Layering Knowledge: Information Literacy as Critical Thinking in the Literature Classroom

Abstract

The Workshop In June 2004, the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM), supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, sponsored an information literacy workshop for literature faculty. The workshop, attended by faculty, librarians, and instructional technologists from several of the private liberal arts colleges in the ACM consortium, provided a collegial setting for discussing best practices for information literacy instruction. Specifically, the group worked together to develop assignments that teach information literacy and literature in mutually reinforcing ways, assignments that move beyond the research paper so that information literacy forms a symbiotic relationship with the literature we teach. We discussed ways to use information literacy instruction not merely to train students in the skill set of locating relevant information for the purposes of literary studies but rather to foster in them better thinking and reading habits of mind. The assignments we present below developed out of this workshop. They reflect our commitment to approaching information literacy as a mode of critical thinking and thereby to encouraging its practice as a habit of active learning.