Exploring LIS Students’ Beliefs in Importance and Self-Efficacy of Core Information Literacy Competencies

Abstract

Understanding perceptions of Library and Information Science (LIS) students on two dimensions-belief in the importance (BIM) of a set of core information competencies, and Self-Efficacy (SE)-is pursued. Factor analysis implementation raises a clear distinction between BIM and SE results. This analysis points to two sets of competencies: principal competencies reflected the most positive insights from students, while the secondary ones were the most weakly perceived and consequently the most in need of encouragement. This is one of the few studies on the subjective profile of LIS students, including improvement initiatives relating to the weakest competencies.here is no doubt that all developed countries are in need of increasing Information Literacy (IL) awareness of their citizens on the vital importance of this issue. In the case of a special kind of citizen-the students (undergraduates and graduates) of Library and Information Science (LIS)-their state of awareness on IL ought to be even more important, as skills and capabilities within IL are key requirements for their future professional practice. Closely related to LIS students' awareness, two kinds of perceptions are key: belief in the importance of such competencies, and Self-Efficacy. The significance of these perceptions is evident, as they influence students' attitudes and behaviors. The belief in importance (BIM) concept, which some educators identify with the idea of motivation, refers to the rating of the importance of certain competencies on the part of students. Self-Efficacy (SE) seems to be a more sophisticated idea, often defined as people's beliefs about their capabilities to produce the designated levels of performance. SE determines how people feel, think, motivate themselves, and behave. Such beliefs produce these diverse effects through four major processes: cognitive, motivational, affective, and selection.1 Information literacy self-efficacy and academic motivation, one could argue, both play important roles in student academic development.2 There is a third dimension, of a qualitative nature, which also affects students' awareness, which arises from the student's preferred choice of learning sources (LS). Four sources of learning have been examined in this study: classroom, library, specific courses, and self-learning. Although students actually resort to all these sources, we hope to ascertain to what extent each of them is used, as this will help to form a profile of the students' IL behavior.

How a cycle of information literacy assessment and instruction stimulates attitudes and motivations of LIS students: A competency-based case study

“…Within SE dimension, evaluation is the most valued category in both cases. This result concurs significantly with that obtained previously in a similar population (Pinto and Fernandez Pascual, 2016). It also confirms the motivational (SE) consistency and attitudinal (BI) variability found in other sections of this research.…”

Patterns of Differentiation of Students’ Competencies: A Comparative Study

“…A small but statistically significant difference was mentioned only for the whole group of social sciences students in the belief-of-importance aspect. 58 Polish students-all three groups altogether-show some differences among the levels of studies as well, either in the case of the belief of importance or self-efficacy, in regard to information searching and processing. The older group of doctoral and graduate students values competencies related to the use of ICT higher than BA students, and they assess their skills slightly higher in the use of printed and electronic sources and specialist databases, internet searching, recognizing obsolete materials, evaluation of information resources validity, knowledge about the most relevant authors and institutions of their subject area, typology of scientific sources, and systemizing information.…”

“…The methodology of research conducted in Spain was precisely described in the following works of Pinto and Pasqual. 45 Polish research was conducted between May and July 2017 at two Polish universities: the University of Warsaw (UW) and the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (NCU). It targeted students from three fields of study-history, journalism, and library and information science-and included three levels of study (see table 1).…”

Exploring attitudes towards information competencies of students and faculty: A disciplinary perspective

“…Based on ILCSHE, and originated in the field of Translation and Interpreting with the name of INFOLITRANS (Pinto and Sales, 2008), IL-HUMASS questionnaire has consolidated its reliability and validity through a series of practical cases on various disciplines (Pinto, 2010, 2011, 2012). Lately, it has been used with a greater analytical depth (Pinto and Fernández-Pascual, 2014, 2016). The full version of IL-HUMASS raises three dimensions for each of the questions, concerning to belief-in-importance (BIM), self-efficacy (SE) and preferred learning source (LS) of IL competencies.…”

“…The ARCS model, a simple yet powerful motivation model for applications to library and information, ‘identifies four essential components of motivating instruction: attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction’(Small, 1998: 6). But attention will focus only on relevance, associated to the concept of belief-in-importance (BIM) which refers to rating of the importance of IL competencies (Pinto and Fernandez-Pascual, 2016: 703).…”