Program Wise Information Literacy Skills of Students

A Comparative Study in a Private College in the Middle East

Abstract

The current study furthers the understanding of the Information Literacy (IL) competency skill levels between the health science and non-health science students in the United Arab Emirates. IL-HUMASS survey on information literacy questionnaire was partially adopted (17 categories) for surveying the IL competency skill levels between the Health and Non-Health students at College A. The questionnaire comprised four information competency categories: “Information Searching, “Information Evaluation, Information Processing/Application, and Information Dissemination and Communication”. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to test the hypotheses. The research findings revealed that among all participants the levels of Motivational Engagement (ME) in the four competence areas were higher, than their levels of Self-Efficacy (SE).Further, interestingly, students enrolled in non-health programs displayed higher levels of both ME and SE in all four categories. Additionally, there were significant variations in IL Self-Efficacy levels between the two programs across the categories. Besides, the application of Pinto’s IL-HUMASS survey instrument to a new user population has provided valuable insights. These insights highlight the importance of considering motivation and self-efficacy levels when designing information literacy programs, especially for health science students. This study is possibly the first in the UAE conducted on a global sample comprising 22 nationalities.