Faculty Services
The JSC Faculty Handbook for Information Literacy
Based on the Oberlin College model, this guide outlines strategies for including information literacy concepts in your courses.
TILT: Questions and Answers
My students are savvy users of the Internet and think TILT is a waste of time. It is too basic for them. Why should I require them to work through the modules?
Many students surveyed said that it is a good review for freshmen. With TILT as a foundation, we introduce terms and concepts that are essential for finding, using and evaluating information sources of all types. We have asked that faculty offer TILT as extra credit. Students can retake the quizzes as often as necessary to get a perfect score.
Why was Blackboard used for mounting the TILT tutorial?
Large universities have built complex registration databases to monitor usage and send quiz results to professors. With the VSC investment in a course management system, we found it feasible to use Blackboard where the assessment tools such as a gradebook and survey instruments are available at the time of course creation. We can copy the TILT assessments and modules into your Blackboard course whenever you wish. You may monitor the gradebook to assess your students’ exposure to information literacy concepts.
How long does it take?
There are three modules plus an introduction. Each takes approximately 30 minutes to complete. Following each section there is a review and a quiz. We have also developed a survey to gauge student interest and solicit input. You can, as the faculty member, adjust the settings for the quizzes in Blackboard. In other words, the quizzes can be timed or password protected.
How do I access the quiz results and the survey?
All VSC courses are created with an online component in Blackboard.™ As a faculty member, you may request that the TILT modules, the assessments and the survey be copied into your Blackboard course. The assessments and the survey are monitored in the gradebook section. VSC students may use TILT on the Web, but the quizzes and survey are available only in the password protected Blackboard course management system. Preview the revised version of TILT (Spring, 2007) at http://libraries.vsc.edu/newtilt.
What are the pedagogical principles behind TILT?
Librarians throughout the University of Texas system collaborated on the development of TILT over several years. Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, the original tutorial was created by an instructional designer (Beth Dupuis), a curriculum coordinator (Clara Fowler) and a technical developer (Brent Simpson). For more information, please refer to the article below**, which is in full text in the Wilson Education Full Text database from the Library Web site.
When should TILT be offered?
At the University of Texas-Austin, all entering students were required to work through the modules before meeting with librarians for more in-depth research sessions. Again, the idea was to introduce concepts and terms to establish a baseline for information literacy instruction. We propose to use that model in JSC’s First Year Seminars.
We continually revise and expand the VSC adaptation of TILT with the expectation that we will add other modules, streamline the navigation within sections, and improve interactivity. We welcome your suggestions.
**Orme, W.A. (2004, May). A study of the residual impact of the Texas Information Literacy Tutorial on the information seeking ability of first year college students. College & Research Libraries, 65(3), 205-215.