2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In the Fall of 2023, a team of STEM Librarians decided to embark on a year-long research project, funded by their library, to study students’ perceptions of their own information literacy skills and what their information literacy skills were in practice. Specifically, this team wanted to analyze both undergraduate and graduate STEM students through an online survey that asked retrospective and targeted questions about finding information, evaluating sources, thinking critically, and citing accurately, for example. The survey contained forty-three questions and was divided into eight sections: demographics, general information literacy perception, information sources, information seeking/retrieval, evaluating sources, critical thinking, citation management, and copyright/plagiarism. 132 complete survey responses were collected via Qualtrics. The librarian team identified gaps in information literacy knowledge amongst undergraduate and graduate STEM students, particularly among international students. With this evidence, the librarian team has started discussions with the School of Engineering to target the large international graduate student population to achieve a specific goal regarding information literacy instruction. Periodic information literacy skill education is happening at the undergraduate level with one-shot instruction, but there is no systematic outreach to the STEM graduate student population.