Investigating Students’ Information Literacy in Academic Writing at Higher Education

Abstract

As digital information has been increasing, the practice of information literacy should be accommodated especially at the higher education level to prepare the students to be active and critical users. Thus, this research investigated students’ informational literacy skills in academic writing. A qualitative method was employed to analyze 9 final essays as the sample of this study and used C.R.A.A.P. criteria which are currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose as the codes to evaluate the references in the final essay.  The findings show that currency becomes the major issue, especially for the higher to medium scores of final essays since recent references or studies were not provided to support the topics. Authority, accuracy, and purpose became the major issues for lower scores as the tendency to use online resources was occurring instead of books or journal articles.