Student Learning Outcomes
University Libraries Instructional Mission Statement
The University Libraries Instruction Program supports the educational mission of Texas A&M University and the missions of the University Libraries for discovery and learning through instructional initiatives that develop skills for information discovery, scholarship, and academic excellence. Working collaboratively with faculty, students, and the community, the Libraries’ Instruction Program promotes critical thinking and challenges learners to consider their role as consumers, producers, and creators of information. Learners will be empowered to effectively identify, find, evaluate, create and ethically use information in their academic pursuits, in their future careers, and as life-long learners in an information-rich society.
Preamble
- Libraries are concerned with the creation, organization, and dissemination of information in its many forms, types, and formalities of publication. This could include traditional formats such as printed publications, as well as data, media, and informal communication, among others.
- Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) are vital to the Texas A&M University Libraries’ instruction program and engagement in the educational mission of the university. The complex information environment in which we live presents problems of systematic exclusion and marginalizes some voices while privileging others. Library instructors advocate for active engagement with EDI in our teaching and learning.
- These program-level learning outcomes are intended to guide the library instruction program. They were developed through a reflective process of considering the University Libraries’ teaching practice, the Texas A&M University student learning outcomes, and professional documents such as the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy. The outcomes are intentionally broad in scope in order to allow flexibility for a wide variety of instructional contexts and audiences.
- These program-level outcomes are meant to be descriptive and not prescriptive. Individual library instructors and/or units are encouraged to work with the program level outcomes to inform their own practices.
Student Learning Outcomes
After participating in library instruction, students will be able to:
Collection & Organization
Develop effective strategies for collecting, organizing, managing, or preserving information.
Creation in Context
Account for audience, genre, format and norms when creating information.
Critical Evaluation
Critically evaluate information in light of its complexities of authority and production, and its relationship to existing knowledge.
Effective Searching
Formulate effective strategies to find relevant resources, while engaging in reflective and recursive searching practices.
Information Creators
Articulate their individual and collaborative roles as information creators, acknowledging their own motivations, biases, rights, and responsibilities.
Information Ethics
Respect information creation as intellectual labor, through ethical use and attribution.
Information in Context
Identify how the production of and access to information are mediated by social, cultural, political, economic, and disciplinary factors.
Informed Selection
Intentionally select information sources, methods, or tools in order to appropriately meet a need, answer a question, or solve a problem.
Question Development
Develop questions for investigation, taking into account existing knowledge or information gaps.
Resource Awareness
Identify library and information services, facilities, and collections, articulating how they are organized both digitally and physically.
