First-year engineering students at the University of Queensland used an interactive webbook to acquire information skills. These helped them search information resources for their projects, which they are required to undertake as part of the subject Introduction to professional engineering. The information skills exercise was an integral part of the project and worth 10% of the overall assessment. The exercises were only available on the Web, allowing the students to enter their answers from home or wherever they had access to the Internet. All answers were marked automatically using a database of all possible answers. Students were able to go back to check their answers. Students were assessed on both their responses to the exercises and also their final bibliography which largely reflected the impact of the webbook. The entire process was evaluated. This paper presents the process and the outcomes of the first-year engineering project involving use of WWW for information skills instruction. The webbooks can be found at http r//www.library .uq.edu.au/9elO5/ Introduction T he focus of this paper is on the development of an information skills programme for first-year engineering students on the Web. Information skills training involves more than teaching students how to use the library. Students need to learn how to do research, locate, find, use, analyse and evaluate information. There is an increasing number of examples, both on the Web and in print, on what the core information literacy skills are M . Essentially, information skills are transferable skills to enable students to define their topic or the problem, to formulate strategies to seek the information required, to locate and access, use, evaluate, organise, synthesise the information acquired and to communicate it using a variety of information technologies.Engineering students are generally highly computer-literate as there is heavy emphasis on computer skills in their courses. Computer literacy and information literacy are not synonymous, even though information skills training normally encourages computer skills The New Review of Information Networking 1997

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Educational institutions with large numbers of programmed lecture theatres have always had the problem of ensuring that the correct pieces of audiovisual hardware are available and in good working order at the required time and place. It is also essential that the equipment works to the teacher's satisfaction throughout the lecture period. It may also be necessary to make the same equipment available at another location almost immediately after the conclusion of a lecture, with little time available for setting up and ensuring all the equipment is functional.