Digital natives are assumed to possess knowledge and skills that allow them to handle information and communication technologies (ICT) tools in a "natural" way. Accordingly, this calls for the application of different teaching/learning strategies in education. The purpose of the study was to test the predictive strength of some attributes of digital nativeness (ICT ownership, ICT experiences, internet confidence and number of ICT-rich university courses) on the information literacy (IL) of 299 Slovenian university students. Correlation and regression analysis based on survey data revealed that the attributes of digital natives are poor predictors of IL. The principal findings are: ICT experiences expressed as the sum of the use of different applications do not necessarily contribute to IL; some applications have a positive and some a negative effect; personal ownership of smartphones, portable computers and desktop computers has no direct effect on IL, while ownership of a tablet computer is actually a negative predictor; personal ownership of ICT devices has an impact on ICT experiences and Internet confidence, and, therefore, an indirect impact on IL; and ICT-rich university courses (if not designed to cultivate IL) have only a marginal impact on IL, although they may have some impact on ICT experiences and Internet confidence. The overall conclusion is that digital natives are not necessarily information literate, and that IL should be promoted with hands-on and minds-on courses based on IL standards.

A new information literacy test (ILT) for higher education was developed, tested, and validated. The ILT contains 40 multiple-choice questions (available in Appendix) with four possible answers and follows the recommendations of information literacy (IL) standards for higher education. It assesses different levels of thinking skills and is intended to be freely available to educators, librarians, and higher education managers, as well as being applicable internationally for study programs in all scientific disciplines. Testing of the ILT was performed on a group of 536 university students. The overall test analysis confirmed the ILT reliability and discrimination power as appropriate (Cronbach's alpha 0.74; Ferguson's delta 0.97). The students' average overall achievement was 66%, and IL increased with the year of study. The students were less successful in advanced database search strategies, which require a combination of knowledge, comprehension, and logic, and in topics related to intellectual property and ethics. A group of 163 students who took a second ILT assessment after participating in an IL-specific study course achieved an average posttest score of 78.6%, implying an average IL increase of 13.1%, with most significant improvements in advanced search strategies (23.7%), and in intellectual property and ethics (12.8%). IntroductionAccording to the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), information literacy (IL) is defined as an intellectual framework for understanding, finding, evaluating, and using information (ACRL, 2000). For the last two decades, IL competencies and skills have been an important subject in the area of higher education, influencing the design, content, teaching methodology, and management of academic courses. Correspondingly, attempts have been made to systematically develop and outline standards and criteria for the evaluation of IL skills. Recent developments in the field have been comprehensively presented at international conferences on information literacy (Kurbanoglu, Spiranec, Grassian, Mizrachi, & Catts, 2014). Proficiency in IL activities and skills entails fluency with information and communication technology (ICT), investigative methods, logic, critical thinking, discernment, and reasoning. The increasingly rapid development in the field of ICT, however, presents a real challenge for any long-term standardization of evaluation methods. IL Standards in Higher EducationA chronological sequence of main IL standards in higher education is presented in Table 1, comparing their structure and contents. One of the earliest attempts to define information skills, the Big Six (Eisenberg & Berkowitz, 1990), first presented in 1988, derives its structure from an earlier taxonomy of educational objectives. The authors envision six stages in solving an information problem, each divided into two further substages.In a later taxonomy, Bruce (1997Bruce ( , 1999 organizes IL into seven categories (Seven Faces of Information Literacy in Higher Education). One of the more frequ...

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Three teaching methods, applied to credit-bearing information literacy (IL) university courses, were evaluated and compared. The effects of lecture-based learning (LBL), project-based learning (PjBL) and problem-based learning (PBL) were investigated using the information literacy test (ILT) as an assessment tool, with regard to the total ILT score, specific IL contents according to the five ACRL standards and students’ mental skills according to the Bloom’s cognitive categories. While all three teaching methods showed a significant improvement in the ILT post-test, the active-learning groups of PjBL and PBL scored significantly better than the LBL group. The most notable positive difference was observed in students’ effective access to information related to database searching skills, in the intellectual property/ethics issues and in the cognitive category of comprehension. The PjBL and PBL post-test results did not differ significantly, indicating that both active learning methods resulted in similar improvements of students’ IL.

Information literate students with a good understanding of science are regarded as an important pool of future successful professionals. The study explored correlations between the information literacy (IL) and scientific literacy (SL) of university students and analysed their achievements according to Bloom's cognitive categories of remembering, understanding and applying knowledge. A theoretical connection between IL standards and SL competencies was exposed. An information literacy test and a science literacy test, derived from the PISA 2006 science scale, were used for assessment. The results showed a significant moderate positive correlation between students' SL and IL. Students with a better understanding of science were more successful in all three cognitive levels of IL, and students with higher SL scores were better in the application of IL knowledge. A specialised credit-bearing IL course with active learning significantly improved the IL level of all students, most notably in applying IL knowledge, and thus reduced the initial IL disparities between students with low and high SL. The study brought the realisation that the IL of university students depends on their SL obtained in previous education; however, a welldesigned university IL course contributes towards higher cognitive levels of IL for all students.