“I only knew how to search Google”: students’ reflections on a four-year information literacy curriculum
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: For undergraduate general health sciences education, there is insufficient high-quality evidence that speaks to the benefits and challenges of an integrated and scaffolded information literacy (IL) curriculum when compared to more traditional modes of delivery. Calls for scaffolded and curriculum-integrated programs are on the rise. Objectives: This study aims to understand students' perceived confidence and skill levels when engaging with or searching for health information, after four years of IL training. Methods: A mixed-methods survey was used to learn whether or how students' confidence in their IL skills was impacted by an IL curriculum integrated into the Bachelor of Health Sciences (BHSc) program at McMaster University. Quantitative survey questions were analysed with descriptive statistics. Qualitative survey questions underwent three cycles of coding to identify themes in participant responses to open-ended questions. Results: Of 194 fourth-year students, 49 participated in the survey, a response rate of 25%. 79% of participants recalled feeling "unconfident" or "not so confident" in finding information in their first year of study. By their fourth year, all participants indicated they felt "somewhat confident" (53%) or "very confident" (47%). 93% of participants indicated their confidence in searching for information was positively impacted by the mandatory IL curriculum. 90% of participants believed they would use these IL skills after graduation. Conclusion: A mandatory curriculum-integrated IL program in undergraduate health sciences positively impacted students' confidence in searching for and finding information. This study indicates the potential benefits of integrating IL instruction into program-wide curricula for undergraduate students.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.012 | 0.031 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.009 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".