The Digital Information Literacy Skill Level on College Student (Case: Final-Year College Student)

Abstract

Nowadays information obtained from digital media is easily accessible through various platforms. People can get information through online simply at the touch of their finger. However, this information can only be useful if the person has sufficient skills in digital information literacy. Information literacy can be defined as a skill to access and evaluate information effectively in solving a problem or in making decisions (Verzosa, 2009). Digital information literacy skills are important for academicians, especially for final year college students.These students have to conduct a research as their final project to achieve a bachelor’s degree. In addition, many university also require this research to be published in well-known journals. To achieve these goals, these university students need good digital information literacy skills. The aim of this study is to find out the level of digital information skills of these students. The findings of this study can be useful as input for universities to improve their student’s ditigal information literacy skills in order to produce a high quality research. This study uses a descriptive quantitative approach and also use The Seven Pillars of Information Literacy which was developed by SCONUL (Standing Conference of National and University Libraries). This study shows that overall digital information literacy skills of these students are at a strong level. They can search for information using a various keywords and identify information needs according to their research topic. However, information and skills about reseacrh papers outside their own university are lacking. These students can only produce research papers based on what is listed in their university’s final research writting guidelines.