Information Literacy Skills of Humanities, Arts, and Social Science Tertiary Students in Singapore

Abstract

Measuring and assessing information literacy (IL) competencies is essential to understand its educational impact as well as to explore pedagogies to improve it. This study is the first to acquire knowledge about Singapore tertiary students’ skills in searching, evaluating, and using information. A total of 534 students from the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore participated in this study through an online survey. Moderate IL skills scores of the respondents showed room for improvement especially in higher-level skills related to information use, synthesis, and evaluation. Students receiving pretertiary education in Singapore scored higher than those from overseas did, which, to some extent, showed that IL education in Singapore is still more effective than that in some other countries. The IL course offered in the university was found to be useful and to lead to higher IL assessment scores.