Bolognese, J., & Smyser, B. (2022, August), Assessing Information Literacy in Capstone Design Projects: Where are students still struggling?  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40519

\bibitem{asee_peer_40519}
  Bolognese, J., \& Smyser, B. (2022, August), \emph{Assessing Information Literacy in Capstone Design Projects: Where are students still struggling?}
  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN.
  10.18260/1-2--40519

Jodi Bolognese and Bridget Smyser.  "Assessing Information Literacy in Capstone Design Projects: Where are students still struggling?".  2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August.  ASEE Conferences, 2022.  https://peer.asee.org/40519 Internet.  16 Dec, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_40519}
  Jodi Bolognese and Bridget Smyser.
  "Assessing Information Literacy in Capstone Design Projects: Where are students still struggling?".
  \emph{2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2022.
  https://peer.asee.org/40519 Internet.  16 Dec, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_40519
author = "Jodi Bolognese and Bridget Smyser"
title = "Assessing Information Literacy in Capstone Design Projects: Where are students still struggling?"
booktitle = "2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2022"
month = "August"
address = "Minneapolis, MN"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/40519}
number = {10.18260/1-2--40519}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Mechanical Engineering students at Northeastern University are introduced to research skills and information literacy at several points during the undergraduate curriculum, including a recently introduced first-year engineering workshop and a required technical writing in the discipline course. There are also two writing intensive courses that require background research to inform lab reports and research presentations. When students reach Capstone Design, project reports show vastly different levels of proficiency in information literacy skills. The goal of this study was to assess which information literacy skills were poorly learned and retained by the students, in order to inform potential adjustments in the earlier curriculum. Additional support in Capstone Design may also be developed based on these results.

A sample of 26 reports from a Capstone 1 class conducted in Summer 2021 were rated using a customized version of the VALUE rubric for Information Literacy (IL). Results show that students were most proficient in paraphrasing from sources, selecting high quality sources, choosing a variety of information sources, and citing sources accurately. They struggled more with higher order, more contextually dependent skills like determining the extent of information needed and synthesizing information from multiple sources to achieve a specific purpose such as justifying a course of action. Additionally, project type was observed to have more of an impact on IL rubric scores than students’ previous participation in IL workshops or writing intensive courses. Results suggest that more practice with higher order skills in context of the engineering design process at additional points during the curriculum may be necessary to enable students to retain these skills. Additional recommendations based on the analysis include making IL requirements in the Capstone grading rubric more explicit and granular, and combining engineering subject matter experts and engineering librarians to collectively score students’ work. This may be a path to enabling more rubric-based assessments of IL in the engineering discipline.
AU  - Jodi Bolognese
AU  - Bridget Smyser
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Assessing Information Literacy in Capstone Design Projects: Where are students still struggling?
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/40519
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--40519
ER  -