Teaching an online information literacy course

Academic librarians have been creating Web‐based tutorials in support of their institutions’ distance education course and remote students for some time. For‐credit, distance education, information literacy classes for undergraduate students, however, have not yet begun to appear in significant numbers. In creating such a course, LIBY 3200, California State University, Hayward, sought to meet the needs of its students better and to explore the potential of distance education. Findings from experience teaching LIBY 3200 suggest that many students are less prepared to function – technologically and cognitively – in a Web‐based distance education environment than might be predicted. Design and delivery of course content proved time‐consuming, with few possibilities for short‐cuts, and teaching methods had to be adapted to help the students become autonomous learners, meaningfully capable of self‐directed learning in a Web‐based environment.