Information Literacy Is Very Important For University Students Education Essay

The growth of information and communication technology today was emergence of the Information Age brought with it an unprecedented. Individuals and organizations should be able to get and obtain specific information to meet the wide range to fulfill their needs. According to American Library Association (ALA) Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, 1989 define an information literate person is one who must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information. Information literate people are those who have learned how to learn. They know on how to learn because they know how knowledge is organized, how to find information and how to use information in such a way that others can learn from them. Information literacy is very important for the university students include from University Technology MARA (UiTM).

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Actually the librarians had seen the information literacy as key requirements in accessing and making appropriate use the vast amounts of information which are now available to students, particularly through the internet. Information is derived from the data. Literacy is embedded in cultural situations. This requires that we take communities that produce, read, interpret texts and reach consensus about interpretation into consideration (Elmborg, 2006). Information literacy has been defined as a set of abilities to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate and use needed information effectively (ACRL, 2000).

The main purposes of become information literate person are they can determine the extended of information needed, they can access the needed information effectively and efficiently and to use the information to accomplish a specific purpose. They also can understand the economic, legal and social issues surrounding the use of information and access and use information ethically and legally. However, not all students in UiTM know on how to become a literate person and they did not know effectiveness and the benefits of using materials in the library because of less information and skills. Students can get more information and knowledge in the library to fulfill their assignments and work. They also can search by using various types of materials that provided in the library.

Therefore, a research was conducted to investigate the phenomenon of the effectiveness use of information literacy skills in PTAR and figure out of solutions in order to assist students on how to become more information literate person and how to get right information from any types of materials according to their skills in finding information. Besides that, we can know what benefits of information literacy are for students in their life. There are qualities different kinds of students in sequence to get information from various types of materials in library and access quality of information that found by them.

Furthermore, the effectiveness use of information literacy also gives the impact to the students that might be positive and negative. They can use their skills to make a plagiarism from others research or searching an unconstructive of information. They did not use the skill that they have in an ethically and legally after get the information. Besides that, the students know how to use the information in the right ways and they will get the accurate information. So, a student who is becomes more effectively literate person actually help them in process of learning and gain more understanding in their field.

1.2 Problem Statement

This research seeks to determine the relationships of independent variables and dependent variable. The dependent variable is the most important of personal traits of effective information literacy (IL) among students in UiTM Kampus Puncak Perdana. The independents variables indicates that information literacy effectiveness such as skills, knowledge and attitude that actually important for the students.

Therefore the problems statements of this study are:

The problem statement of this study is to identify the effectiveness use of information literacy among students in order to become a good and understanding people in the future. Therefore a research about the effectiveness of information literacy should be conducted to know on how many students that aware about this study.

This is because students should have a knowledge, skills and good attitude to face any challenges in the future.

1.3 Rational of the study

The rational of this study was to identify the competencies of effectiveness information literacy skills among Bachelor Studies (BIS) students. Besides that, this study is going too investigated if the student of BIS has characteristics to become a literate person in manage good information for the future learning. This study also tells the awareness of the effectiveness information literacy skills among students because in the future students should be better in collect data in order to gain a new knowledge and become a literate person.

1.4 Research questions

This section will define and explain the research question that related with this study.

1.4.1 What kind of competencies does the person need to allow him or her to be IL now and also in the future?

(ARP, 1990; Bjorner, 1991; Koster, 1993; Mc Crank,1991)

1.4.2 What are the programmed that should provided to the student in Malaysian academic universities?

(Juhana, 2000; Mohd Sharif and Zainab (2002); Yushiana; 2003; Chan Sai Noi, 2003; Che Norma, 2004; Maimunah and Mohd Sharif; 2004; and Mohd Sharif and Edzan, 2005)

1.4.3 What is the importance of information literacy for university graduates?

(Mohd Sharif and Zainab A.N. 2002)

1.5 Significance of the study

This research is conducted to make all students know on how importance effectiveness of information literacy and what is the element that attributes them to be a good information literate person. In addition, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of information literacy among students. Moreover, this research will identify the relationship between the independent variables with dependent variables. The dependent variable is the information literacy among Bachelor of Information Studies. The independent variable indicates the information literacy competencies such as skill, knowledge and attitude and the others are background and roles of university.

If this study is not conducted, the student cannot aware and understand with the important of the information literacy in their life. In addition, a finding through this research is make the student realizes about the characteristics of students in order to produce and find the good way to become information literate person. The outcomes from this research will show how many student can be a good literate student in achieve their knowledge and information to teach and find something new from other person. Besides that, in the future of BIS student will be as a librarian and one of the skill that they should have to become information literate person in order to lead and find some appropriate knowledge, so they can help students in the future according to their needs.

1.6 Objectives of the study

The objectives of this report are:

1.6.1 General objective

This study examines the personal traits of effective information literacy among Bachelor Information Studies (BIS) student and it will determine the relationship between dependent variables and independent variables. The dependent variable is the effectiveness of information literacy among BIS students at UiTM Kampus Puncak Perdana. The independent variables indicate that effectiveness of information literacy such as skill, knowledge and attitude and the others are family background and roles of university.

Specific objective

To know the students aware less on information literacy skills that using to searching information in Perpustakaan Tun Abdul Razak (PTAR).

To find out what are the types of online databases that they used in information searching to get information.

To know how many students can retrieve information from online databases and to make sure students find the right and accurate of information from there.

To know whether reference services will help the students if they have the problem when searching the information.

Definition of terms used

This section will define and explain several terminology and key words that related with this study.

Information

In a general, information is a raw data that has been verified to be accurate and timely. Information is more specific and organized for a purpose and presented within a context that can gives it meaning and relevance, and which can be leads to increase in understanding and decrease in uncertainty. The value of information lies solely in its ability to affect a behavior, decision and outcome. A piece of information can be considered valueless if after receiving it, things remain unchanged. (Business dictionary.com, 2011)

Literacy

The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 defines literacy as ‘an individual’s ability to read, write, speak in English, compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the individual and in society.’ This is a broader view of literacy than just an individual’s ability to read, the more traditional concept of literacy. As information and technology have become increasingly shaped our society [sic], the skills we need to function successfully have gone beyond reading, and literacy has come to include the skills listed in the current definition.”

(The National Institute for Literacy, 2011)

1.7.3 Information Literacy

Information literacy is “ability to effectively identify, access, evaluate and make use of information in its various formats and to choose the appropriate medium of communication. It also compasses knowledge and attitudes related to the ethical and social issues surrounding information and information technology.

(California Academic and Research Libraries Task Force, 1997)

1.7.4 Information literate people

Information literate people are those who have learned how to learn. They know how to learn because they know how knowledge is organized, how to find information and how to use information in such a way that others can learn from them. They are people prepared for lifelong learning, because they can always find the information needed for any task or decision at hand.

(From ACRL Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report: Association of College & Research Libraries, 1997)

Effectiveness

Effectiveness is very similar to efficiency, but the measure is related to some enterprise objective rather than the technical quality of output. For example, one common indicator of effectiveness is related to customer satisfaction rather than output. Therefore the effectiveness measure of a business process can be indicated by the resource inputs needed to produce a level of an enterprise objective.

A further measure of effectiveness is given by:

Effectiveness = Enterprise objectives/Input Quantity”

(Darnton, G. and Darnton, M. (1997)Business Process Analysis,)

Knowledge, Skill, Attitude

According to Yuki (2002), knowledge is what a person learn through familiarity or experiences-what you know. Skill is the ability to use what you know. Attitude includes the desire to something-motivation- and the belief that you can do it-confidence.

(Yuki, 2002)

1.8 Scope of the study

This research is focused on Information Management students in Perpustakaan Tun Abdul Razak (PTAR). They were chosen from the program IS220, IS221, IS222 and IS223. This scope is more specific to the effectiveness of information literacy among students in library UiTM Puncak Perdana.

1.9 Limitation of the study

There are several limitations that influence this study. There are as follows:

The number of respondents

The limitation of this research is that our respondents are among UiTM Puncak Perdana students and only focuses to management students only. The number of the students who were sampled for the experiment presented in the study was quite small in amount to the target population the researchers aimed to generalize. The number of user who will be quite small quantity sampled for the study about 100 users. Each course only needs 25 respondents. There are no attempt was made to conduct research among other universities students where the life culture and preferences are different from UiTM Puncak Perdana because of the times doing research and distance location.

Time constraints

Time constraints is one of the limitation that researcher has faced for the three months when need to finish this research. In addition, researcher also has less time to searching and find previous studies or reference materials when conducting the literature review because so many information that exist in both of printed and non-printed materials. Moreover, time constraint to get a response from the respondents because they are busy doing work and maybe reflect untrustworthy questionnaire.

Financial constraints

Financial constraints faced by researcher in sequence to preparing this research because it needs a high cost. Researcher requires to prepared questionnaire and report which is need cost for printing and Photostat the materials. Besides that, the researcher also needs to print some of references for further reading. Hence, a lot of money is being used in order to complete this research.

Lack of experience

Lack of experience is one of limitation that faced the researcher because this is the first time researcher conduct a research. This is the new experience for researcher in order to finish the research. Moreover, researcher also has lack of knowledge and information about the subject being discussed in this research. Hence, researcher has to explore and make a lot of reference to get a good sources and appropriate information in order to produce a good report research.