Using rubrics to assess information literacy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report the results of an assessment study of undergraduate students' achievement of information literacy learning outcomes in a first‐year research and writing course.Design/methodology/approach – The object of the assessment was a group of bibliographies compiled by the students. The librarian and other faculty members created a scoring rubric based on course learning objectives and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. The rubric was used to score the bibliographies to determine the students' levels of mastery of the objectives, their use of library‐licensed vs freely available web sources, and differences among the classroom learning environments.Findings – The paper finds that students' academic work is a useful gauge of their achievement of information literacy‐based learning outcomes. A rubric is a valuable assessment tool that provides a reliable and objective method for anal...