Information Literacy
Information literacy is your ability to find, evaluate, organise and
share information, whether you are using it for learning, research for professional purposes. The capacity to find, evaluate, manage, curate, organise and share digital information, including open content. At higher levels, a critical awareness of provenance and credibility. Capacity to interpret information for academic and professional/vocational purposes. Ability to act within the rules of copyright and to use appropriate referencing. Ability to record and preserve information for future access and use.
share information, whether you are using it for learning, research for professional purposes. The capacity to find, evaluate, manage, curate, organise and share digital information, including open content. At higher levels, a critical awareness of provenance and credibility. Capacity to interpret information for academic and professional/vocational purposes. Ability to act within the rules of copyright and to use appropriate referencing. Ability to record and preserve information for future access and use.
Use the below guiding questions and resources to design and plan your assessment and learning resources/activities to support student development of information literacy capabilities.
Student learning outcome examples
- Assess the value, credibility and relevance of digital information in relation to a specific task, issue or question (eg using trusted resources to fact check AI outputs, web sources)
- Understand copyright; use only legal sources; use copyright alternatives such as Creative Commons licensing
- Recognise where it is not appropriate to share data digitally including with AI tools
- Find information using a variety of search engines, indexes and databases, and using appropriate strategies and terms; find information on the open web (eg in wikis, blog posts, journals, e-books and open content) appropriate to the subject and topic
- Find information within digital files, editions and collections (eg find/search, browse, use indices and thumbnails, skim read, review, fast forward)
- Critically assess whether digital information is trustworthy, timely and relevant; distinguish different kinds of information (eg academic, professional, personal, political)
- Apply information in subject-specialist tasks (eg solving problems, answering questions, developing arguments, informing professional decisions and practices, designing solutions and presenting ideas)
- Use appropriate referencing for digital sources of different kinds
- Organise digital information (eg using reference management software, databases and spreadsheets, tags, metadata; also curation tools and services); record and review information for personal/shared access and future use
- Share information appropriately with an awareness of professional, legal, privacy, accessibility and equality issues
Activities
Study Smart
Ask the class to complete the four modules of Study Smart between tutorials. Lead a 10-minute discussion recap at the start of the next class using these prompts to get them thinking:
-
- What is one thing from Study Smart I already knew?
- What is one thing I learned that I wish I could share with my younger self?
Using PICO
Ask the class to complete the Using PICO online module. After completion, ask students to share the following with the class (via Padlet):
-
- Their PICO and resulting question
- List the library database/s they think would suit searching their PICO question best
- A screenshot of their search strategy applied in a library database using some of their PICO terms, applying appropriate search techniques
- Reflection on ways they might improve the search by adjusting and repeating methods outlined in the module
Understanding database subject headings
Ask the class to watch the ‘What is a subject heading’ video (YouTube 5:12 mins). After watching the video, ask students to:
-
- Search PubMed or Medline using MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). OR search Embase using Emtree
- Discuss how/if their search results differ from when they have used just keyword searching in these databases
Resources
- Library help(QUT Resource)
- Using the Library Search(QUT Resource)
- Information essentials (UQ, online module)
- QUT CiteWrite(QUT Referencing Guide)
- QUT AIRS(Modules with quizzes)
