The faculty listed below will coordinate the work proposed.

Librarian Charity Hope, liaison to the Biology Department, brings to the proposed project significant experience developing and advocating for information literacy initiatives. Since joining the San Jose State University Library in August 2000, she has served on the University Library Information Competency Task Force, a small group charged with developing a coordinated, progressive program to help all students meet information competence learning objectives. Goals for the Task Force include assessing and improving current efforts, and working to better integrate information competence learning into departmental and general education curricula. In her previous position as Reference & Digital Initiatives Librarian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Hope was a lead contributor to several information literacy projects, including a set of interactive, Web-based information literacy instruction modules designed in partnership with teaching Faculty in the College Writing Project for first year students; a research partnership between the library and the computer science department to develop classroom lesson plans and a search engine interface to encourage the development of information literacy in 4th grade children; and the development of instructional content for an online, credit course in information literacy to be offered in Spring 2001.

Dr. Robert Hyde has developed for general education, upper division, and graduate biology courses a project that addresses ACRL standards. This project, done in groups of three to four students, is assessed during each stage of a student's progress. Assessments are made with scoring rubrics for the following: (1) a library activity involving searching for citations, (2) annotated bibliographies, (3) concept maps depicting the methods, results, and biologic processes studied in primary research articles, (4) individual written summaries based in part on the concept map, and (5) a concept map and written summary prepared by a group, which integrates the work done by each member to address a group's research focus question. Each group then evaluates, with an additional scoring rubric, oral presentations given by each member of peer groups. Having the groups peer-edit their work with the rubrics before submitting final reports promotes the learning of self-assessment. The concept maps promote critical thinking and organizational skills. These assignments cover most of the ACRL standards and have successfully been implemented with up to 95 students in a course.

Sulekha Anand is an assistant professor of biostatistics in the Department of Biological Sciences. She is the course coordinator for Biology 100W, Scientific Communication, which is required for all Biological Sciences students. This course is instrumental in helping undergraduate biology students develop information competence. Students develop skills in searching electronic databases such as Medline and Biological Abstracts for scientific journal articles and books. They use these searches to gather information about specific biological topics with the goal of writing in-depth research papers on these topics. Students write a literature review (review article) and primary research article, along with a number of smaller assignments. Students develop the ability to hone in on information relevant to their topics, and filter out irrelevant information. Students also develop the ability to distinguish between credible and unreliable sources of printed and electronic information. Dr. Anand also teaches two related, required courses, Computer Literacy in Biology and Hypothesis Testing. Students develop an extensive repertoire of computer skills in Computer Literacy in Biology using tutorial manuals written specifically for the course. Students use many of these skills in the computer based laboratory component of the Hypothesis Testing course, in which they perform in-depth data analyses for a variety of experimental designs.

Dr. David Matthes has taught a course in bioinformatics for the last two years in which the ability to obtain biological information from internet-based databases using bioinformatics tools is the focus. How to make sense of the data obtained, especially how to evaluate its quality and relevance, is emphasized. It is his belief that scientists are moving into an era that is far more data-rich than ever before and that a necessary skill of any scientist is how to mine the freely available data for that which can answer or inspire questions in the scientist's teaching or research area.