English for Academic Purposes Faculty Resource Guide

If you would like to incorporate critical thinking about information into your course goals, objectives, or outcomes, here is a list of recommended goals based on the course syllabus. As always, you can contact the EAP librarian to tailor information literacy outcomes to your course, request assignment specific assistance, and request instruction sessions. 

Recommended Information Literacy Goals for Pathway 1*

• Students will be able to explore library research tools that allow them to select a topic to write about.
• Students will be able to recognize resources that are appropriate to use to give background information about a topic. 
• Students will be able to seek guidance from experts such as librarians, experts, and instructors. 

*These goals are aligned with the Association of College and Research Library's Framework for Information Literacy.

Sample Activities + Assessments

1. Brainstorm ways to choose a topic as a class. Have student complete a worksheet that answers the questions: what topic is it that you would like to research? Why are you interested in this topic? Who, what, where, how? Talk about how choosing topics that interest us and that we know a little something about is one way to do this. Discuss how we can use prior knowledge to build upon our research and find information using library resources.
2. Demonstrate various search tools such as CQ Researcher and GVRL. Discuss how these resources can be used to discover information about a topic, and then used as a jumping off point to find more information about that topic.

If you would like to incorporate critical thinking about information into your course goals, objectives, or outcomes, here is a list of recommended goals based on the course syllabus. As always, you can contact the EAP librarian to tailor information literacy outcomes to your course, request assignment specific assistance, and request instruction sessions. 

Recommended Information Literacy Goals for Pathway 2*

• Students will be able to identify interested parties, such as scholars, organizations, governments, and industries, who might produce information about a topic and then determine how to access that information.
• Students will be able to utilize search strategies in order to find information on their topics in library databases. 
• Students will be able to understand that they have a responsibility to cite their sources.
• Students will be able to seek guidance from experts such as librarians, experts, and instructors. 

*These goals are aligned with the Association of College and Research Library's Framework for Information Literacy.

Sample Activities + Assessments

1. Write a sample topic on the white board. Lead the students in a group brainstorm about where they might find information about that topic asking questions such as: Who might care about this topic? Who would want to write and/or read about information pertaining to this topic? Where might you find this information?
2. After students have a discussion about the types of resources they might find about a particular topic, have them search for that information using Google and/or a library database like SLUth (a demo of SLUth should be done here). Students should identify keywords or phrases that they can use to search, and also be familiar with choosing specific types of information using database features.
3. Citation is an important part of the research process, and it can be introduced to students through the World of Citation activity. This activity starts with a discussion about how, why, or if people cite sources in academic papers in students' home countries. Next, we will use the analogy of the address in a discussion to help students understand why having a complete and correct citation is important, and also learn why in-text citations are an important guide map for the reader. This demonstrates the how to cite as well as the why.