Information Literacy Program - EN11 & EN12

The vast majority of freshmen attend our mandatory introductory information literacy program through their English EN 11 and EN 12 classes. This program consists of two sessions, one in the fall semester and another in the spring.

• In the first session, students develop familiarity with a range of basic library resources and services of immediate and future relevance. Activities include a "choose your own adventure" movie of library services titled Fairfield Beach: the Library, small group exercises in the library catalog and the Academic OneFile database, class discussion of search techniques and results, an introduction to the CQ Researcher database (time permitting), and plenty of hands-on practice and Q&A. The web-based tutorial, Critically Evaluating Information, is assigned to students at the end of class. Students may consult the tutorial in tandem with an EN 11 Web Companion to enhance the classroom instruction.

• In the second session, students work through a Research Plan , which entails articulating their topic, selecting appropriate print and electronic background materials, brainstorming keywords and synonyms, distinguishing scholarly journals from popular magazines, choosing subject specialized databases to find literary criticism related to an assigned course text, and forumlating database search queries using Boolean operators and truncation, among other techniques. An EN 12 Web Companion enhances the classroom instruction. The web-based tutorial, The Plagiarism Court, is assigned to students at the end of class.

The Information Literacy Program is planned by Ramona Islam and Jin Wu in close consultation with the Instruction Librarians. For information regarding this program, please call Ramona Islam at (203) 254-4000 ext. 2138 or e-mail her at rislam@mail.fairfield.edu.