Lack of Information Literacy: is it causing unethical academic

malpractices by postgraduate students in Kenyan Universities?

Hellen A. Amunga&

Prof. Gopikuttan, A.

Introduction

• Role of postgraduate education to socio-economic, political and technologicaldevelopment

• Current networked environments and hybridlibraries

• Access, awareness and use of variedinformation resources for quality academicresearch output and dissemination of findings

Brief Literature Review

Some common activities that postgraduate students go through: • Specific subject-based course work • undertaking the research methodology course• creating the research proposal• being supervised or guided to complete their

academic assignments• writing up their final research works (thesis and

dissertations et cetra) • being evaluated before they attain their degrees(Rowley and Slack, 1998)

Brief Literature Review…

For the above to be above board, institutions must:

• invest in human and infrastructural resources

• ensure availability of varied information resources

• create institutional cultures that lean towards quality research

• Additionally, there must exist institutional mechanisms for strict and effective evaluation of students’ work.

Brief literature Review

Impacting Factors

• Globalization

• privatization of higher education

• massification (Altbatch & Rumbley, 2009)

• categories of students joining higher education among them being those who join postgraduate education for a mixture of personal and professional reasons (Sloweyand Schuetze, 2012)

Reasons for IL for Postgraduate students

• In the 21st Century, those who are equipped with skills and are knowledgeable about finding, evaluating, analyzing, integrating, managing &conveying information effectively to others are held in high esteem (Rockman, 2003)

• IL training helps institutions and students in particular to check on plagiarism, to understand and respect intellectual property rights and generally helps students to do better in their academic work ( Malliari and Nitsos (2008)

Reasons for IL…

• Although most students getting intopostgraduate study exhibit confidence abouttheir information literacy skills, they arealways underprepared for the demands ofpostgraduate level of study. They thus needadvanced information literacy training(Hodgens, Sendal and Evans 2012; O’Claire2013)

Need for Collaboration

There exists a relation between the uptake ofinformation literacy to an institution’s culture.The author argues that for any IL programme tosucceed, the library, faculty and administrationsub-cultures must be at sync about what theprogramme should entail. As such, IL must be inthe university’s strategic plan, be discussed atsenate levels as well as be reflected in individualfaculty’s syllabi Iannuzzi (1998)

Study’s Methodology

• Exploratory Survey triangulating both qualitative& quantitative research methodologies

• 615 students with 83.7% return rate

• Out of the 28 target respondents for library staff,the study secured 23 face-to-face interviews andtwo filled-up and returned interview schedules

• Two university librarians and one referencelibrarian were unable to participate althoughtheir libraries/universities participated

FindingsFinancing & Students’ Awareness

• Universities are spending millions as subscriptioncosts to enable access to online resources.

• For the year 2012 when field work for this studywas carried out, public university libraries paidKsh 1,960,000 while their private counterpartspaid Ksh 460,000 (this was equivalent to USD23,059 and USD 5,412 respectively)

• 87.2% of the students were aware of provision ofonline resources by their libraries while only

12.8 % said they were not aware

One Librarian’s View on provision & Use

‘The resources, that is, both human andinfrastructural, are available to them but mostof these students attend evening classes. Onlygroups come in for discussions to pass exams orwhen faced with an assignment…they do not goan extra mile.’

What attracts students to online resources?

Online Resources’ Attribute

Preference Levels

(n=515)

Yes

(%)

No

(%)

No Response

(%)

Ability to download and print for later

use

51.3 48.5 0.2

Ease of access and availability 46.6 53.2 0.2

Time-saving benefit 44.5 55.3 0.2

Currency of information 43.9 55.9 0.2

Quick browsing 41.7 58.1 0.2

Access to other resources through

provided links

41.7 58.1 0.2

Comprehensive coverage 39.0 60.8 0.2

Ability to access in different locations 35.9 63.9 0.2

Ability to easily share with friends and

colleagues

34.6 65.2 0.2

Ease to reference if using reference tools 32.4 67.2 0.4

Ease of copying and pasting into one’s

work

28.2 71.7 0.2

Who offers IL training?

I learnt how to use

online resources

through:

(n=515)

Yes No No Response

% % %

Assistance by peers 43.5 55.3 1.2

Trial and error 35.1 62.7 2.1

Training offered by both

library staff and

lecturers

33.4 65.4 1.2

Training offered by

library staff only

30.3 68.5 1.2

Self-instruction online

manuals

29.3 69.5 1.2

Training offered by

lecturers only

24.5 74.2 1.4

Students’ participation in IL training

• Only 137 students responded to this query

• Of the 137:

56.9% (78) – very useful

15.3% (21) – Fairly Useful

13.8% (19) – Useful

13.8% (19) – Not useful

Challenges at point of access & useChallenge at point of access and use Freq.

(n=515)

%)

Time restrictions due to other responsibilities and activities 244 52.2

Requirement to use passwords and user identities 174 33.8

Being asked to pay to be able to access certain articles 156 30.3

Lack of technical knowledge 145 28.2

Slow Downloading speeds 137 26.6

Inability to flip through as I would with print resources 123 23.9

Lack of printing facilities in the university library 120 23.3

Inadequate computers in the university library 117 22.7

Frequent power outages 113 21.9

Using my external storage device on virus infested computers in the university library 105 20.4

Reading on the computer screen 104 20.2

Lack of support from library staff 96 18.6

Time limits imposed by the library on how long I can use the computer 95 18.4

Not being permitted to download and save information on my external storage devices 90 17.5

Spelling errors related to use of British and American grammar by various databases 79 15.3

Lack of access to previously accessed articles 77 15

Requirement that I format my storage devices before using them on library computers 72 14

Requirement that only library staff can log in for me 72 14

Students’ training needs

Needed Information Literacy skill Freq.

(n=515)

%

Literature search skills 223 43.3

Using referencing tools 215 41.7

Learning more about information resources in my discipline 162 31.4

How to use online databases specific to my area of study 140 27.2

Social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs etc) 112 21.7

Saving online resources for later use 80 15.5

Basic computer skills (word processing, e.g. typing, saving files

etc)

76 14.8

Opening an email account and how to use email to

communicate

56 10.9

Some Views from librarians

‘Even after attending orientation, some studentswill disappear and only start looking for youwhen they start research work. By then, most ofthem have already forgotten the skills theyacquired during orientation. Others insist librarystaff has to help with the literature searchesbecause they believe we know everything…’

Some views from librarians

‘Plagiarism is rampant in thesis anddissertations. People do not want to study.Whatever is read is copied word by word. MostMBA supervisors come from other universities…Two years ago during a defence [session] for sixstudents, only one [thesis] was found not tohave been plagiarised...’

Is lack of IL causing Ethical Malpractices in Universities?

• The challenges encountered by students at point of access • Nature of students’ study programmes: evening, Saturday classes

and sand-witched holiday classes for school-based/institution based programmes (IBP)

• The examination-oriented educational system• Time limits as a result of inadequate resources in some universities• Lack of personal time to use the library and specifically attend

information literacy classes• The haphazardly done and voluntary, non-examinable information

literacy programmes• Lack of involvement by all stakeholders• What students want to be trained on• Lack of IE integration across the curriculum • Lack of pedagogy skills among librarians et cetra

Conclusion

Where do we start from? IL or IE or Integrate both?

• Awareness creation to all stakeholders

• Advocacy

• Capacity building

• Training

• Policies

THANK YOU!