WELCOME to the Teaching and Learning Section of the CSLA Website on Information Competence. This Section is designed primarily as a resource for faculty who wish to integrate information competence in their courses.

Why should faculty consider including information competence in their courses? Never in our history has so much information been available. With nearly 2.7 billiion documents published each year and with the technological ability to access information, every student must have a mastery of information competence. (1) The CSU Academic Senate position paper, Information Competence, states that the

meaning of informtion competence has evolved to go beyond 'library literacy' or 'bibliographic instruction'... 'Information competence' is the ability to find, evaluate, use and communicate information in all of its various formats, including the plethora of electronic communications. (2) (3)

Faculty play a primary role in helping students gain essential information competence skills. This can be accomplished if information competence is integrated into course requirements.

In an effort to assist faculty to incorporate information competence in their courses, we have included links to valuable resources on the internet. Course Resources includes information on the meaning of information literacy and other course resources. Course Tools gives links to tools that can be used to develop "on-line" components in courses. CSLA Web Courses and Other Web Courses give samples of "on-line" courses or course modules.

The other two sections of this site will also be useful to faculty and to their students: Basic Internet Skills and Accessing Knowledge Resources. It is our hope that faculty will create syllabi that include links to relevant electronic resources and to this site. This can assist students to gain the necessary skills on how to access and evaluate electronic information.

We hope these resources are useful to you.

  1. Information Competence Work Group. (1995). Information Competence in the CSU: A Report
  2. Academic Senate CSU. (1998). Information Competence
  3. Academic Senate CSU. (1998). Information Competence:A University-wide Responsibility

PLEASE HELP US KEEP THIS SITE CURRENT. To be effective, this site, as well as sites it refers to, must be updated frequently. We hope you, the users, will help us in this task. If you feel something here has not helped you, or that you have found a site elsewhere that covers the instructional material better, please let us know.

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Last updated (bc) 9/2/98