An Investigation of the Information Literacy Instruction Practices,
Attitudes and Knowledge of University Faculty
Findings and Recommendations Based on Survey and Interview
Research at York University
Background & motivation for study

Much about role of faculty librarian collaboration in
information literacy planning and instruction written
by librarians for librarians.
 Literature rich in second-hand accounts of faculty
behaviour.
 Lack of research studies exploring faculty attitudes,
perceptions, behaviours and practices. (McGuinness,
2006).

Existing research studies show evidence of a
disconnect between faculty and librarians around
teaching roles.
 Greater understandings of respective roles and
cultures could be fostered by more research.

Yet information literacy competencies, to be taught
well, require substantial input from faculty.
(Gullikson, 2006)

York University Libraries’ Information Literacy
Manifesto (2005-2010)
 Assessment a core strategic priority including needs
assessment with faculty.
Goals of learning more about:

Faculty perceptions of York students’ information
literacy habits, needs, and IL competency levels.

Faculty perceptions of the importance of IL
competencies & IL instruction among students.

Existing IL practices among faculty.

Faculty beliefs about ideal frameworks for IL
instruction at York University.



In-class or outside class.
Online, in-person, blended.
Optional, mandatory
Methodology

Web-based Survey (stage one)
 Primarily closed-ended questions.
 Comments invited and faculty quite responsive.

Spring 2007.

All full-time faculty at York.

221 usable responses.

Data analyzed using SPSS 16.0.
 Cross-tabulations, chi-square testing.

Statistically meaningful analysis possible at very broad
disciplinary level:
 Sciences & Engineering (N=48)
 Social Sciences & Humanities (N=130)
 Professional Schools - Business & Law (N=39)
Methodology

24 semi-structured interviews (stage two) during
winter/spring 2010.
 One third in each of these broad areas:
 Business
 Science
 Social sciences and humanities

Within each disciplinary area:
 All interviewees have expectations that students
demonstrate library and information research skills.
 50% of faculty arrange for IL instruction with the library.
 50% of faculty organize no IL instruction with the
library.

All interviews recorded and transcribed.
Faculty
Perceptions of
Students’ IL
Abilities
Faculty perceptions of students’ IL
competencies: Different levels
Faculty Ratings of Information Literacy Competencies
of Students They Teach
0.6
Ranking where 1="very poor" and
7="excellent"
7
12
0
6
37.7
7.8
1.4
28.7
5
7.7
25.6
Graduate Students
15.6
4
39.4
21.7
4.2
3
1.2
2
20
5.6
0.6
1.1
1
0
3rd & 4th Year
Undergraduates
1st & 2nd Year
Undergraduates
24.5
30.1
14.7
10
20
30
40
% Faculty Selecting Response
50
Faculty perceptions of students’ IL
competencies: Mean rankings (scale 1-7)
* = differences across disciplines found to be statistically significant.
1st-2nd Year
Undergrads*
3rd-4th year
Undergrads*
Graduate
Students
Across all
disciplines
2.82
4.08
5.32
Sciences and
Engineering
2.74
4.21
5.42
Social
Sciences &
Humanities
2.72
3.96
5.33
Professional
Schools
(Business &
Law)
3.61
4.59
5.21
Faculty concerns about student IL ability
(based on survey comments analysis)

Heavy reliance on free web.


Lack of motivation to go beyond this.
Heavy reluctance to use print resources.

Perceptions of their own abilities, higher than actual
abilities.

Failure to distinguish between online library resources
and internet more generally.

Skills in distinguishing between types of resources
lacking.

Scholarly versus popular especially.
Faculty perceptions of students’ IL
competencies
Used as a reference point for one interview question to gauge faculty
impressions of undergraduate students’ IL abilities in the context of
their teaching and disciplinary areas:






Determine the extent of information needed
Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
Evaluate information and its sources critically
Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base
Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
Understand the economic, legal, and social issues
surrounding the use of information, and access and use
information ethically and legally
Source:
Association of College & Research Libraries. Information Literacy
Competency Standards for Higher Education.
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompet
ency.cfm
Faculty concerns about undergraduate
students’ IL competencies
Getting started: Determining the nature and extent of
relevant information available
“They don’t know where to get started or they start in the
wrong places.” (Hard Sciences)
“…focusing is really one problem they have in research. They
start out with these enormous topics…I mean you tell them to
be as narrow as possible but then you have to really say: ‘What
are you doing?’” (Humanities)
“It’s just a huge challenge to get them to do anything but
Google. Yeah, they think Google and they are done. Stop!
Think beyond that.” (Social Sciences)
“..the first [stage] was to clarify for themselves: ‘Okay, what’s
my general topic?’…So working first on the logical skills of
clarifying the topic, the argument. ‘What do I want to think
about? What do I want to propose?’ That took a lot of time!”
(Humanities)
Faculty concerns about undergraduate
students’ IL competencies
Evaluative/Critical thinking skills
“But the idea that you just go on the Internet and just find out
your answers. It seems to me everyone is very comfortable
with that. Not comfortable with thinking: ‘Is it true?’ Not
comfortable with thinking: ‘Is this the best possible source and
how do I discriminate?’” (Health Sciences)
“Often these kids in one sense think of themselves as
information literate because they are fairly good at finding stuff
using Google but they are often not very sophisticated about
evaluating information. And that’s really where the hard work
is…They think that what they are looking for are facts…they
think you can find a clear definite answer…that this is it and
that there aren’t all these other factors, grey areas, and we
really don’t know…part of growing up too is learning to live
with uncertainty. But I think it’s also a school system thing…it’s
all rubrics and so laid out. It’s kind of formulaic.” (Humanities)
“And they all say: ‘Well, how many of these do I have to find?’
They want a number. And it’s like: ‘You need as many as you
need to cover the topic you’ve chosen.’ So the idea here is
evaluating the information and its sources critically. It’s not the
number, it’s how good they are.” (Health Sciences)
Faculty concerns about undergraduate
students’ IL competencies
Evaluative/Critical thinking skills
“Very often Wikipedia is cited as a reference. And really that
isn’t enough for what I would consider scientific literature.”
(Hard Sciences)
“I think that cognitive problem solving stuff is almost being
circumvented a little bit because we have all this different
technology stuff and that’s why we have students who come in
not knowing how to process information: what’s important,
what’s not important.” (Health Sciences)
“They were very open to having the technology help them
clarify search skills which is lovely and amazing and really
scary because that may well contribute to short circuiting their
own logical processes…all of this to say that some of the
things that facilitate ease in one domain cost an enormous
amount in others.” (Humanities)
Faculty concerns about undergraduate
students’ IL competencies
Ability to incorporate selected information in to ones
knowledge base
“The process of reading articles, internalizing them, writing
real hand-written notes, that process is no longer
done…They’ll download the article, they will read it on the
computer, they’ll cut the table out…None of it is processed.
So I’m not quite sure how things are getting in to an
internalized knowledge base anymore…And I think that’s
the weakness.” (Health Sciences)
“I mean, incorporating selected information in to ones
knowledge base, I don’t think that students are taught
enough to be self-critical. Like critical thinking also
includes questioning your own assumptions, your own
values and that’s something that I don’t think sort of comes
naturally to a lot of the students.” (Business)
Faculty concerns about undergraduate
students’ IL competencies
Academic integrity/Plagiarism.
“One of the things I find is that skill with citation is diagnostic
for me; like if people know how to cite online stuff, they have
much better skills. That’s one thing I’ve noticed. It’s cut and
dried… In a lot of cases people don’t even have that
rudimentary level of skill.” (Business)
“We are using Turnitin for the first time…I am going to have
them see against their peers has anyone copied the same thing
just to try and raise awareness in first year students…But we
still have second year students who are unsure and will do
things like, they will write a literature review and everything is
in quotes. If you highlight the things in quotes, there is nothing
left that’s theirs, and of course that gets a bad mark as well.”
(Health Sciences)
“I mean obviously these days with the Internet these kids are
used to just, you know, to just downloading pirated movies and
all this stuff. I mean, the other thing is that the lines are
blurring…I mean, what could I or what could I not use in a
lecture?” (Humanities)
Faculty Views
on the
Importance of
Information
Literacy
Faculty overwhelmingly recognise the value of
fostering IL competencies among students
York University study establishes this.
Can students in your discipline
benefit from receiving information
literacy instruction?
No
2.3% Don't Know
4.1%
Repeated Finding in Other Studies
Cannon (1994)
Leckie & Fullerton
(1999)
McNamara-Morrison
(2007)
Webber, Boon &
Johnston (2005)
Yes
93.6%
Faculty perceptions of the importance of
individual IL competencies
Mean,Median
Rankings on scale of 1-7, with 7 indicating highest level of
importance, and 1 indicating the lowest
Capable of defining a research topic effectively
Able to identify information appropriate to a given research question
Understand how information is communicated in the primary discipline which
they are studying
Understand the differences between scholarly and popular sources
Able to distinguish between primary and secondary sources of information
Able to identify appropriate search tools (e.g. databases, online research tools)
to find needed information
Capable of formulating effective search strategies when looking for needed
information within online research tools
Understand how to critically evaluate library information sources found
Understand how to critically evaluate information found on the free web
Able to effectively synthesize information gathered from different sources
Understand issues relating to academic integrity
Capable of citing information sources correctly
6.35, 7
6, 6
6.37, 7
6.58, 7
6.45, 7
6.21, 6
6.21, 6
6.51, 7
6.64, 7
6.49, 7
6.6, 7
6.27, 7
Faculty perceptions of the importance of
individual IL competencies

Weetman (2005) reports that a vast majority of faculty
(ranging from 85% to 97%) say each skill as defined
by SCONUL “seven pillars” is essential by the end of
the course.

Gullikson (2006) found 61 out of 87 of ACRL IL
Standards for Higher Education given ranking of
3.25/4 or higher.

Both this study and Gullikson (2006)

Highest ranked competencies fall within ACRL IL
standards three, four and five.

Lowest ranked competencies fall within ACRL IL
standard two.
Faculty perceptions of the importance of
individual IL competencies
“I mean I could see [IL] as fundamentally enhancing a
student’s effectiveness in every other course they take
which would be a really good argument for having it as
part of the core curriculum with an academic mandate
rather than a library mandate.” (Business)
“…I think we’d like to have undergraduate students
graduating with an ability to discern what is useful
information, how to use it effectively, and how to bring it
in to their knowledge base. That’s just a life experience
thing.” (Health Sciences)
“I always try to point out to them that these are, in a
sense, life skills – that they are consumers of
information throughout their lives, and that they might
as well be savvy consumers…” (Humanities)
IL Instruction:
Faculty Beliefs
vs. Practices
Appropriate Roles & Information Literacy
Instruction: What Faculty Think

York Study
Should be a collaborative endeavour between
librarians and faculty:
 78.7% - faculty and librarians together.
 10% - librarians only.
 7.1% - faculty only.
 4.3% - either faculty or librarians.

Other Studies – Mixed findings:

Substantial support for collaborative model – Cannon
(1994), Gonzales (2001), Leckie & Fullerton (1999).

Faculty feel little or no responsibility for teaching
information literacy – Thomas (1994), McGuinness
(2006)
Appropriate Roles & Information Literacy
Instruction: What Faculty Do
York University:
Disconnect between belief and practice.
Corroborated by findings of
other studies
Note, however, statistical significance of gender as
demographic variable: female faculty found to
incorporate IL Instruction more than male faculty.
Manuel, Beck & Molloy
(2005) in a review of the
LIS literature conclude
that:
Are information literacy competencies taught to
students as part of your courses?
120
“various studies report
that 55 to 85% of the
faculty do not use
librarian-provided
instruction”
100
80
37.5
47.1
60.4
68.8
60
No %
40
Yes %
62.5
52.9
20
39.6
31.3
0
All
Science &
Engineering
Social Sciences
& Humanties
Professional
Schools
(Business &
Law)
Only Thomas (1994) found
gender to be significant –
female faculty 2.5 times
more likely to introduce
instruction than male
faculty.
Who is doing the teaching?
Almost 55% of York University faculty, who are
incorporating information literacy instruction,
are doing this themselves. Studies by Gonzales
(2001), Cannon (1994), and Leckie & Fullerton
(1999) and McGuinness (2006) reveal similar
findings.
11.3
Teach myself (%)
34.8
53.9
Faculty and librarian coteach(%)
Librarian teaches (%)
Faculty/librarian roles and information literacy
instruction
Faculty who organize IL with the library define the value of the
librarian role in a range of ways:
“…the nice thing about a librarian coming in to the 2030 class is the
fact that it is just one more voice telling them. And it’s a slightly
different perspective.” (Health Sciences)
“[my subject librarian] was very good to underscore that
librarians are not just the sort of people who reshelve books librarians are scholars…So it would be nice if students thought
about librarians in terms of research just like they think of their
professors…We can help that by bringing librarians in to the
place where students value their professors...For whatever
reason they don’t value them as much in the library. They see you
more as service providers.” (Humanities)
“Yes. It’s recursive. Just because you went to the library
workshop and hit all the nails on the head, it doesn’t mean the
students walk out knowing it. You have to design the course so
they can practice it.” (Social Sciences)
Faculty/librarian roles and information literacy
instruction
Faculty who organize IL with the library define the value of the
librarian role in a range of ways:
“Access to needed information: that’s what I am hoping I
guess the library introduces them to.” (Hard Sciences)
“Librarians are spending an awful lot of time doing
workshops but I think if I were strategic planning with the
library, I would put 20% of my librarian teaching time in to
teaching and the rest working with departments to assist with
integrating IL in to their curriculum…I think that synergy
between the library and curriculum planning is crucial…”
(Social Sciences)
“…ideally they cooperate…[this] needs to happen a lot
more…But it’s also important because…people are isolated in
their little own holes…and we can either work at cross
purposes or we can work together…it again sends the
message to students that in a sense, what should I say, that
knowledge isn’t a bunch of subject specialists in little holes,
but that actually there is the problem of integrating it and
that’s the final cask in a way.” (Humanities)
The non-adopters: Why some faculty offer
no IL instruction

47.1% of York faculty are not incorporating IL instruction.
Reasons given:

Curriculum too full and not enough time (61.1%)
 Leckie & Fullerton (1999) & Cannon (1994) = approx 25%,
while Thomas (1994) = 53.9%

Lack of awareness (18.8%)
 Larger factor in most other studies: Cannon (1994)= 40%;
Gonzales (2001)=46%, Leckie & Fullerton (1999)= 31%.

Other reasons included:
 Not faculty’s responsibility (22.2%).
 Students can teach themselves these competencies(22.2%).
 Students have these competencies already (13.3%)
Faculty beliefs about ideal frameworks for IL
instruction at York University.
Should Information Literacy Instruction
be Mandatory or Optional?
120
100
14.3
18.3
16.2
27.7
80
60
Optional %
Mandatory %
40
81.7
85.7
83.8
Social Sciences
& Humanties
Professional
Schools
(Business & Law)
72.3
20
0
All
Science &
Engineering
Faculty beliefs about ideal frameworks for IL
instruction at York University.
Optional or required?
25 faculty comments received:

15 out of 25 express unwaivering support for mandating
this type of instruction somewhere, with only four
expressing reservations.

Five faculty show support with qualifications.

Provide it only where students shown to need it.
Illustrative comment:
“The competency itself should be mandatory,
Whether the instruction should be depends on
competency the students have already
achieved.”
Faculty beliefs about ideal frameworks for IL
instruction at York University.
Optimal IL Delivery Mechanisms

Disconnect between what is done, and what faculty
believe should happen:
 In practice, most faculty adopting IL instruction
within class time (79% during lectures, 36% during
tutorial time, 12% outside class)
 Optimally 39% of faculty believe IL instruction
should take place outside scheduled class time,
and only 45% think it should happen during class
time.

Thomas (1994) and McGuinness (2006) find similar
strong believe in NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard)
approach.
Faculty beliefs about ideal frameworks for IL
instruction at York University.
Optimal IL Delivery Mechanisms
In-class, outside class, or online?
63 faculty comments received.
Asked to comment on in-class, outside class, or
online

Integration during class time at some point in a
program desirable (33 comments)

Multi-method approach optimal (31 comments)

Assignments or task-specific objectives essential to
ensure learning (7 comments)

Reservations about in-class delivery due to lack of
time (9 comments)
Faculty beliefs about optimal delivery
frameworks: IL instruction inside class or outside
class?
Faculty who organize IL predominantly favour an in-class
approach, though recommended models vary:
“We should as a program…have thought through what you
should be able to do by the end of 1st year, 2nd year. It should
get progressively more challenging and difficult. We should
give them lots of practise and we should be assessing them
as they go.” (Social Sciences)
“We’ve got to make decisions at the program level as to how
we do this sort of thing…perhaps part of orientation. We also
need to do it some time in between, when we identify people
who are falling behind. So there are various ways in which we
could do it in a more structured manner. I find doing it course
by course works especially at lower levels but at upper levels,
they are saying, half of them, they’ve seen [the librarian]
before.” (Business)
Faculty beliefs about optimal delivery
frameworks: IL instruction inside class or outside
class?
Faculty who organize IL predominantly favour an in-class
approach, though recommended models vary:
“I think the simple answer could be as easy as let’s
dedicate a one credit course at the first year level and
second year level and third year level and fourth year
level…one credit is usually one hour a week…utilized in
the development of you know information skills,
information gathering skills, writing skills.” (Hard Sciences)
“If this was an elective, like if it’s an elective, people will
not mind. If you want it in the core, it’ll be an issue
because something else will have to go and that’s really
the obstacle…” (Business)
Faculty beliefs re optimal delivery frameworks: IL
instruction best delivered online, in-person, or as blended
model?
Faculty who organize IL with the library generally see
blended model as the preferred approach:
“It’s my view modern education is best delivered both online
and in the classroom…Is there a need, a niche for purely
online courses? Yes. Is there a niche for purely classroom
delivered courses? Yes. But is there a role where the strengths
of those two styles combine and you get a better product?
Absolutely.” (Hard Sciences)
“I am using Moodle as a way for them to give each other
feedback. It is fostering cooperative stuff.” (Social Sciences)
“Everyone in the working group thought there had to be much
more blended learning, lots more using
technology…technology can be used to promote deeper
learning and more durable learning and it’s just not being used
by any means even to promote deep learning right now.”
(Business)
Conclusions

Implications for Practice:
 Flexible approach to IL models and approaches
desirable as faculty preferences vary.
 Case for investigating further the role and place of
faculty development in an IL program.
 Need for stronger library advocacy role.
 Though awareness of IL instruction is high (84%
survey respondents), 57% say a better job of
promoting IL could be done.

Implications for Research:
 More research to gain deeper understanding of why
faculty choose not to adopt IL instruction.
 More research to obtain more in-depth understanding of
faculty views on models of information literacy
instruction which are most effective or desirable.
Bibliography

Anita Cannon, “Faculty Survey on Library Research Instruction,” RQ 33, no. 4
(1994): 524-41.

R. Gonzales, “Opinions and Experiences of University Faculty Regarding Library
Research Instruction: Results of a Web Based Survey at the University of
Southern Colorado,” Research Strategies (April 18, 2001): 191-201.

Shelley Gullikson, “Faculty Perceptions of ACRL's Information Literacy
Competency Standards for Higher Education,” The Journal of Academic
Librarianship 32, no. 6 (November 2006): 583-592.

L. Hardesty, “Faculty Culture and Bibliographic Instruction: An Exploratory
Analysis,” Library Trends 44, no. 2 (1995): 339-67

Gloria J. Leckie and Anne Fullerton, “Information Literacy in Science and
Engineering Undergraduate Education,” College and Research Libraries 60, no. 1
(January 1999): 9-29.

Claire McGuinness, “What Faculty Think-Exploring the Barriers to Information
Literacy Development in Undergraduate Education,” The Journal of Academic
Librarianship 32, no. 6 (November 2006): 573-582.

Laurie McNamara Morrison, “Faculty Motivations: An Exploratory Study of
Motivational Factors of Faculty to Assist with Students' Research Skills
Development,” Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information
Practice and Research 2, no. 2 (2007).
Bibliography

Paul O. Jenkins. Faculty-Librarian Relationships. (Oxford: Chandos
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
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
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
J. Thomas, “Faculty Attitudes and Habits Concerning Library Instruction:
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
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
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