Teaching Digital Natives:

Information Literacy

• Information literacy is the ability to "collect information, analyze information, and make educated decisions" (Neumann, 2016, p. 102)
• IL is an important foundation for successful students
• Strengthens critical thinking skills

Digital Natives

• People who grew up using technology
• Often considered to be "multi-taskers and fast paced learners" (Neumann, 2016, p. 101)

Information Literacy & Digital Natives

• A study of English instructors found that IL skills were lacking in Digital Natives
• Students can utilize technology for entertainment purposes, but they are unable to do so for educational purposes
• Commonly reported problems were: constant distractions (87.5%), plagiarism (75%), and citing non-scholarly sources (68.75%)

Information Literacy & Digital Natives

• Digital Natives have difficulty finding and identifying reliable information
• They often "believe information is accurate merely because it was deemed as so on a website" (Neumann, 2016, p. 104)

Information Literacy Solutions

• Teach Information Literacy in English classes
• English class is already about critical thinking and literacy, Information and Technology Literacy is just a new kind of literacy to add to the curriculum
• Important things to teach: developing critical thinking skills, locating scholarly sources, and explaining plagiarism

Developing Critical Thinking

• Overly exaggerated examples of unreliable information can promote critical thinking, such as heavily edited Wikipedia entries
• Key Questions: Who wrote this? What was the author's intent? When was it published? Was the author objective? Was there bias?

Locating Scholarly Sources

• Spend a class in the library or computer lab demonstrating how to locate information
• Lecture on locating sources
• Offer handouts
• Key Questions: What is the reason the information is posted? Are references included? Is this information consistently updated?

Explaining Plagiarism

• Students are often unaware of the mistake or unaware of the conseuqences
• Discuss the consequences of plagiarism, both within the class and within students' academic careers
• Teach citation formats

References

• Neumann, C. (2016). Teaching digital natives: promoting information literacy and addressing instructional challenges. Reading Improvement, 53 (3), 101-106.