Experiences with and Perceptions of Information: A Phenomenographic Study of First-Year College Students

Information literacy proficiency: Assessing the gap in high school students' readiness for undergraduate academic work

“…Gross and Latham (2007, 2009, 2011, 2012 found that students lack IL proficiency and have a tendency to overestimate their abilities. Their study found that only 45% of the students who participated in their research were information literate; yet, many did not feel that they struggled with IL (Gross & Latham, 2007, 2009.…”

“…Information literacy instruction needs to target students' academic information needs and behaviors, and be grounded in their contextual, social experiences. For example, some studies have shown that students rely heavily on technology (Gross & Latham, 2011), expect their information needs to be satisfied immediately (Keup, 2008;Rowlands et al, 2008) with speed, convenience, and accessibility acting as mitigating factors for information searching (Duffy, Liying, & Ong, 2010). There is a heavy emphasis on the use of technology for information seeking.…”

Beyond Mechanics: Reframing the Pedagogy and Development of Information Literacy Teaching Tools

“…Smith, Given, Julien, Ouellette, and DeLong (2013) tested college-bound high school students and found their skills well below the threshold needed for undergraduate work. Their general findings were corroborated by Porter (2011), Gross and Latham (2011), Gustavson and Nall (2011), and The Citation Project: Preventing Plagiarism and Teaching Writing (2014), among others.…”

“…In contrast, Molteni and Chan (2015) found, "Students who tend to overestimate their information literacy skills may not be as receptive to library instruction as those who feel that they have a lot to gain" (p. 5). Gross and Latham (2011) concurred, concluding, "the students who participated in these interviews do not embrace the idea that there is an objective set of skills needed in order to find, evaluate, and use information" (p. 180). Students in their study believed their research skills were somewhat intuitive, self-taught, or derived from other skills (e.g., "I didn't find this.…”

Instructional Preferences of First-Year College Students with Below-Proficient Information Literacy Skills: A Focus Group Study

“…Moreover, they prefer the Internet and people as resources, but they place little emphasis on information quality. 5 The data gathered in the interviews provided valuable context about students' perceptions of and experiences with information literacy and information seeking. Focus groups were then conducted with a different set of students with below-proficient skills to gather data about their experiences with and perceptions of information literacy in imposed and self-generated informationseeking tasks and to compare that with the data gathered in the interviews.…”