Lasting impacts of credited information literacy library instruction for graduate engineering students

Background: For over 20 years, librarians at Polytechnique Montréal, a francophone engineering university in Canada, have been delivering a credited workshop mandatory to research master’s and PhD students. CAP7005, a bilingual workshop, is recommended to be taken at the beginning of the student’s program, with the goal of developing their information literacy (IL) skills. In 2020, the librarians conducted a study based on course assessments, which revealed satisfaction rates of over 90% in terms of achieving this workshop’s learning objectives. To build on these results, the team wanted to assess what students remembered from the workshop and still used a few months after completing it. This article also seeks to foster discussion regarding the lasting impact of library-based IL skills training. Purpose/Hypothesis: More specifically, the question this program evaluation activity attempts to elucidate is: What are the impacts of CAP7005 on students’ information literacy skills in terms of learning and putting them into practice, as well as on their awareness and use of library services, three to twelve months after completing it? Additionally, this article assesses students’ general appreciation of the workshop. Methodology: In spring 2024, an online survey was sent to 380 students who took CAP7005 in 2023 (during the winter, summer and fall terms) and who were still studying at Polytechnique Montréal. These students also had the opportunity to participate in a focus group meant to provide a qualitative insight to the survey. Results: The response rate was 23%, with 89 complete survey responses and 10 students for the focus groups. Between 89% and 98% of the respondents reported that CAP7005 has helped them master at least partially the IL skills taught, and that 67% to 97% used them sometimes or often. These skills include finding appropriate documents for their information needs, creating advanced search strategies to query bibliographic databases, understanding plagiarism and copyright, and evaluating a scientific article. Also, 91% of respondents indicated that CAP7005 has made them more aware of library services and resources, and 69% used them more as a result. In addition, 64% of the participants would recommend the workshop to their colleagues if it were not compulsory (21% would not recommend it, 15% were neutral), attesting to their general appreciation of the workshop. Conclusions: Even if the long-term aspect was limited to students who were still enrolled at Polytechnique Montréal, the survey showed that three to twelve months after completing it, students stated the workshop improved their IL skills and usage of library services. As they continue to use these skills in their research activities, some could become habits and thus benefit them in their future. Students in the focus group mentioned it made a real difference that the workshop was given by librarians. Combined with the survey results, this shows that the librarians’ expertise made an important contribution to graduate students’ research habits, ethics, and critical reading.