Information Literacy Skills of Graduate Students

Research conducted at the Australian National University with 107 PhD

students in 2003

Objectives of the Skills Audit

• To provide students with advice on their information literacy training needs.

• To provide trainers with information on the skills levels of the graduate students so that courses could be pitched appropriately.

• To set in place a means of measuring the Graduate Information Literacy Program.

(Ethics approval for the research project was obtained in October 2003.)

Information Literacy Skills Tested in the Skills Audit

• Information Searching Skills (database & web searching)

• Information Management Skills (bibliographic software skills)

• Information Technology Skills (Word processing skills)

Database Searching Skills

• If a student had not previously used a database they did not need to complete the remaining questions in this section.

• Students were asked to self-assess their skills.

• Students knowledge of and ability to use Boolean operators and truncation were tested.

Self Assessed Database Searching Skills and Actual Database Searching

SkillsScore Self-Assessed as Excellent Self-Assessed as Good Self-Assessed as Satisfactory Self-Assessed as Poor

6 3 14 45 6 11 5

4 3 12 53 2 7 8 1

2 2 6 6 11 20 5 4

Further training needed and students knew it

24 students

34 studentsNo further training needed and students knew it

Further training needed but students may not know it

Further training necessary but students did not know it15 students

9 students

14 students

11 students

No further training needed but students may think it was

Further training needed and students knew it

Ability to correctly use Boolean Operators

Only 48.6% of graduate students, had a sound understanding of Boolean operator searching.

Truncation & Wildcard

• 66% of students selected the correct answer to the question testing for truncation skills.

• 57% of students understood the use of the wildcard symbol.

Linking to the Library Journal Holdings

• One third of the graduate students were unaware that there were links in most databases to the library journal holdings information.

Database Searching Skills and Subject of Study

3.81 3.95 3.773.3

32.5

00.5

11.5

22.5

33.5

44.5

Humanities22 students

SocialScience 24

students

Science 45students

Business10 students

Fine Arts 4students

Technology2 students

Overseas educated students had poorer database searching skills.

• The average score for Australian educated students was 4.26 (65 students).

• The average score for Overseas educated students was 2.90 (42 students)

• There was a variation in database searching skills of these overseas students depending on where they had done there undergraduate degree. Students educated in the NZ/Pacific area had an average score of 4.5. Students from South Asia had an average score of 1.36

Web Searching Skills

• The average score was 3.3 (possible maximum 6)

• 2 students (both Australian educated) had no previous web searching experience.

Self Assessed Skills and Actual Web Searching

SkillsScore Self-Assessed as Excellent Self-Assessed as Good Self-Assessed as Satisfactory Self-Assessed as Poor

6 1 2 15 3 10 3

4 4 19 53 4 14 10 2

2 3 11 91 1 30 1 1

No further training needed and students knew it No futher training needed but students may think it was16 students 4 students

Further training needed but students may not know it Further training needed and students knew it41 students 17 students

Further training necessary but students did not know it Further training needed and students knew it16 students 13 students

What did the graduate students know about searching the web?

• 38.31% knew that a typical search engine would not search the entire web.

• 67.3% had some knowledge of advanced search features and could correctly answer a question on how to restrict a search to sites from a particular country.

Question 22 asked the students how the search engine Google would interpret the

following search. The question read:

Using Google you enter the following terms: 

Tourism Bali Indonesia 

Google will look for:

       These words next to each other (a phrase search)       These words separated by OR (tourism or Bali or Indonesia)       These words separated by AND (tourism and Bali and Indonesia)       Will respond that your search strategy is invalid

The answers

• 60 students correctly answered this question.

• 14 students thought Google would treat the search as a phrase search.

• 27 students thought Google would imply and OR between the search terms.

Question 23 asked students what the safe search filter can be used for

       Stop the search from stalling if there are more than 100,000 results

       Help prevent pornographic sites from being retrieved

       Prevent your institution from being able to record the web sites you have been viewing.

       Limit your search results to reliable web sites

The Answers

• Only 32 students (29.9%) knew that the role of the safe search filter was to assist in preventing pornographic web sites from being retrieved.

• While this is disturbing, it is perhaps more alarming that 47 students (44.8%) thought that the role of the safe search filter could be used to limit search results to reliable web sites.

Web Searching Skills and Subject of Study

3.163.45 3.51

2.55

3.5

3

0

0.51

1.5

2

2.53

3.5

4

Humanities22 students

SocialScience 24

students

Science 45students

Business 10students

Fine Arts 4students

Technology2 students

Overseas educated students had weaker web searching skills than Australian

educated students

• The average score for the Australian educated students was 3.55.

• For overseas-educated students the average score was 2.97.

• New Zealand & Pacific educated students outscored Australians in web searching skills with an average of 3.75. UK/European students scored an average of 3.5, North and South American educated students had an average of 3.3, students from East Asia an average of 3.2, those from the Middle East and Africa 2.5 and students from South Asia an average score of 1.81.

Information Management Skills

• The average score for information management skills was 2.2.

• 50 students (46.7%) had no previous experience in using information management software.

• Only 7 students (6.5%) scored a 6 (full marks)..

 

Points of Interest• Of those who

had previous Endnote experience, many were not skillful at moving data from databases into Endnote libraries.

• Only 37% of students with previous experience correctly identified the means of exporting references.

• While 89% of those with previous experience could use the other features of Endnote, such as creating references, using styles and Cite-While-You-Write.

Word Processing Skills

• Section 6 of the Skills Audit tested students’ ability to use word processing packages to the extent that would be needed to produce a thesis of around 100,000 words. As the ANU provides access to Microsoft Word and LaTeX, these were the packages that skills were tested on. Students could indicate skills in using other packages, but none did.

 

• All but one of the 107 students had previous word processing experience. However, it was found that many graduate students did not have sufficient word processing skills to enable them to produce a long document such as a thesis in anything resembling an efficient way.

Students were unaware of their lack of advanced word

processing skills

Score Self-Assessed as Excellent Self-Assessed as Good Self-Assessed as Satisfactory Self-Assessed as Poor

6 25 3 6 6

4 5 14 11 13 6 10 7 2

2 3 14 8 11 2 3 20 1

Further training necessary but students did not know it Further training needed and students knew it20 students 14 students

Further training needed but students may not know it Further training needed and students knew it35 students 21 students

Self Assessed Skills and Actual Word Processing Skills

No further training needed and students knew it No further training needed but students may think it was11 students 6 students

What the students knew• Two questions tested students’ knowledge of basic word formatting,

skills. 73% of students were able to correctly answer the first and 60% answered the second question correctly.

 • Only 48% of students could correctly answer the question about

heading styles. • Only 18% of students were able to correctly answer the question

testing skills in using templates. A skill that is very important if the students are to produce a consistently formatted long document, especially if this document is the result of merging a number of separate documents.

• Only 17% of students knew that a table of contents could be generated from Styles and table entry fields.

What other training did the graduate students

want?

• Photoshop

• GIS Mapping

• Illustrator