University students’ information literacy skills and impact of training in Bangladesh

Abstract

This article examines university students’ perceived skill levels in utilizing internet resources and library tools, as well as accomplishing specific information-skills tasks, and assesses the impact of information literacy training in Bangladesh. The study involved two phases: first, a survey was administered to a sample of 257 students and, second, an experiment was conducted with 28 students to examine the effectiveness of training. The survey results show that the students perceived their skills with internet resources and library tools to be at a high level, with significant differences found in skill levels based on gender and age. Additionally, the students reported a high level of perceived skills in completing information tasks, with no significant differences found across the demographic variables. In the experimental study, the participants exhibited low task performance on a set of 22 task questions prior to training, achieving an overall correct score of 28.4%. However, a significant improvement in correct scores (57.1%) was observed after participating in the skills training.