Information literacy of undergraduate Vietnamese students viewed from the perspective of cultural context

Abstract

This paper reports the results of the study on information literacy (IL) of undergraduate students, conducted at the University of Danang. Participants were 353 undergraduate students. Data were collected with a paper survey consisted of 12 open-ended questions. Then, semi-structured in-depth interview method was applied to enrich the information left by respondents in questionnaires. This study contributes to the body of literature on IL in Vietnam by exploring the information skills and information behavior of the group of undergraduate students. It shows the main constraints and challenges in development of IL education and underlines a very slow change in Vietnamese academia that inhibits actions to be taken to develop an IL educational offer at the universities. Presentations of study results is enriched with the description of IL initiatives undertaken in Vietnam so far and with references to cultural context and background in higher education that may influence both IL initiatives of policy makers and information competences and information behavior of users.