To build an information literacy program, we need to better understand our students' information literacy skills. To this end, Williams College Libraries participated in Project SAILS, a research project initiated by Kent State University which aims to develop a standardized assessment tool for measuring students' information literacy competency.
During the spring 2004 semester, we invited a random sample of 600 students across all class levels to participate in Project SAILS by completing the web-based version of the assessment tool. Of the 600 students, we received 193 usable responses. Students were tested on 45 randomly selected items from the SAILS test bank of 126 questions. Each question was designed to test competencies based on the Association of College and Research Libraries' Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. The questions were further categorized into 12 skill sets:
*skill sets 1, 5, and 8 contain too few test items for a meaningful analysis.
View Sample Questions (Williams users only)
View Study Results (Williams users only).
For additional information, contact .