The abundance of information available to us every day continues to increase, largely because of society’s reliance on the internet. While the internet provides access to a wealth of information, information may be inaccurate or irrelevant because anyone can publish content on the internet. As a result, it is critical for individuals to develop information literacy, which includes the skills to gather information, assess its quality, and use it effectively. Information literacy is especially important for engineers because of the need to be lifelong learners in order to adapt to the needs of society and technological innovations. Despite the importance of information literacy, it largely remains absent from undergraduate engineering curriculum. In this work, we developed two modules that were implemented and assessed at two time points in two different first-year engineering courses. These modules focus on defining information and providing a framework to assess the information. Each module includes a short video followed by a handout with questions designed to support students in making connections between the videos and their assigned design project. The development of the modules was informed by current research within the area of information literacy as well as the first two authors’ experience teaching first-year engineering students. Assessment data from the two implementations show that students were able to identify a range of resources they used to get information for their design project. While some students were able to assess quality of information using a structured process, many students’ assessments were superficial and needed more time and instruction to improve. In addition to discussing our assessment outcomes, we provide a reflection on our personal experience implementing the modules to support the implementation of these modules by other instructors. These modules are available for use, testing, and adaptation in other first-year engineering contexts.

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Courtney Faber

Rachel Ellestad

Alexis Walsh