First-year programs often provide critical avenues for freshmen students’ first exposure to information literacy. Collaborations between librarians and first-year programs often include orientations that are brief and limited in scope. Implementing a more rigorous approach to acquisition of information literacy skills in a first-year course requires buy-in from administration and faculty, as well as significant planning and sound instructional design in order to demonstrate learning outcomes and provide for useful assessment. This article provides a blueprint for designing and implementing a successful information literacy instruction and assessment program in the one-hour credit, first-year experience course. Assessment data demonstrates a 24-percent increase in acquisition of information literacy outcomes for the sample.This study describes an information literacy program created from scratch in which collaboration is initiated by librarians with teaching faculty in the first-year program to provide information literacy skills to incoming freshmen. The program is not only successful logistically, but is designed with assessment needs and evidence of student learning in mind. Additionally, the program design takes into account the needs of learners through utilization of a variety of learning activities and teaching tools that include group interaction, web-based tutorials, individual assignments, and peer-learning
