| Information literacy (IL) skills are an increasingly important component in twenty first century higher education. To determine the level of self-perceived information literacy skills, communication majors (N = 111) and non-communication majors (N = 84) completed an online survey to identify their perceptions of their own information literacy motivation and skill levels. Questions were grouped into the students' competencies in information searching, information evaluation, information processing, and information communication and dissemination. A series of backward stepwise regressions were conducted to examine the relationship between self-perceived information literacy motivation and skill level for each competency as a function of major, age, gender, hours per day spent using technology for school use, and for personal use, hours per week spent on social media, and number of internet enabled devices. Students with more internet devices had lower information search motivation. Social media use was found to be a negatively associated significant predictor variable for information evaluation motivation as well as for information processing motivation, thus suggesting that those who spent more time on social media had lower motivation. Males perceived themselves to have higher information processing skills than did females. Students with more devices had lower information communication and dissemination motivation. The most common source of learning for all competencies was in class, followed by self-learning. Key Words: Information literacy, IL, motivation, skill, information search process model, communication competence. |
