Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 96, May 2016, Pages 94-108
Computers & Education

A longitudinal study on information-seeking knowledge in psychology undergraduates: Exploring the role of information literacy instruction and working memory capacity

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2016.02.011Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A longitudinal study on information literacy in psychology students was conducted.

  • The roles of instruction and working memory capacity were investigated.

  • Curriculum-integrated instruction is more effective than library instruction.

  • Working memory capacity moderates the development of information-seeking knowledge.

  • On cognitive load theory grounds, usability of databases and tutorials is crucial.

Abstract

No longitudinal studies on whether the acquisition information literacy requires formal instruction or whether it just develops “naturally” have yet been published. Moreover, no studies exist on individual and situational factors moderating the long-term development of information literacy. For these reasons, a three-semester long, four-wave longitudinal study on information-seeking knowledge (a major aspect of information literacy) was conducted with 137 psychology undergraduates (first wave). With regard to situational factors, curriculum-embedded information literacy instruction was contrasted with library instruction. Concerning individual factors, the role of working memory capacity was explored on cognitive load theory grounds. Data were analyzed through multi-level modeling. Results revealed a linear increase in information-seeking knowledge across the four waves, which remained significant when controlling for the effects of information literacy instruction. Curriculum-embedded instruction seemed more effective than library instruction. Working memory capacity moderated the development of information-seeking knowledge: Students with a high working memory capacity had steeper learning curves than those with lower working memory capacity. Results were robust when controlling for additional individual factors known to have an impact on knowledge development, namely fluid intelligence, epistemic beliefs, and domain-specific self-efficacy beliefs. We conclude that instruction plays a key role in information literacy development, especially when it is embedded into the respective curriculum. Moreover, reducing cognitive load is crucial for the acquisition of information-seeking knowledge. Efforts should therefore be made to enhance the usability of information search tools and to provide well-structured online tutorials and instructional modules, for example by using authentic, real-world learning tasks.

Introduction

Information literacy is commonly defined as a set of skills and abilities that enable individuals to recognize an information need and to effectively locate, evaluate, and use the needed information (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2000 1). Information-seeking knowledge refers to declarative and procedural knowledge on how to search for information and therefore constitutes an important prerequisite for information literate behavior2 (Rosman, Mayer, & Krampen, 2015a). Since it enables an active construction (instead of passive reception) of knowledge, many authors have emphasized the crucial role of information literacy for conceptual understanding and self-regulated learning (Brand-Gruwel et al., 2005, Johnston and Webber, 2003, Joo et al., 2000, Tsai et al., 2012). While the majority of publications on information literacy consists of practitioner-oriented theoretical papers or case studies offering prescriptive advice (e.g., on how to design and implement information literacy instruction; Larkin & Pines, 2005), only one longitudinal study on the development of information literacy has been published until now (Salisbury, Corbin, & Peseta, 2013). Since this study took place in an environment where students received continuous information literacy instruction, it does not allow to ascertain whether information literacy necessarily requires formal instruction or whether it just develops “naturally” (e.g., through more or less systematic self-regulated learning activities) in today's so-called digital native students (Ng, 2012). Moreover, no longitudinal studies on the (situational and individual) moderating factors of information literacy development have–to our knowledge–been published yet. With regard to situational factors that likely influence the development of information literacy, many emphasize the superiority of curriculum-embedded and domain-specific information literacy instruction over more generic and domain-unspecific instructional methods (e.g., Andretta, 2005). Nevertheless, this assumption has not yet been tested empirically. As for individual determinants of information literate behavior, working memory capacity has been prominent for quite some time (e.g., Garcia et al., 2011, Savolainen, 2015). On the other hand, no studies exist on how this variable might influence the development of information-seeking knowledge. The present article fills these gaps by investigating the development of information-seeking knowledge in psychology students over the first half of their undergraduate studies and by relating development to these situational and individual factors.

The transition from secondary to tertiary education constitutes a cornerstone in students' intellectual development and a turning point in how they (should) approach academic information seeking. Even though some secondary schools already convey basic information-seeking knowledge, universities are the places where most students get in touch with scholarly information-seeking for their first time. Simply consulting Google™ is replaced by searches in academic search engines and bibliographic databases, the breadth and depth of Wikipedia™ becomes insufficient for many purposes, and lecturers increasingly require students to read scholarly books or even journal articles. This is especially true for the psychology curriculum, where information literacy is viewed as a central learning goal (American Psychological Association, 2013).

Notwithstanding the importance of this transitional phase, longitudinal studies on information literacy development in freshmen and sophomores are rare. Apart from qualitative research (e.g., Chu and Law, 2008, MacMillan, 2009, Warwick et al., 2009) most studies investigate–predominately in pretest-posttest-designs–the effects of library or course instruction on information literacy (e.g., Burkhardt, 2007, Leichner et al., 2014, Wopereis et al., 2008) or on other variables related to information-seeking (e.g., library satisfaction: Stamatoplos & Mackoy, 1998; cognitive states: Walton & Hepworth, 2011). Other studies longitudinally investigate the search process as such (e.g., Kuhlthau, 2004, Spink et al., 2002, Vakkari, 2001). For example, Spink and colleagues (2002) let their participants carry out actual information searches and collected standardized interview data prior to and after the searches. However, the results of these studies do not allow for conclusions about the long-term development of information literacy. In contrast, a third group of studies investigates information-seeking in a truly longitudinal fashion (i.e., over sufficiently long intervals). Unfortunately, these studies are extremely rare and most of them investigate information-seeking on a rather basic level by only considering students' library use patterns (Whitmire, 2001) or the use and awareness of electronic information services (Crawford et al., 2004, Urquhart and Rowley, 2007). As they do not employ achievement tests to assess information literacy, such studies might perhaps better be conceptualized as longitudinal investigations of individual information behavior in library contexts.

One recent article by Salisbury et al. (2013) stands out in this taxonomy. In their four-wave longitudinal study, the authors used an established information literacy test (the so-called Research Practices Survey [RPS]; Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium, 2015) to investigate health sciences students' information literacy development in the context of curriculum-embedded information literacy instruction. Even though the study exhibits some rather severe methodological shortcomings (e.g., a dropout of over 90 percent across the study period, no inferential testing), the authors conclude that their data “clearly indicates improvement between first and final year for learning outcomes related to understanding peer-review (sic) articles, understanding citations, utilisation of academic sources and competence in applying information search skills” (Salisbury et al., 2013, p. 8). When interpreting the results of Salisbury et al. (2013), one nevertheless has to bear in mind that all study participants received continuous information literacy instruction throughout the whole three-year study period. Therefore, the question arises whether their information-seeking skills would also have increased without specific training, especially since the participants had distinctly higher RPS scores in the last wave than students from other universities.

Our first point of investigation therefore deals with whether or not psychology studies stimulate–independent of formal information literacy instruction–the development of information-seeking knowledge in psychology undergraduates. Even though empirical evidence on this is scarce, there seems to be some agreement that information literacy does not necessarily develop on its own. For example, Brophy and Bawden (2005) see formal instruction as a crucial requirement for information literacy development. In line with this, Warwick et al. (2009) argue that many students employ “a conservative information strategy, retaining established strategies as far as possible and completing tasks with minimum information seeking effort” (p. 2402). As information literacy instruction is not integrated into most educational curricula (Derakhshan and Singh, 2011, Probert, 2009, Schmidt-Hertha and Rott, 2014) and students rarely participate in library instruction (Head & Eisenberg, 2009), this might well explain why even advanced students often refer to Google (e.g., Griffiths & Brophy, 2005) and employ one-word-searches (e.g., Sutcliffe, Ennis, & Watkinson, 2000) when searching for scholarly literature.

On the other hand, one might argue that at least in psychology, many classroom assignments require information-seeking (e.g., to prepare term papers) and that students therefore acquire the respective skills through more or less systematic self-regulated learning activities, for example by conducting trial-and-error searches, consulting online tutorials, or seeking advice from their peers, faculty, or librarians (Head & Eisenberg, 2009). In line with this, Gross and Latham (2009) found undergraduates to consider their information-seeking skills to be primarily “self-taught”. Moreover, Elmborg (2003) argues that “all researchers know that trial-and-error searching in online indexes and exploring the stacks can be potent learning experiences in and of themselves” (p. 70). Finally, Head and Eisenberg (2009) found most of their study participants–even though only 12 percent had ever undergone library instruction–to use scholarly databases on a regular basis. One may thus conclude that many students acquire some less elaborate search strategies on their own and subsequently use them both in everyday and in course-related searches (Head & Eisenberg, 2009). Considering this, formal instruction would not always be necessary, at least with regard to the development of basic search strategies. We thus expect psychology undergraduates to develop at least some information-seeking skills independently of formal instruction:

Hypothesis 1

Psychology undergraduates’ information-seeking knowledge increases over their first three semesters even when controlling for the effects of formal information literacy instruction.

As a second line of investigation, we considered the effects of situational factors on information-seeking knowledge development. Although participation in information literacy instruction is not mandatory at most universities, some students may either choose to participate in generic instruction offered by libraries or may receive more or less extensive instruction during their domain-specific courses. Library instruction often consists of so-called “one-shot” sessions, usually lasting 45–90 min. Such classes aim at conveying general information-seeking skills (e.g., skills relating to the use of library catalogues or bibliographic databases) and are often rather generic and domain-unspecific (i.e., not tailored to information-seeking in a specific domain). One-shot library sessions have been widely criticized since they only teach basic knowledge on certain library services and do not allow to transfer this knowledge to actual, real-world searches (Anderson and May, 2010, Mery et al., 2012).

Embedding these same learning goals (i.e., fostering information-seeking skills) into discipline-specific curricular courses, in contrast, might be helpful to achieve deeper processing of learning contents and thus better and more sustainable learning. So-called embedded designs (Andretta, 2005) therefore not only allow learners to acquire discipline-specific knowledge about databases and library catalogues, but also encourage (or even require) the transfer of learning contents to real-world searches, for example by letting students carry out literature searches on self-chosen topics and summarize the results in seminar papers. Andretta (2005) views such designs as most effective because they allow learners not only to acquire new skills, but also to reflect on and implement the newly acquired skills in novel contexts. Embedded designs thus have strong similarities with contemporary instructional design methodologies like the Four-Component Instructional Design model (4C/ID-model; Van Merriënboer & Kirschner, 2013), in which authentic, real-world learning tasks are the method of choice. Especially in the long term, students will likely benefit more from a research methods course that combines authentic information-seeking tasks with the writing of a seminar paper than from an extracurricular instruction session that conveys generic knowledge on how to use certain library services (Artman, Frisicaro-Pawlowski, & Monge, 2010). We therefore expect curriculum-embedded information literacy instruction to have stronger effects on the development of information-seeking knowledge than generic library instruction.

Hypothesis 2

Curriculum-embedded information literacy instruction has a stronger effect on the development of information-seeking knowledge than library instruction.

A third point of investigation deals with individual factors that might moderate the development of information-seeking knowledge. In recent years, cognitive load theory (Paas, Renkl, & Sweller, 2003) has become immensely popular in multimedia and computer-mediated learning. According to cognitive load theory, human working memory–defined as a cognitive system that is used for temporarily storing and manipulating information (Baddeley, 2012) – is not able to process many elements simultaneously. Working memory overload, in turn, impedes the transfer of new information to long-term memory (e.g., through schema acquisition and automation) and thus impairs learning (Paas et al., 2003, Van Merriënboer and Sweller, 2005). Paas et al. (2003) distinguish three types of cognitive load: Intrinsic cognitive load relates to demands that are imposed on working memory capacity by the learning content itself (e.g., by the level of interactivity between different learning elements). Extraneous (or ineffective) cognitive load, in contrast, are working memory demands imposed by ineffective instructional design (e.g., when problem solutions are not given in the instruction but have to be derived by the learner). Finally, germane (or effective) cognitive load is working memory load directly relevant to learning (e.g., schema acquisition and automation).

Bartholomé and Bromme (2009) suggest that a high working memory capacity enables learners to better deal with cognitive load. In line with this, previous research has established a strong relationship between working memory capacity and learning (Austin, 2009, Carretti et al., 2009, Engle, 2002, Gathercole et al., 2003, Seufert et al., 2009). Because it keeps users orientated while navigating and searching, working memory capacity also plays a crucial role in information-seeking. For example, Sharit, Hernández, Czaja, and Pirolli (2008) argue that navigational behavior requires “both recall of where one is, planning of where one wants to go, and comprehension of information on Web pages … to be carried out more or less concurrently” (p. 20). Positive effects of working memory capacity on information-seeking have been found in very diverse samples (e.g., Czaja et al., 2001, Garcia et al., 2011, Laberge and Scialfa, 2005, Savolainen, 2015). With regard to cognitive load theory, such findings suggest that the multitude of functions and the complex hyperspace structure of most academic search engines and bibliographic databases induce high amounts of intrinsic cognitive load that overtax searchers with lower working memory capacity. For example, research shows that learners with lower working memory capacity are quickly overwhelmed by hypertext environments (DeStefano & LeFevre, 2007) and easily diverted by irrelevant details (seductive details effect; Mayer et al., 2001, Sanchez and Wiley, 2006).

Despite robust evidence for the effects of working memory capacity on information-seeking, empirical and/or theoretical articles on how working memory capacity might affect the development of information-seeking skills have not yet been published. This is striking, because cognitive load theory is even better suited to explain why students with lower working memory capacity might have difficulties in acquiring information-seeking skills. In fact, these students face a double burden since they are prone to be overwhelmed by both the learning process as such (i.e., instructional methods inducing extraneous cognitive load) and by the learning contents (e.g., complex database structures inducing intrinsic cognitive load; see above). Since extraneous and intrinsic cognitive load are additive (Paas et al., 2003), this might especially be true when such students approach information-seeking outside of formal instruction. In this case, they have to navigate through a complex information environment (e.g., online tutorials, bibliographic databases, etc.) while at the same time managing their self-regulated learning process (e.g., extrapolating different search strategies, evaluating their value, memorizing them, etc.), thus inducing high intrinsic and high extraneous cognitive load, which further impairs the transfer of new information to long-term memory.

On the other hand, students with a high working memory capacity will likely be more successful in assimilating new information from information literacy instruction and tutorials, and will not be overwhelmed by the multitude of functions and the complex hyperspace structure of most search tools. In sum, we therefore expect students with higher working memory capacity to have steeper learning curves with regard to the development of their information-seeking knowledge.

Hypothesis 3

Working memory capacity predicts the development of information-seeking knowledge in psychology undergraduates over their first three semesters: The higher students’ working memory capacity, the higher their increase in information-seeking knowledge will be.

To sum up, we suggest the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: Psychology undergraduates' information-seeking knowledge increases over their first three semesters even when controlling for the effects of formal information literacy instruction.

Hypothesis 2: Curriculum-embedded information literacy instruction has a stronger effect on the development of information-seeking knowledge than library instruction.

Hypothesis 3: Working memory capacity predicts the development of information-seeking knowledge in psychology undergraduates over their first three semesters: The higher students' working memory capacity, the higher their increase in information-seeking knowledge will be.

Section snippets

Participants and procedure

All hypotheses were tested with data from a four-wave longitudinal study on knowledge development. Participants were psychology undergraduates seeking a Bachelor's degree. Baseline data was collected during the first few weeks of participants' studies, followed by three consecutive data collection sessions at the beginning of the second, third, and fourth semesters, respectively. The study thus spanned across the first half of the psychology undergraduate curriculum. We ensured that only

Preliminary analyses and variable coding

In a first step, PIKE-P scores were obtained through the standardized scoring syntax by Rosman et al. (2015a). Thereafter, to enhance interpretability of results, these scores were recoded into percentage values by dividing them through the highest attainable score (88) and subsequently multiplying them with 100. As can be seen in Fig. 1, a rather strong increase5

Discussion

The present study investigated the development of information-seeking knowledge in psychology undergraduates over the first half of their undergraduate studies. A four-wave longitudinal study with N = 137 students (first wave) was conducted. Dropout occurred unsystematically and was rather small with only 16 percent from the first to the last wave. Descriptively, a linear increase in information-seeking knowledge was found, which, according to additional analyses of cross-sectional data from

Acknowledgments

Research was funded by the German Joint Initiative for Research and Innovation with a grant acquired in the Leibniz Competition 2013 (grant number SAW-2013-ZPID-1 195). The funder was not involved in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication.

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