SAILS, Take 2 - An Exploration of the “Build Your Own Test” Standardized IL Testing Option for Canadian Institutions

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by jay

Several standardized and validated information literacy (IL) tests exist for U.S. post-secondary contexts, yet fewer options serve institutions beyond the U.S. This article reports a second study at a Canadian university using the Build Your Own Test (BYOT), a customizable version of the SAILS Individual Scores test, to assess undergraduate IL learning. It weighs the pros and cons of SAILS Cohort versus BYOT, and finds BYOT enables better measurement of individual students’ IL changes during a single term.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Communications in Information Literacy | Volume 12 | Issue 1 | Article 3 | | --- | --- | 2018 SAILS, Take 2: An Exploration of the “Build Your Own Test”Standardized IL Testing Option for Canadian Institutions Rumi Y. Graham University of Lethbridge, [grahry@uleth.ca](grahry@uleth.ca)[ ](grahry@uleth.ca)Nichole Eva University of Lethbridge, [nicole.eva@uleth.ca](nicole.eva@uleth.ca)[ ](nicole.eva@uleth.ca)Sandra Cowan [sandra.cowan@uleth.ca](sandra.cowan@uleth.ca), [sandra.cowan@uleth.ca](sandra.cowan@uleth.ca) Let us knowhow access to this document benefits you. Follow this and additional works at: [https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/comminfolit](https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/comminfolit) Part of the Information Literacy Commons Recommended Citation Graham, R. Y., Eva, N., & Cowan, S. (2018). SAILS, Take 2: An Exploration of the “Build Your Own Test” Standardized IL Testing Option for Canadian Institutions. Communications in Information Literacy, 12 (1), 19-35. Retrieved from [https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/comminfolit/vol12/iss1/3](https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/comminfolit/vol12/iss1/3) This Research Article is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Communications in Information Literacy by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. For more information, [please contact](please contact pdxscholar@pdx.edu)[ pdxscholar@pdx.edu](please contact pdxscholar@pdx.edu). Graham et al.: SAILS, Take 2: An Exploration of the “Build Your Own Test” Standa COMMUNICATIONS IN INFORMATION LITERACY | VOL. 12, NO. 1 | 2018 19 SAILS, Take 2: An Exploration of the “Build Your Own Test”Standardized IL Testing Option for Canadian Institution Rumi Graham, University of Lethbridge Nicole Eva, University of Lethbridge Sandra Cowan, University of Lethbridge Abstract Several standardized and validated information literacy (IL) tests have been developed for use [in U.S. post-secondary contexts](in U.S. post-secondary contexts), but fewer choices exist for schools outside of the U.S. In an earlier study (Cowan, Graham, & Eva, 2016) the authors explored IL testing at a Canadian university using the international version of the SAILS Cohort test. This article describes a second study that used the Build Your Own Test (BYOT)—a customizable version of the SAILS Individual Scores test—to evaluate undergraduate students’ IL learning. Pros and cons of using the Cohort and BYOT versions of SAILS are discussed, with the aim of providing guidance for other schools interested in pursuing such testing. The authors found the BYOT allowed them to better gauge the extent to which individual students’ IL ability levels changed over the course of one term. Keywords: information literacy, standardized tests, SAILS, Canadian institutions, liberal education, undergraduate students Graham, R., Eva, N., & Cowan, S. (2018) . SAILS, take 2: An exploration of the “Build Your Own Test” standardized IL testing option for Canadian institutions. Communications in Information Literacy, 12(1), 19-35. Copyright for articles published in Communications in Information Literacy is retained by the author(s). Author(s) also extend to Communications in Information Literacy the right to redistribute this article via other scholarly resources and bibliographic databases. This extension allows the authors'copyrighted content to be included in some databases that are distributed and maintained by for-profit companies. All other rights of redistribution are licensed by Communications in Information Literacy under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BYNC-SA 4 .0) . Graham, Eva, & Cowan [ ARTICLE ] SAILS Take 2 Published by PDXScholar, 2018 Communications in Information Literacy, Vol. 12, Iss. 1 [2018], Art. 3 20 COMMUNICATIONS IN INFORMATION LITERACY | VOL. 12, NO. 1, 2018 SAILS, Take 2: An Exploration of the “Build Your Own Test”Standardized IL

FAQs

What problem does the study address about information literacy assessment in Canada?

The study addresses the limited testing choices outside the U.S. and the difficulty of determining individual learning gains when the SAILS Cohort option reports mainly aggregated comparative results.

What is the Build Your Own Test (BYOT) used in the research?

BYOT is a customizable version of the SAILS Individual Scores test that allows institutions to hand-pick questions from the SAILS question bank for evaluating undergraduate students’ IL learning.

How did the authors evaluate students’ IL learning using BYOT?

They used a pre-test/post-test approach to assess mainly first-year undergraduates, comparing how individual students’ IL ability levels changed over the course of one term.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by jay