Learning from the Learners:The student voice in Information Literacy

Increasingly, we are exhorted to listen to the student voice, and hitherto, Information literacy teaching has not been an area where this has seemed like a major concern. The professional literature concentrates on specific skills which have been acquired within the artificially constructed environment of an information literacy session in the university. This, however, does not take into account other factors which influence student perceptions of the usefulness of information literacy. These may include their past experiences, its place in the curriculum, the way information literacy is taught, peer attitudes, and its relationship to the˜real world. Additionally, librarians have often evaluated the usefulness of their sessions from their own viewpoint rather than from that of the students themselves. During the years 2006-11, I undertook a Doctoral thesis which attempted to discern what value was attributed value to information literacy by groups of nursing students. As part of this work I used a phenomenographic approach which entailed the use of a series of interviews to obtain rich data. The issues discussed were derived from both group and individual interviews and help to shed valuable light on areas such as:

• Nursing culture versus Academic culture
• Group size and timing of sessions
• Influence of peers on learning
• Library anxiety
• Assumptions and expectations made by Librarians
• Informal learning

This presentation discusses selected key findings from the research and potential implications for future information literacy teaching and those who teach it. It considers the need for more collaborative working to ensure that the use and value of information literacy is better understood