TILT information

Tech's Information Literacy Tutorial (TILT)

TILT is an interactive, web-based tutorial developed at the University of Texas (UT) and designed to teach first-year students basic research skills. Three modules, personalized to an Internet topic selected by the student, introduce students to selecting sources appropriate for academic-level research, searching periodical indexes and search engines, and evaluating and citing information.

Each module takes about 30 minutes. The content was created to appeal to a traditional-aged freshman student. The original cartoon images provide quirky visual representations of the content to aid recall of information. The tone of the text is fun and, in places, irreverent. Text length for each page is short, easy to read, and free of library jargon. All content was reviewed by a panel of UT faculty and students, as well as run through usability tests with UT undergraduates.

Because TILT teaches generic concepts and skills, it does not teach the mechanics of specific VT research tools such as Addison and our periodical databases. However, TILT could be used in any course which has a research component, either as a required or extra-credit assignment. Ideally, TILT should be assigned and completed before students begin their research project and before they attend a library instruction session.

(The above description was taken in part from TILT's "Site Philosophy" web page at http://tilt.lib.utsystem.edu/yourtilt/docs/philosophy.html and from the Faculty Information Sheet from the Townsend Library of New Mexico State University - Alamagordo at http://alamo.nmsu.edu/library/nwtilt.html)