Students’ Application of Knowledge from a Library Usage and Information Course for Undergraduate Students at King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang

Abstract

Information literacy is one of the crucial skills for student development in the 21st century. The focus is on accessing, evaluating, using, and managing information in order for students to succeed in their work and life. This research aimed to investigate students’ application of knowledge from a library usage and information course for undergraduate students at King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang.A survey research method was used to collect data. The sample group consisted of 310 undergraduate students who were taking the library usage and information course in the first and second semester of 2015 educational year and in the first semester of 2016 educational year.A questionnaire was used to collect data. The results show that the students were able to apply the following kinds of knowledge at the highest level (99.7%): (1) importance of information in daily life, (2) characteristics of information sources, (3) types of information sources, (4) selection of information sources for finding relevant information, and (5) usage of the circulation service in the central library.It was also found that they were able to apply the following kinds of knowledge at the lowest level: knowledge of usage of interlibrary loan service and search as well as selection of scholarly journals from the citation index database.The results of this study suggest that lecturers should focus on giving real world examples of information sources so that students can better understand and apply them in their daily life and develop their learning into the future.