Integration of information literacy skills into business courses

Abstract

Using content analysis and staff interviews, this study evaluated the impact of an action plan that aimed to assist in integrating information literacy skills into teaching and learning practices of eight first‐year core business courses in the Division of Business and Enterprise (BUE) at the University of South Australia (UniSA). The action plan involved a series of professional development meetings with these eight staff, library liaison staff and learning advisers. In order to evaluate the success of this action plan, comparisons were made between two groups of academic staff: those eight first‐year BUE core course coordinators who had experienced the action plan and another eight BUE first‐year staff who had not. An analysis found that there were no statistically significant differences to changes in information literacy teaching and learning practices over the 12 months between the two groups. It was therefore concluded that the action plan had not delivered the intended outcomes. This finding was partly attributed to a large number of inhibiting factors as well as to the short time over which the action plan was conducted.