Creating Trails: Tool for Real-Time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills

This article describes Tool for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (TRAILS), a freely available, online tool designed to measure the information literacy skills of high school students. It is based on information literacy competencies for ninth-graders found in the "Ohio Academic Content Standards" (Ohio Department of Education 2001) and in "Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning" (AASL and AECT 1998). It is designed as a classroom tool that enables a library media specialist to easily obtain a snapshot of skill levels in order to better tailor instructional efforts. TRAILS was created by academic librarians at Kent State University in conjunction with library media specialists and is one of the numerous projects of the Institute for Library and Information Literacy Education (ILILE), a federally funded initiative through the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the U.S. Department of Education. Objectives, development, use, and future of TRAILS are discussed.