TEACHING INFORMATION LITERACY: EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES

Being information literate is crucial for today's pupils if they are to become tomorrow's self-directed learners and innovative employees. Current information literacy (IL) pedagogical practices, however, have not necessarily been effective in providing students with the tools necessary for thorough research and memory recall. Therefore, effective instructional strategies are of utmost importance in IL education. The working hypothesis of this study is that students will have an easier time learning IL skills if they are able to include their interests—which are influenced by their dominant intelligences—into their coursework. As a result, the quality of their work would improve. Using a well-established educational approach—Gardner's idea of multiple intelligences—a course was developed to provide students with the IL skills they would need to test these postulates via project work. What followed was a comparison of the two groups' project quality: the experimental and control groups. Project results were much better for students who had received IL instruction that included the use of learning styles