Information literacy of doctoral students in engineering and the librarian’s role (original) (raw)
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Academic librarians often tend to direct information literacy initiatives for undergraduate students while overlooking researchers on postgraduate level. The paper reports on a survey case study conducted in 2015 at a leading South African university's engineering faculty. The mixed methods study involved participants from seven departments and collected quantitative and qualitative data. Participants included masters, doctoral and post-doctoral students, and established researchers (students and staff). A self-administered electronic questionnaire, focus groups and individual interviews were used for data collection. The study explored the needs of engineering postgraduate researchers for advanced research information literacy skills. Findings led to the proposal of a framework for advanced research information literacy (ARIL). This paper extends the research to map ARIL to opportunities that can be embraced by academic libraries to support the challenges experienced by engineering researchers.
2013
Efforts to improve information literacy levels in academic institutions are often focused on undergraduate students, and mostly address the improvement of information retrieval skills. This practice is also evident in information literacy programs offered for postgraduate researchers, if offered at all. Although there have been radical transformations in scholarly communication and practice in recent years, there is still an assumption among many that researchers on postgraduate level are sufficiently information literate to deal with the new challenges. A gradual awareness of the unique needs of postgraduate researchers in a dynamic and demanding academic environment is, however, developing. Literature in this regard is, unfortunately, limited and scattered, with the majority of studies performed in academic institutions outside the borders of South Africa. The aim of this paper, which forms part of an exploratory component of a doctoral study, is to suggest important components which should be included in the framework for planning and ultimately designing an advanced information literacy program focussing on postgraduate engineering researchers. This paper will report on the foundational exploration required to determine what an advanced information literacy program for postgraduate engineering students should entail. This includes: (1) a basic conceptualization of advanced information literacy; (2) a review of reports of information literacy programs aimed at postgraduate researchers; (3) the identification of advanced information literacy activities featuring during the research process; and (4) an encapsulating conceptualization (i.e. definition) of advanced information literacy, building on (1)-(3). The latter could direct data collection from postgraduate engineering researchers on their research information needs and skills to determine their needs for an advanced information literacy program. In this paper issues (1)-(4) are presented as an exploratory framework for a study on designing a research focused advanced information literacy program for engineering postgraduates.
INFORMATION LITERACY SKILLS OF ENGINEERING STUDENTS
International Journal
Information literacy is one of the critical digital-age literacies for higher education. Students need to be information literate to cope with the challenges in further studies and future profession. Assessment of students' information skills is important to determine how information literate they are. This study describes the results of an information skills assessment and has identified the skills that need improvement. It has also identified the type and format of resources students most frequently use in course assignments. The respondents in the study were diploma-level engineering students who had undergone at least three semesters at a Malaysian college. Data were collected using a survey instrument adapted from Mittermeyer and triangulated using a citation analysis of student bibliographies in an essay assignment. The results of this study show that the respondents seriously lacked the necessary knowledge and skills to evaluate internet information, to identify the most efficient search strategy, to use scholarly resources, and to use information ethically. Most scholarly resources used were books in print format, while most non-scholarly resources referred to were in electronic format. This study implies the importance of information literacy assessment as the first step in improving students' information skills. It also indicates the need to encourage students to use more scholarly electronic resources in their coursework. It is suggested that a larger sample of students be used in order to be more representative of the engineering student population. An intervention program should also be introduced to improve students' information literacy skills.
Libri, 2018
Th aim of the paper is to present findings of a study on information sources and information behavior of doctoral students at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. The study also looked into student perceptions of the role of the academic library and their attitudes toward it as a legitimate partner in the research process, as doctoral students are required to publish the results of their doctoral research in high-ranking peer-reviewed journals during their course of study. However, they rarely use the library and its services; the study was undertaken with the intent to obtain insight into the students’ information behavior as well as needs and reasons for overlooking the library as a relevant partner in their research process. The online survey was conducted on a sample of 138 postgraduate students, with semi-structured interviews with five postgraduate students also conducted. The findings show a dominant student orientation tow...
This study attempts to identify the bibliometric characteristics of the articles published in the various journals from WEB of Knowledge during the study period 1999-2013. Bibliometric analysis use data on numbers and authors of scientific publications and on articles and the citations therein (and in patents) to measure the “output” of individuals/research teams, institutions, and countries, to identify national and international networks, and to map the development of new (multi-disciplinary) fields of science and technology. The results show that the most prolific author is ‘Julien Heidi’ with 21(1.64%) articles and ‘Pinto Maria’ with 19 (1.49%). ‘The continent America ranked first by contributing 690 (52.43%) articles. followed by The Europe continent occupies the second position with 338 (25.68%). Among the key words Appeared in the publications shows that high frequency keywords were “information literacy” is topped with 221(24.07%) publications with followed by next “Information” has scored with 38 (4.13%) publications.
Revista Română de Biblioteconomie și Știința Informării = Romanian Journal of Library and Information Science, 2019
that offers bachelor's degree and master's degree in library science. Survey on information literacy competencies of library science students at the Department was realized by the online questionnaire for self-assessment that was developed on the basis of Permutation Model Components with the purpose to obtain insight in student's perception of their information literacy competencies, to detect to what degree students improve their information literacy competencies and confidence during studies and what possible difficulties they face in this process. This is particularly important considering that there is no separate information literacy course adopted in Departments curricula but the information literacy related content is offered and taught in different courses. Analysis expectedly reveals that in general students feel confident in their information literacy competencies, that their information literacy competencies progressively improve during their studies, but also that students consider that the introduction of a stand-alone information literacy course would greatly contribute to the simpler and faster improvement of their information literacy competencies.
The purpose of this paper is to extract and scrutinized the scholarly literature on Information Literacy indexed in the Web of Science database. Designed/methodology/approach: Bibliometric approach was brought in use to get the publication data on Information Literacy. A retrospective method of data was used to extract the required dataset from the Web of Science database. The dataset was retrieved on 4th January 2021 at King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Science, Saudi Arabia. The word Information Literacy has been written in inverted commas in the Basic Search option and select "Topic" in the subsequent box. Timespan box was set on All years (1900-2020) by default. A total of 4,943 items has been identified, further, the filter command "Information Science Library Science" was used in the Web of Science Category to refine and limit the results to 2,945. Further in the limit of "Document Types", four types were, Article, Proceedings paper, Review, and Early Access types were selected. The data of publication was exported into Microsoft Excel for analysis. The data of publications, citations and growth rate was distributed by year, further documents' types, topmost productive countries, institutions, and authors in Information Literacy were identified. The frequently used journals and most cited papers were also presented in tabular form. Research limitation(s): The study is limited to bibliometric analysis of the scholarly literature on Information Literacy indexed in the Web of Science only and no other databases were brought in use for browsing the same terms. Key finding(s): A total of 2,251 records were selected for data analysis, published from 1983 to 2020. The selected documents gained 22,107 citations with an average of 8.66 citations per document and 58 documents secured the h-index scale. The United States and California State University System of United States were found most contributing country and institution while the Spanish author, Maria Pinto emerged as the most prolific author. Practical implication(s): This study identified the usage of Information Literacy and its relevant literature indexed in the Web of Science. This analysis could create awareness among the readers, potential authors, and library and information professionals in understanding the scope and coverage of this subject. Contribution to Knowledge: This attempt will serve as a source of direction for the new investigators interested in the bibliometric examination of research productivity of various journals and scholarly databases. It will contribute to the academic world and will assist to spread the boundaries of knowledge.
Information Literacy Skills of Engineering Students: A Survey
The aim of this study was to measure the self-perceived level of Information Literacy (IL) skills of engineering students of different disciplines at B.Sc., M.Sc. and PhD levels. The findings may be helpful for library professionals to design an instructional program to improve students' suck skills for better utilization of available printed and online sources. This study was also to identify the difference between selected personal and academic variables and the level of IL skills. Data was collected through ACRL Standards based pretested questionnaire in a survey. SPSS software was used for data analysis. Keyword: 1. Information Literacy. 2. Information Literacy Skills, 3. Engineering Students