Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Peer learning dynamics have proven powerful in collegiate contexts. These dynamics should be leveraged at the undergraduate level in academic libraries for reference provision and basic information literacy instruction. Drawing on the literature of peer learning, documented examples of peer reference and instruction in academic libraries, and preliminary evidence from current practice at California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, this article provides support from the pedagogical standpoint that undergraduates not only can provide peer reference and instruction, but should. The relevance to other institutions and additional assessment methods for establishing the efficacy of peer instruction are also discussed.

The nature of the information-rich environment of the 21st century has affected the ways in which students’ access information. Students no longer have to seek information; they acquire it passively through their everyday use of the Internet. This paper presents findings of a study involving the information encountering experiences of undergraduate students and the potential role of personal information collection, management, and retrieval in information literacy instruction. Undergraduate students enrolled in an information literacy course were surveyed regarding their experiences online with information encountering and personal information management. Survey questions were adopted from the information encountering scale developed by Wise & Erdelez (2012) and consisted of twelve questions focused on the noticing, stopping, examining, and capturing steps of the Information encountering model (Erdelez, 2004). The study indicates that the vast majority of the undergraduate students responding to the survey were frequently encountering unexpected information while online, but were not capturing this information for future use using built-in, web-based tools. While information literacy courses teach students to identify, seek, analyze, and use needed information, they do not prepare them to manage and retrieve unexpected information encountered while using the Internet.

The latest piece of research by CLT on Embedding Digital and Information Literacy in Undergraduate Teaching compared strategies being used by three projects that are part of the JISC Developing Dig...