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 fall semester of 2002 to integrate information literacy into the course in Principles of Economics. This course introduces the fundamental concepts and principles in economic analysis, covering both microeconomic behavior and macroeconomic outcomes. The primary purpose of the course is two-fold: to teach students the basic concepts and principles that will help them better understand everyday economic issues; and to give them a basic foundation in formal economic analysis that will help them in more advanced economics courses. The course therefore targets an audience that consists of two groups of students: those who plan to select economics as their major or minor and those who do not plan to pursue additional economics courses. Yet, given the global dimensions and also the changing nature of socioeconomic issues in the contemporary world, it is important that all students become aware of the economic diversity both within and across societies. In this context, integrating an information literacy component into the Principles course would greatly benefit the present learning experience of the students and their future learning potential, too.
Since we address microeconomics and macroeconomics principles in a single introductory course, we typically face some limitations when it comes to covering special topics or accommodating special projects. Therefore, the initial task in developing the information literacy component would be to creatively incorporate training sessions and design an assignment that would promote information literacy without significantly compromising the existing course content. The next task would be to identify the set of information resources that would be appropriate for the target audience. Since the volume of readily available information concerning economics is large, it would be of great benefit to students if they become aware of at least some of the resources and also learn how to access, utilize, and present such information.
The proposed project, if successful, would develop students' knowledge of available information resources in economics and their basic research skills. We anticipate that this would involve multiple training sessions, which would deal with the availability and use of information resources, followed by a project assignment. 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 in the past. We have not yet identified the appropriate set of information resources, but possible resources 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, students will have a project assignment that will require them to collect some basic socioeconomic data and present that information in some standardized written form. 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 results of the submitted assignments.
C. Timeline
Summer 2002: development of course material
Fall 2002: information literacy instruction and corresponding project
Spring 2003: evaluation
D. Faculty time
We expect that the faculty time required in selecting, organizing, and evaluating the materials and the project assignment associated with information literacy will be relatively significant. A rough estimate of the time spent would be about two weeks of preparation during the summer, four hours per week during the fall semester, and a week to process the evaluation.