[Download] "Are They Ready? Exploring Student Information Literacy Skills in the Transition from Secondary to Tertiary Education (Report)" by Australian Academic & Research Libraries * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Are They Ready? Exploring Student Information Literacy Skills in the Transition from Secondary to Tertiary Education (Report)
- Author : Australian Academic & Research Libraries
- Release Date : January 01, 2011
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 239 KB
Description
How information literate are first year students, and what information literacy skills do they bring to university? In the university environment, information literacy is like other fundamental capabilities that support learning and need to be developed early in the first year of study. Information literacy and learning are intertwined. In general, awareness of how to find and use information facilitates learning in the tertiary environment (Lupton, 2008). More specifically, information literacy is a threshold concept that is critical to learning about research and the research process. In order to succeed, students need to grasp and assimilate an understanding of information literacy: both the lower order skills needed to find and access resources, and the higher order thinking required to use and evaluate information. Students come to university with "a range of prior knowledge, skills, beliefs and concepts that significantly influence what they notice about the environment and how they organize and interpret it" (Bransford 2000: 10). Just as new knowledge is constructed from existing knowledge, new understandings of scholarly information and research are influenced by prior experience of finding and using information. However, when it comes to information literacy, it is generally accepted by academic librarians that the information skills of incoming first year students are limited in terms of expected capabilities for university research (Ellis & Salisbury, 2004; Guise, Goosney. Gordon & Pretty, 2007; Hufford, 2010: Mittermeyer, 2005; Rowlands, 2008; Russell, 2009 and Hartmann 2001). While it is not surprising, nor should it be expected, that commencing students are ready and equipped for discovering and using scholarly information, it should also not be assumed that this lack of readiness and awareness means students are information illiterate.