A. Participants
Librarian: Joy He, Public Services Librarian
Faculty: M. Saif Rahman, Assistant Professor of Economics
B. Description of the project
We propose a project for the spring semester of 2003 that would integrate information literacy i nto the course in Economic Systems. This course provides a comparative analysis of the principles, organization, and performance of the major economic systems across the world. It focuses on the more developed systems, examining variants of both capitalism and socialism experienced across Asia, Europe, and North America through the past century. Such comparative study is inherently information intensive and involves the exploration of both cross-country data and the existing academic literature. In this context, a systematic approach to integrating information literacy into the ourse would greatly benefit the learning experience of students.
Under the present format of the course, students learn about the evolving economic systems in selected countries, including the United States, Japan, Germany, the former Soviet Union, China, and a sample of transition economies in Eastern Europe and Central Eurasia. With these cases serving as key examples, the overarching goal of the course is to help students (i) understand cross-country diversity in economic practices and organization, and (ii) learn the use of economic information in grasping the nature of any given system. Naturally, time constraint does limit the scope of the course and makes it difficult to cover the characteristics and experiences of some other notable economies, especially in Western Europe, Scandinavia, and the Pacific region. Furthermore, the average student taking this course is typically unaware of the various information resources available in print or online, and this limits their ability to learn about other economies on their own. Since the volume of readily available information relevant to the subject is large, it would be of great benefit to students if they learn how to access, utilize, and present such information. An information literacy component in the course would therefore aim to teach these skills to the students.
The proposed project, if successful, would develop students' knowledge of information resources, their research skills, and their presentation skills. This would involve multiple training sessions dealing with the availability and use of information resources, followed by project assignments. The sessions will be jointly designed by the participants listed under item A and will be presented to students by Joy He, who has had substantial experience in working with economics students and faculty in the context of information resources. Possible resources for information include, but are not limited to, the following:
In addition to teaching students how to locate useful information electronically or in print, we hope to develop the students' skills in
As part of the course requirements, each student will have a project assignment that will require her to collect socioeconomic data for a given country and then present the information in the form of a written or an oral report. In addition, the course will feature article presentations by students and will require the use of Powerpoint as a visual aid in their presentations. We plan to prepare a location on ERes or the Web to make the relevant materials for this project available to students and to also feature the submitted projects.
C. Timeline
Fall 2002: development of course material
Spring 2003: information literacy instruction and corresponding assignments and projects
Summer 2003: evaluation
D. Faculty time
The faculty time required to select, organize, and evaluate the materials and projects associated with information literacy is expected to be relatively significant. A rough estimate of the time spent would be about two weeks of preparation prior to the semester of instruction, four hours each week during the semester of instruction, and a week to process the evaluation.