The information flow of today is endless and the advances in information technology astounding. In today?s information society it is of utmost importance not only to be able to find the right information but also to evaluate the information. The expression ?information literacy? is not a new one but it has never been as pertinent and essential as today. Information literacy is however not something which is easily and swiftly achieved.
Swedish youth education is based on problem based learning in which the students are expected to research for material, evaluate their finds and use their skills to produce a good written or oral presentation. This in turn will hopefully help children to grow up to be information savvy.
Adult education is based on the same principle, however the students have more life experience and are usually more motivated as they themselves have chosen to study. Our thesis is concerned with this group as we decided to study if these said aspects, combined with the course plan of adult education and different teaching techniques, give adult students greater means to become information literate.
We interviewed six Social science teachers in five different adult education schools, so called Komvux. A questionnaire was also handed out to the students in the interviewed teachers? classes. The purpose of this questionnaire was to show not only if there were any differences between older and younger students, and less and more motivated students, but also if there were any differences between students who had experienced different teaching methods. Last but not least we wanted to see if the perception the students had of their own information literacy was correct.
It turned out our randomly selected group of students was fairly homogenic age wise. A majority of the students were motivated and we found that they were quite confident concerning their information literacy. When studying their replies to our questionnaire we found that a majority of the students knew how to clearly define the subject, where to find information and how to use different information sources. There was little difference between the students who had experienced different teaching methods.
Although the students showed that they could find information we found that they lacked skills concerning criticism of sources and evaluating information. Many acknowledged the importance of criticizing ones sources but were unsuccessful in explaining how they would go about to do this.
To make the students more information literate we recommend increased instruction in criticising and...
