Education Resources

Information literacy is a phrase used to describe a wide range of skills that enables someone to collect relevant information from a range of sources, use that information appropriately and reference it correctly.

Students and tutors have access to untold amounts of digital information via the internet, so it is more important than ever before that they have the skills to make sense of this information and use it to inform their work appropriately. One of the biggest drawbacks of using the internet as a tool in the classroom is the tendency for students in primary and secondary education to become reliant on 'copying and pasting' from the internet to complete their work.

Obviously in Further and Higher Education this is not acceptable and teaching students about plagiarism plays an important part of information literacy. However, plagiarism is avoidable and information literacy is a very positive subject, as students who develop good information literacy skills will be aware that they can inform their work with the views, ideas and work of others, as long as it is correctly referenced.