Biology and Nursing Students' Perceptions of a Web-based Information Literacy Tutorial

Abstract

This study assessed student perceptions about an online information literacy tutorial, CORE (Comprehensive Online Research Education, to plan for the next generation of tutorials. The CORE tutorial includes seven modules: "Planning Your Project," "Topic Exploration," "Types of Information," "Search Tools," "Search Strategies," "Evaluating Sources," and "Copyright, Plagiarism, and Citing Sources." First-year students in biology and nursing courses responded to a survey after they completed the CORE modules. The students liked learning through an online tutorial. They thought that the tutorial could be improved with shorter modules and the addition of video and audio content. Few students reported learning important information from the "Copyright, Plagiarism, and Citing Sources," "Evaluating Resources," and "Types of Information" modules. They suggested topics for additional tutorials: how to use library databases and Microsoft Excel; how to evaluate the quality of information, how to cite references in a bibliography, and how to find statistics.

Keywords

• online tutorials; assessment; student perceptions