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Designing A general information literacy course for first-year postgraduate students: Improving academical and innovative abilities

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Abstract

In an era of information explosion, improving information literacy for academical innovation is essential for postgraduate students. However, the majority of these students lack information literacy knowledge, and even a few lack access to related courses. To improve the ratio and level of the information literacy of postgraduate students, we design a novel framework for general information literacy. It consists of four parts, namely, teaching process, methods, abilities, and applications. The methods part of the framework includes questionnaire, intensive teaching, embedded pedagogy, and free sharing. They provide support for the teaching process and abilities improvement. Notably, postgraduate students’ abilities are expected to be enhanced, namely, learning(using search engines to enhance search quotient), academic research (conducting literature search, analysis, and assessment), and innovation (evaluating innovation and managing information). These abilities are applicable to academic research, internship, and academic competitions, among others. Moreover, we design a questionnaire to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed framework. The statistical results demonstrate that the information literacy of postgraduate students maintained an upward trend, and the course was evaluated with a high level of satisfaction.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank LUO Zhaofeng (University of Science and Technology of China) for the insightful advice

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Youth Fund, under number 62102318, and partially by the Educational and Teaching Reform Research Project of Shannxi Province under Grant 21BY012. This work was also supported by Pilot Project Construction of Virtual Department of Shannxi Province at the School of Software, Northwestern Polytechnical University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Software Northwestern Polytechnical University, No.127, Youyixi Road, Xi’an, 710129, Shannxi, China

    Bingshu Wang, Ming Shen, Chunyan Ma & Yue Zhao

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  1. Bingshu Wang
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  2. Ming Shen
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  3. Chunyan Ma
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Correspondence to Bingshu Wang.

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Wang, B., Shen, M., Ma, C. et al. Designing A general information literacy course for first-year postgraduate students: Improving academical and innovative abilities. Educ Inf Technol 29, 12781–12795 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-12326-y

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