Qualitative Assessment of Student Attitudes Toward Information Literacy

Many distance degree students at Washington State University enroll in General Education 300, a one-credit information literacy course taught online by librarians that exposes students to activities and materials that support the ACRL information literacy standards. In a final assignment, students write about the origins, applicability, and future use of information literacy and their newly minted skills in this area. We used ATLAS/ti, http://www.atlasti.de/, to analyze the text of these assignments and explore student attitudes toward information literacy. The majority of students articulated a broad view of information literacy not tied to a specific course project or to the library as a place.