Developing information literacy measures for higher education

Abstract

This is the first part of a report of an investigation on Information Literacy (IL) among final year students in six Malaysian universities in the Klang Valley. The study attempts to measure studentsâ IL competency in key areas, namely, the ability to identify, access, retrieve, evaluate, and organise needed information to achieve certain purposes. A self-administered questionnaire was used as the instrument for data collection, conducted during August and September 2005. Respondents comprised students from 3 main fields, i.e. Science and Technology, Social Science and Humanities, Business and Accountancy. A total of 1,100 responses are used for data analysis. Scores are assigned for identifying levels of competency as: 0 = wrong answer, 1=beginner, 2=intermediate and 3=advanced. Results of the analysis reveal that half (50.1%) of the respondents are at the intermediate IL level while more than one-third (38.4%) are beginners, and slightly more than ten percent (11.5%) can be categorized as at the advanced competency level. Respondents with higher competency levels are those who frequently read materials in English, use the Internet to download programs / software, search databases for aca-demic materials, use the library to read academic journals and discuss academic matters, compared to those who go to the library for other reasons such as to borrow books, meet friends or study. Compulsory information skills courses are found to be related to competency levels, but this relationship is not statistically significant. There is no significant difference in the competency level between those who are currently writing a thesis and those who are not. However, there is a significant difference in IL competency between those who have written assignments in an essay format and those who have not.