Information literacy skills of undergraduates of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Moratuwa

Information literacy has been recognized as the core literacy of the 21st century. An information-literate person is capable of identifying, locating, evaluating, organizing, and effectively using the information to address and help resolve personal, job-related, or broader social issues and problems. It is widely recognized that information literacy has to be taught to students during their undergraduate programmes. However, none of the universities in Sri Lanka has taken information literacy into the undergraduate curriculum to date. In the above context, the status of information literacy skill level of undergraduates attached to the Faculty of Architecture was investigated as a part of a university-wide study.The Information Skills Test developed for the study was used with 25 multiple choice questions (MCQ) as test items addressing 8 information literacy skill sets and 4 information literacy standards. This test was previously applied to Engineering Faculty students (Seneviratne & Wickramasinghe, 2009). The test was administered among a randomly selected sample of Level 1 Faculty of Architecture undergraduates representing all academic departments. Of the 122 valid responses received, 65 percent were from undergraduates of the Department of Building Economics, 28 percent were from the Department of Town and Country Planning, and 7 percent from the Department of Architecture. Data was analyzed using statistical software SPSS.The maximum information literacy score that could be attained is “1” for a particular information literacy standard, information literacy skill, or as a whole. The overall information literacy score (Mean) obtained by Level 1 undergraduates of the Faculty of Architecture is 0.42 (SD=0.12). This overall Mean score is considerably below the maximum score that can be attained (i.e., 1.0). However, it was found that Level 1 undergraduates from the Faculty of Architecture scored the highest overall information literacy score (Mean=0.42, SD=0.12) compared to Level 1 undergraduates from the Faculty of Engineering (Mean=0.36, SD=0.13) and the Faculty of Information Technology (Mean=0.34, SD=0.13). Data was also analysed to investigate how the gender of the undergraduates, whether their mother is employed or a housewife, and whether they have relatives living with them (such as grandparents) influence the information literacy skill level of undergraduates. The findings will be presented in detail, and the implications of the research will be discussed