Journal of Education and Health Promotion

Effect of information literacy training course on information literacy skills of undergraduate students of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences based on ACRL standards

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

. Zohreh Karimi
. Hasan Ashrafi‑rizi
. Ahmad Papi
. Leila Shahrzadi
. Akbar Hassanzadeh

Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Health, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract
Background: Information literacy is the basis for lifelong learning. Information literacy skills,
especially for student in an environment that is full of information from multiple technologies
are being developed is equally important. Information literacy is a set of cognitive and
practical skills and like any other science, proper training is needed, and standard‑based
education is definitely better and evaluation would be easier. This study aimed to determine
the impact of information literacy training course on information literacy skills of Isfahan
University of Medical Sciences students based on ACRL standard in 2012. Materials and
Methods: The study method is semi‑experience with two group design (with pre‑test and
post‑test) and applied. The data collection toll was a questionnaire assessing student’s
information literacy that developed by Davarpanah and Siamak and validity was confirmed
by professional librarians and reliability as measured by Cronbach’s alpha, was 0.83. The
sample consisted of 50 undergraduate students from Isfahan University of Medical Sciences
that by random sampling method was perch in both case and control groups. Before and
after the training (once a week), a questionnaire was distributed between the two groups.
This training was held in a classroom equipped with computers with internet access and in
addition to training using brochures and librarian presentation, interactive methods such as
discussion and exercises were used. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 20 software
and two level of descriptive (mean and SD) and inferential statistics (t‑test and t‑paired).
Results: The results showed that the students’ information literacy scores before the training
was lower than average, so that in the control group was 32.96 and in the case group was
33.24; while information literacy scores in the case group significantly increased after the
training (46.68). Also, the effect of education, respectively had a greater impact on the ability
to access information (the second standard), ethics and legal use of information (the third
standard), effective use of information (the fourth standard), critically evaluate information and
its sources (the fifth standard). Conclusion: This study showed that the training was effective
on enhancing students’ information literacy skills as the greatest impact was on increasing the ability to access information. Due to low mean score information literacy in the context of
object recognition, there is a need for more training in this area.

Keywords

Key words: ACRL Standards
information literacy
Isfahan University of Medical Sciences
training course
undergraduate students
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Journal of Education and Health Promotion
Volume 5, Issue 5
Autumn 2015
Pages 1-7

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