Abstract:

As science and technology are rapidly changing, information literacy (IL) skills are of paramount importance for postgraduate students in these disciplines and pose unique challenges in identifying, evaluating, acquiring, using and keeping abreast of new information. Despite the emergence of information technologies that facilitate access to information, there is growing evidence that postgraduate students still have some difficulties in using theoretical knowledge to solve professional problems, especially for those in science and technology disciplines.

Postgraduate students at the University of Chinese Academy Sciences (UCAS) are in almost the same situation. So some questions are concerned by UCAS. At what stage will these postgraduate students adequately develop scientific information literacy skills for future research? Who should be responsible for ensuring the development of such skills? The National Science Library (NSL) is a research library affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and has a team of subject librarians with diverse professional backgrounds. An important role of subject librarians is to provide IL education program for postgraduate students in UCAS. In this study, the subject librarian collaborated with UCAS and designed a combined pedagogical practice in information retrieval skills for chemistry courses. 76 postgraduate students enrolled in courses in September 2022 were involved in the case study, and worked together to complete a team task through problem-based learning.

The objectives of the courses were:
Phase 1: Select an interesting research topic for a group team of five or six students. .
Phase 2: Provide graduate students with practical skills in the chemistry fields.
Phase 3: Provide graduate students with search strategies and analytical tools.
Phase 4: Provide graduate students with first practical experience of problem-based learning.
Phase 5: Encourage team collaboration and present the progress of the team's research topic through bibliometric analysis.
Phase 6: Online evaluation of the course and discussion of its limitations.

The evaluation of the course is very positive. The graduate students reflect that they are able to acquire the way and skills to solve practical problems for research. Meanwhile, it is also an effective way to promote their motivation, interest and self-learning. The results are not only rewarding for graduate students in chemistry fields, but also provide good practice for the design and implementation of problem-based learning of IL instruction. Although this is a case study, research libraries can develop strategies to apply the combination of teaching phases to teaching in other science and technology IL courses.

Keywords:

Design IL instruction, problem-based learning, case study, postgraduate student in chemistry.