Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Abstract
A study was undertaken to examine undergraduate students’ skills in Information literacy among at Mzumbe University in Morogoro Municipality, Tanzania. The objective of this study was to investigate the information literacy levels among undergraduate students. Specifically, the study sought to find out how undergraduate students identify their information needs, to examine how undergraduate students evaluate the retrieved information and to find out how undergraduate students cite and reference information sources. The study used a mixed method approach design using cross-sectional and case study. The study distributed 210 questionnaires to undergraduate students using stratified sampling followed by systematic random sampling to select individual students in year 1, 2 and 3. Data were analyzed using SPSS software V.16. The study found that most students (84.7%) knew how to identify information they retrieved through different tools. Moreover, a greater number of respondents (88.0%) had the ability to evaluate their retrieved information. Also, quite a good number of them (87.0%) were skilled in terms of citations and referencing. From the study findings, it was plausibly concluded that the majority of the undergraduate students are information literate when it comes to information identification, evaluation but few had little knowledge on citations and referencing. The study recommends that information literacy should be integrated into the research method course that is offered by every department and school. Also there should be training on proper citations and referencing as most students reported this to be an area they are not well equipped.