Towards improvement of information literacy in the digital era through useful and meaningful educational programs. If you can't find it on Google, it does not exist?

Abstract

This is an account of the quest of a beginning lecturer in media publishing and ICT (higher education) who is trying to find the best way to make new students (more) information literate. I started my quest in the classroom, giving assignments to my students. They had to write an essay for which they were supposed to do research. During this process I collected their complaints about the problems they encountered. I wrote those down and analyzed them until I had a clear picture of their difficulties. To get a better idea of their educational background, I read several reports on the teaching of information literacy in Dutch primary and secondary education which entailed among other things longitudinal and quantitative research on the use of ICT in education and reports on the skills of pupils and teachers. Also I wanted to find out what people had already written about the shift in information seeking strategies and the impact of the digitized information age. This would help me put into perspective this so called ‘Google generation. In order to find an answer to next question on how technology changes human behavior, I read many articles, theses and books to help me discover the nature of the issues the student have with finding relevant information. I found many articles and many views on the topic and decided to focus on a few recurring themes, which I related to the different problems my students seemed to have. I would like to use the Bobcatsss conference as a testing ground upon which I shall introduce recommendations for improving information literacy and awareness among students.