Assessment of the impact of information literacy interventions for 4th year students at the National University of Lesotho

Abstract

The study intended to identify the IL interventions being implemented by NUL and to determine their impact on students’ IL competencies. The primary aim was to find out whether the strategies are achieving the results of producing students who are information literate. The study was conducted at the National University of Lesotho and was guided by three theoretical frameworks: the Seven Voices of IL, the Six Frames Model and the UNESCO model. These three frameworks were chosen because they each addressed specific objectives of this study. Pragmatist paradigm and mixed methods research were employed. A sample of 310 comprising 284 students, 12 librarians and 14 lecturers were sampled through purposive and proportional random sampling techniques. Data was gathered through both questionnaires and interviews and was analysed using both quantitative and qualitative methods (i.e. SPSS and thematic techniques). The key findings of the study were: (1) students, librarians and lecturers shared a degree of commonality on how they viewed IL (2) with respect to IL interventions, the majority of participants from the three groups indicated that the university organises the following IL interventions: library orientations, library instruction lessons/courses, assignments and tasks requiring research and evaluation, collaboration between librarians and lecturers, reference services, use of ICT in library services, communication skills course, workshop and training, etc. to promote information literacy skills among students; (3) with regard to impact of IL interventions on students’ competencies, the students reported that they were able to understand information need, locate, evaluate, retrieve, organize, present and communicate information effectively, however according to lecturers, most students struggle to cite sources correctly while most plagiarize their assignments. Moreover most students were not sure whether the available IL interventions enable them to make effective use of data bases, indexing, abstracting and use information ethically. The study concludes that IL interventions in place at the university may not have the desired impact on students. Therefore the study recommends that the university should design a formal IL policy and integrate IL into the curriculum.