2023 STEM Library Biology Syllabi Combined.pptx

At Baylor University, biology is one of the most popular concentrations with approximately 1200 majors or 8% of the undergraduate population. In addition to their majors, the department also teaches students who are fulfilling their general education requirements, pre-med students, and students who take biology for their majors such as anthropology, biochemistry, bioinformatics, chemistry, environmental science, geology, health science studies, and nursing. Biology majors are also not required to take ENG 130 Writing and Academic Inquiry Seminars (i.e. freshman composition). In addition, there are three different tracks for biology majors so no upper level class is required for all majors. All of these factors make it difficult to determine when is the best time to introduce subject specific information literacy to biology majors.
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We use the Syllabi Information Literacy Miner https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1N778ot87GI-wJSQHpjRJWkplL4NL5HWb?usp=sharing to help us determine which instructors to approach to offer information literacy guidance. Approximately 500 syllabi from Spring 2018 to Fall 2022 were analyzed. There were approximately 100 courses and 200 distinct course-instructor pairs. These courses ranged from 1000 level service courses to 5000 level graduate seminars. Some of these courses have multiple sections with multiple instructors in a single semester; others alternate instructors in different semesters; a few were only offered once in the 14 terms. Out of these approximately 65 courses and 140 course-instructor pairs were flagged as including information literacy terms of these approximately 40 courses and less than 50 course-instructor pairs were for undergraduate classes.