Effective Engineering Information Literacy Instruction: A Systematic Literature Review

The objective of this study was to investigate effective methods of teaching information literacy to engineering undergraduate students. The authors searched several databases (e.g., Compendex, Scopus, ERIC) for English language studies published between January 2000 and January 2016 that contained both an information literacy intervention for engineering undergraduate students and an assessment method for evaluating the intervention's effectiveness. Thirteen studies were included in the final data set, of which eleven studies reported effective results based largely upon descriptive statistical analysis. The strongest indicator of effectiveness that emerged in the data was collaboration with disciplinary faculty. With few articles in the final results set containing inferential statistics, the authors were only able to draw limited conclusions regarding effectiveness. The low use of such statistical methods highlights a need for librarian researchers to develop skills with research design and statistical analysis. This study is one of few systematic reviews on the topic of information literacy and the first systematic review on engineering information literacy effectiveness. It intends to serve as a baseline for future work.