Measuring the impact of an information literacy session

Measuring the impact of information literacy teaching on student research behaviour and ultimately on student achievement is uncommon in practice and has methodological problems. If achievable such a measure would guide planning and delivery of further sessions and provide further evidence of effectiveness for faculty academics and Student and Learning Services senior management. Besides immediate session evaluation no evidence of impact on formally assessed work had been undertaken before, therefore there was and is limited information, at least within the Development and Society Faculty Support Team, to confirm learning after the period of the session itself. The research looked at the development of student information literacy abilities, before and after a teaching intervention, as measured by the scholarly nature of references as a proportion of total references. The results indicated a significant improvement from a Scholarly Index of 25% in the assignment before the intervention to 76% in the one afterwards. There are still issues with the methodology as it does not isolate other factors such as other interventions and autonomous learning. However it does provide one indication of a positive outcome of the sessions and for further research.