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Educating for Evidence Based Decisions in Engineering: The view as Librarian and Instructor

The First Year Engineering program at Purdue University is regularly reviewed and revised to adapt to the needs of the students, feedback from teaching faculty, and the changing needs of the university curriculum. In the last year, a unifying theme was added to the class to help tie all the different activities together. That theme was “evidence based decision making in engineering”, a perfect fit for introducing and discussing information literacy many times throughout the semester, rather than in a single, isolated session. As instructor for one section of the class, the author identifies benefits to including this message throughout the semester, evidenced by the resources students used as seen during spot reviews of homework assignments and when listening to group work during class. Post-class reflections recorded by the instructor on how class went and what students struggled with, particularly related to identifying information needs and appropriately supporting those needs with evidence, form part of the data for analysis. A content analysis of the common PowerPoint slides provided for all sections of the class identifies when in the semester the information content is included and in what context. This analysis will produce an outline of mechanisms that could be used in other settings to introduce information literacy content and reinforce the need for quality evidence in making decisions. Introduction Embedding information literacy content into the curriculum has been presented as an ideal way to teach the information in a meaningful way for the students . At Purdue University there is not a single course all new students must take, so it is important for the librarians to work with the first year engineering program to ensure the engineering students get an early introduction to the use of published resources in engineering design. The first year engineering course at Purdue University is taken by all incoming and transfer students who intend to major in engineering. Course enrollment is around 1,600 students divided between 14 sections of the class. Each section of the course has 120 students as the maximum enrollment, and most sections begin the semester at class capacity. The course has a faculty coordinator and a team of instructional support staff to help keep the sections aligned, coordinate common exams, and maintain the course blackboard site. There are two classrooms used to teach, a studio classroom, where there are laptop computers available for every other student (60 computers supplied), and a laboratory setting where there are 120 laptops available. Students may also bring their own laptops, which enable the class to be taught in the studio classroom with a reasonable expectation that each student has access to a computer. Instructors have some flexibility in how information is presented during a class or shuffled between class sessions, provided the content is covered in a timely fashion to meet preparation expectations for in class activities, homework, and exams that are common to all sections of the course. Quizzes are given at the discretion of the section instructor and are used in a couple of ways, to ensure the online modules have been viewed prior to class, and to gather summative information about how well students have learned the content covered in class. In the fall semester 2012, for one section of the course, a librarian had the opportunity to be the instructor of record, not a secondary instructor or limited to participating in teaching just the information literacy part of the content and the grading. This option was available since the librarian-author has multiple engineering degrees as well as a MLS degree. Purpose This paper reviews the student work from one section of the first year engineering course related to information literacy. The analysis provides an empirical measure of how well students are able to complete various information literacy tasks required of them throughout the semester.