This paper provides guidelines for writing effective information fluency assignments, derived from face-to-face collaboration with faculty/librarians from two regional universities. The authors show a planning matrix for keying information fluency assignments to university, TAC of ABET Criterion 2, and program outcomes. Examples of preliminary attempts to gather indirect measures of students' information fluency indicators are described, drawing on work from both institutions. Information fluency is a term adopted by the authors as a substitute for the more familiar term, information literacy (IL), which "may be seen as using information technology; as a combination of information and technology skills; as acquiring mental models of information systems; as a process; as an amalgam of skills, attitudes and knowledge; as the ability to learn; or as a complex of ways of experiencing information use". In addition, information literacy is a vital new area of teaching scholarship. This paper describes the characteristics of effective research assignments that encompass the broader sense of information literacy as knowledge acquisition and management, with related sub-skills. The authors, in discussions with faculty and librarians at another regional university, reviewed various definitions of information literacy and concluded that the terms imply a negative: those who do not qualify as information-literate are then "illiterate," a word with significant social stigma. Further, the term "literacy" implies that the capability, once acquired, is in some manner an attribute of the individual. The linguistic term, "fluency," borrowed from second-language acquisition, is adopted throughout the remainder of this paper as more appropriate.
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