The University of Denver Libraries’ Joseph I. Moreland Fund for Information Literacy Programs is designed to support the Libraries’ goal of integrating research education into all undergraduate majors. The program awards instructional development grants to instructors who would like to design or revise an undergraduate major course in order to infuse an entire course with information literacy and research skills. Research strategies should be integrated with academic content and sequenced throughout the quarter to allow students to learn, reinforce, and master these important skills. Throughout the course design process, the instructor collaborates closely with a librarian to integrate information literacy concepts. The grant is limited to undergraduate major courses, as described below.
Grants Purpose
DU undergraduate students are introduced to information literacy concepts in their first year at the University, but students need additional and repeated opportunities to find and evaluate information, to learn how information is disseminated and gathered in a disciplinary field, to examine their own methods and skills in seeking and using information, and to explore the economic, social, legal, and ethical issues that arise from new methods of producing and distributing information.
The purpose of these grants is to support course instructors and librarians in applying their disciplinary expertise to creating and reenergizing courses within the majors that foster critical engagement in research and information use. These courses will present students with opportunities to engage critically with sources in order to accomplish specific purposes within or beyond a given discipline. It is our assumption that proposed courses will not focus exclusively on information literacy, but rather will incorporate it into the examination of discipline-specific subject matter. Such courses, whatever their subject matter, will teach students to select, evaluate, acknowledge, and challenge sources; to identify and articulate those sources’ arguments; to determine effective ways to use those sources for their own purposes; and to build upon and respond to the research of others. The larger purpose of these projects is to support students in strengthening their research and critical thinking skills within their major. Although courses that have a strong writing component are well-suited to teaching the research process, information literacy can be appropriately taught through coursework in any discipline and at any level.
The Association of College and Research Libraries broadly defines information literacy as “the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning.” University Libraries especially welcomes proposals from faculty who are interested in exploring new methods for teaching a range of literacies (data literacy, visual literacy, media literacy, etc.) within the majors.
