent user of information. Information literacy functions include defining the need for, locating, evaluating, organizing and communicating information in a legal and ethical manner. This is an online sixty hour, three credit graduate level course completed over a thirteen-week period.

Hardware & Computer Skills Requirements


Students may use either a Macintosh computer or a PC with Windows 2000 or higher. Students should possess basic word processing skills and have internet access with an active e-mail account. Students also are expected to have a basic knowledge of how to use a Web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Safari, Mozilla Firefox etc.

Course Materials


The required text for this course is 100% Information Literacy Success by Terry Taylor (2007). Online readings and Web site reviews will be assigned during the course to enhance learning. These readings will be presented as annotated Web sites within the course content.

Session Outline

Introduction: Information Literacy
Contents:
  1. Students will become familiar with and utilize the forum system of communication.
  2. Students will become familiar and interact with other students in the class.

Session 1: What is Information Literacy?
Contents:
  1. Information and Knowledge
  2. Information literacy
  3. Information literacy standards

Session 2: Intellectual Property and Ethics
Contents:
  1. Information
  2. Intellectual property and intellectual property rights
  3. A little historical perspective
  4. Importance of intellectual property rights
  5. Categories of intellectual property
  6. Copyright
  7. Plagiarism
  8. Citing resources
  9. Academic honesty

Session 3: The Research Process
Contents:
  1. Overview
  2. The purpose of research
  3. Research approaches and functions
  4. Characteristics of good research
  5. The Research Process

Session 4: Library Information Resources
Contents:
  1. Overview
  2. Primary and secondary sources of information
  3. Library resources
  4. Periodicals
  5. Information Retrieval Systems
  6. Online reference sources

Session 5: Finding Information
Contents:
  1. Overview
  2. Library information
  3. Library cataloging systems
  4. Ways to search for items in the library or online
  5. Boolean Operators
  6. Online searching
  7. Web Directories and Web Search Engines

Session 6: Judging Information Quality
Contents:
  1. Overview
  2. Evaluating authority
  3. Evaluating content

Session 7: Organizing Information
Contents:
  1. Objectives
  2. Reasons for organizing information
  3. Organizational strategies
  4. Written presentation skills
  5. Graphic presentation skills

Session 8: Sharing Information
Contents:
  1. Overview
  2. Written presentation skills
  3. Steps in writing a term paper
  4. Parts of a research paper
  5. Graphic presentation skills
  6. PowerPoint presentations

Session 9: Information Literacy in the Classroom
Contents:
  1. Overview
  2. The teacher's role
  3. Information literacy lesson plans online
  4. Writing lesson plans

Session 10: Pulling it all together, the Invisible Web
Contents:
  1. Overview
  2. The Invisible Web
  3. Invisible Web facts
  4. Searching, searching, searching
  5. Why can't we find these pages?
  6. How do we find information on the Invisible Web?

Grading


    Assignment Points   Grading Scale  
  Forum Participation   30      100 – 93 A
  Assignments   40       92 – 85 B
  Final Integration Project   30       84 – 77 C
  Total Points 100    

Student Requirements


1. Participation: Actively participate in all forum postings and assignments.
2. Reading: Complete all readings and reflections.
3. Students will develop an Information Literacy lesson plan to be used with their students.

Student Academic Integrity


Participants guarantee that all academic class work is original. Any academic dishonesty or plagiarism (to take ideas, writings, etc. from another and offer them as one's own), is a violation of student academic behavior standards as outlined by our partnering colleges and universities and is subject to academic disciplinary action.

Register

To register to take TEI's Information Literacy Online course, go to the Course Registration page.