Helping students identify information: an investigation

From their internet device of choice, students can search for and locate the scholarly information that faculty want them to use as well as the less-reputable or even dubious information that faculty want them to avoid. Learning to know the difference is essential, and being able to correctly identify different types of information like magazines, journals, newspapers, conference proceedings, websites, videos, discussion boards, and blogs is an important skill for students to develop. This skill is also part of the Association of Research and College Library’s Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. While learning to identify different types of information may seem like a straightforward task, it can be overwhelming, especially for freshmen researchers who are often being introduced to academic information sources for the first time. This study looks at the ways freshmen students enrolled in three sections of a 1-credit Information Literacy Lab course identified and misidentified sources that they found online. By looking closer at the common problems that students encounter in identifying and evaluating online sources from the internet and library databases, faculty can develop classroom activities and assignments which will encourage and promote these important information literacy skills. Suggestions based on this research will be made to help faculty who are interested in building research assignments for students. Students who become adept at identifying and evaluating information will produce higher quality research projects throughout their college careers.