3.4 Information Literacy
3.4.2 Information Literacy in Higher Education
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the Scottish government. The results revealed that IL was a critical skill needed by government staff for decision-making. This required training in information skills for accessing, critical thinking and evaluation of sources of information.
This section has attempted to demonstrate that information literacy is no longer a preserve of an educational institution setting, but has attracted more attention in the workplace and continues to do so (Kirk, 2004). IL at the workplace can increase productivity by saving time and wastage in the line of production and improving the quality of decisions and communication among employees and their external environment and by increasing access to quality and reliable information.
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5. understands many of the economic, legal and social issues surrounding the use of information and accesses and uses information ethically and legally.
Rockman (2004) stresses that IL in an academic context is a campus-wide issue that should involve all administrators, faculty, librarians, media and information technologists, assessment co-ordinators, faculty development directors, service learning specialists, student affairs personnel and career development professionals. Similarly, ACRL (2000) and Saunders (2012:226) note that IL success requires a collaborative effort. Amalahu, Oluwasina and Laoye’s (2009) study of users’ e-learning information needs at Tai Solarin University of Education in Nigeria found the need to increase the presence of information literacy in their curriculum, to encourage better use of electronic resources available, since many users preferred the electronic resources over print and the internet over the library. The study suggested that users needed to be equipped with skills and knowledge that would enable them to succeed in their academic endeavours and beyond, where lifelong learning is embraced.
Dangani (2009) explained that the role of IL in academic institutions is to prepare lifelong learners by developing their ability to think critically, use information socially and ethically and be conversant with current IT trends. He feels that for the survival of individuals, organizations or nations in the 21st century information society, IL skills are a pre-requisite. This is because of the understanding that there is so much information in so many formats and this can be overwhelming for students and the rest of the population (Dupuis, 1997).
The Boyer Commission Report, Reinventing Undergraduate Education (1998), conjectured that undergraduate education needed to be a continuum that prepared students to be continual learners after graduation, by equipping them with critical thinking skills. Besides, students need confidence in handling information if they are to succeed in an environment such as this. They will find themselves in a better position to handle information that comes their way if they have the skills to find, select, interpret, evaluate, organize and use information for specific purposes.
University students will benefit from IL by transferring the IL, knowledge and skills across all the other courses they take. An understanding of the legal and ethical implications of information use will be beneficial to the students, especially with regard to ethos and respecting intellectual property values. While recognizing the importance of IL for educational initiatives, Boyer’s Report noted that, although information is a precious resource, the challenge of
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educators is to help students make sense of a world described by some as experiencing an
‘information overload.’
The concepts of lifelong learning and information literacy were noted to have a mutually reinforcing relationship with each other. Dangani (2009) referred to the relationship as being critical to the success of every individual, organization or state. In a study on IL among undergraduates at the University of California-Berkeley, Maughan (2001) concluded that students think they know more about accessing information and conducting library research than they are able to demonstrate when put to the test and that students continue to be confused by the elementary conventions for organizing and accessing information. The study demonstrated that lack of information literacy skills in university graduates left them ill- prepared for efficient functioning in the information society. It is only those who are information literate that are able to always find the information needed for any task or decision at hand with ease (Ojedokun, 2007).
The ALA in the Final Report of the Presidential Committee on Information Literacy (ALA, 1989) emphasized the importance of understanding how information is generated, organized and used to the degree that an information literate person could teach others. The transferability of skills is not only expected across disciplines, but also from one person to another. In education, the information literacy standards provide guidelines for design and assessment of IL learning. In this regard, Candy (2002) declares that IL is a key competency that enables learners to master content and extend their investigations, become more self-directed and assume greater control over their own learning. As the ALA’s Committee says, “ultimately, information literate people are those who have learned how to learn” (ACRL, 2000). They know how to learn because they know how knowledge is organized, how to find information and how to use information in such a way that others can learn from them. They are people prepared for lifelong learning, because they can always find the information needed for any task or decision at hand (Ojedokun, 2007).
In conclusion, the above studies and others clearly show that college and university education in the 21st century cannot be complete without a strong component of information literacy in their curriculum. This is because the skills IL gives can be applied across disciplines and are
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needed in society after graduation for both life and lifelong learning. As Pawley (2003) stated, IL can be considered as a dynamic kind of information that leads to the transformation, of lives.
Therefore the learning process is going beyond teaching people to find information to emphasizing the ability to find information, create knowledge from it and use the knowledge for problem-solving. Similarly, Candy (2002) declares that IL is a key competency that enables learners to master content and extend their investigations, become more self-directed learners and assume greater control over their own learning. It is the foundation for independent and lifelong learning, as it multiplies opportunities for students as they interact with a wide variety of information sources and expands their knowledge base (ACRL, 2000).