Socio-Cognitive Relevance of Information Literacy: The impact on student academic work

Abstract

Relevance seems to be a topic that continues to escape common understanding and agreement among information science researchers. At the same time relevance is acknowledged by the same as a fundamental cornerstone in information science. A contemporary area of relevance research is the concept of relevance from a user socio-cognitive view.

This study aims to investigate undergraduate student perceptions of the socio-cognitive relevance of information literacy competencies to their academic work; to identify the factors that make information literacy competencies socio-cognitively relevant to their academic work. Socio-cognitive relevance is the perception of something being useful and meaningful. Learning how students perceive and rank the usefulness and meaningfulness of information literacy competencies for their academic work will be valuable for improving pedagogical work, supporting academia goals such as retention and completion, and improving how to communicate the value of information literacy competencies as transferable competencies for successful career and workplace experiences, and improve lifelong learning information awareness.

There are recent studies that have provided data on undergraduate student perceptions of interacting with information in the academic environment but not specifically the complex triad of information literacy competencies, socio-cognitive relevance and undergraduate student academic work. A cross-sectional mixed-methods two-stage...