1. Does Library Instruction Class Contribute to Undergraduate Students’ Information Competency?
Yingqi Tang, Hung Wei Tseng
Jacksonville State University, AL 36265, United States
Introduction
RESULTS
METHODS
Students come to a university with varied background knowledge and skills. The differentiation exists even among students with the same major, similar degrees of motivation and interest, and comparable levels of intelligence. Understanding student information competency helps librarians to identify student’s strengths and weakness on information seeking. Thus, librarians can incorporate relevant topics in a library instruction lecture for improving students’ information seeking skills. Eventually lead students becoming self-directed, critical thinking individuals in their career and life.
Participants:
98 sophomore and junior students who were enrolled in the Fall term of 2014.
Procedures:
Information competency: A 32-item information competency scale adopted and modified from Marshall’s (2006) instruments to measure students’ feelings about finding and disseminating research information.
Students were invited to conduct a web-based survey
Data was analyzed using statistical software Package SPSS 18.0 for Windows. r
Purpose
CONCLUSIONS
The purpose of the study was to investigate undergraduate students’ information competency skills, and whether these skills can be developed in library instruction classes. The research questions that guide this study include as follows:
What are students’ strengths and weaknesses in the area of information literacy?
Does the library instruction really contribute to students’ information literacy skills?
Undergraduate students’ capability of information finding, retrieving, analyzing, evaluating, and presenting are on and above medium level. Nevertheless, the information competency skills are yet to be improved.
A one-shot library instruction class can easily overwhelm students with jam-packed and dispersal of information and it is more likely only beneficial students with completion of a course project. Multiple library instruction intervention is necessary for enhance information literacy skills.
Jacksonville State University
700 Pelham Road North, Jacksonville, AL 36265
Hung Wei Tseng, Ph.D. Instructional Designer
Office of Educational Technology and Support Tel: (256)
Yingqi Tang
Distance Education/Electronic Resources Manager
Houston Cole Library 
Tel: