How do students’ information literacy skills change over the course of their undergraduate education? We assume or at least hope they will improve. But do they? And if so, by how much? At the University of the Pacific, we are using the SAILS (Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) Test to assess undergraduate students’ information literacy skills and to see how they have changed over time. The SAILS Test is a multiple-choice test that has been used by more than 200 universities across the world. According to their website, the SAILS Test can “determine how well your students can navigate the complex world of information” and can “identify strengths and weaknesses of your students' information literacy skills.” Librarians at Pacific administered the test to the same group of first year students in 2014-2015 and as seniors in 2017-2018. I presented the initial results, including data about first-year students, at the 2016 MLA national meeting. This presentation will be a follow-up with recent data from senior students. In addition to discovering how students’ skills have changed over time, the data will be disaggregated based on demographics, including major, gender, ethnicity, transfer status, and nationality, which will speak to the conference theme of diversity and inclusion. I will also discuss the ways in which we plan to use the data to further improve our students’ information literacy skills.
