Electronic Engineering Student Information Literacy Needs: A Pilot Study #ecil2015

Evi Tramantza presented next in the doctoral forum at the European Conference on Information Literacy 2015 on Electronic Engineering Student Information Literacy Needs: A Pilot Study at the University of Surrey. She is using case study approach, including an action research element (as she teaches information literacy to the student in her case studies), in two universities, the University of Surrey (UK) and Aristotle University (Greece), with a focus on mechanical engineering students. Tramantza was reporting on a pilot study of electronic engineering students. She had undertaken focus groups and interviews, and collected documentation on the module structure, as well as her own field notes (as she teaches information literacy in this course). She has identified four key thematic areas: the first is resources, which included a theme about categorisation (the students struggling to find material at the right level, and anting it cartegorised) and use of media (e.g. Youtube video to explain concepts). The second thematic area was skills: students identified a lot of different skills that they need to complete their course (and these students were quite confident in identifying what they needed) and also the lecturer identifying needs in writing. The third area was Pedagogy and Learning, which included the nature of engineering teaching (with a more transmissive approach to teaching engineering) and peer learning (with engineering students having their own communities of learning, and this being connected to their identity as engineers). The final theme was information literacy iteself: including the students' awareness of the need to find good information and apply it.