Information literacy as a determinant of engineering undergraduates’ use of electronic resources in three universities in Osun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Information literacy is conceptualized to be an individual recognizing the need for information and the possession of knowledge on how to find, evaluate and communicate information effectively to make a decision. With the surge in sources of information, particularly the electronic information sources, which are now abundantly available, it is expected that a good literate information user would use electronic resources better than a noninformation literate. This study therefore focused on information literacy as a correlate of engineering undergraduates’ use of electronic resources in three universities in Osun state, Nigeria due to the centrality of current information to their engineering practices. The descriptive survey design was adopted, the population consisted of 100-500 level engineering students selected from a federal, private and state universities in Osun State. Three hundred and fifty- four (354) copies of the questionnaire were administered to engineering undergraduates across the selected three universities, two hundred and twenty-seven (227) copies of the questionnaire correctly filled were returned and were found useful for the analyses. The software package for social sciences was used for data analyses based on descriptive and inferential statistics for research questions and hypothesis respectively. The study revealed that, e-resources were found moderately available, and used for personal development of the engineering undergraduates in Osun state. The study equally established that Internet sources and e-journals were the predominantly used e-sources, while the frequency of use was daily. The students were found to be able to identify information ( 𝒙̅ = 3.22), do seek information (𝒙̅ = 2.84), can evaluate information (𝒙̅ = 2.89), and apply the information (𝒙̅ = 2.62). thence, the overall information literacy of the engineering students was found to be good (𝒙̅ = 2.91) and might be responsible for their use of electronic resources. Therefore, concludes and recommends that relevant electronic information resources should be subscribed to by the universities for the use of engineering undergraduates.