The use of social media in teaching a campus-wide information literacy course

Abstract

It is crucial for university students to become information literate in order to succeed in their studies; even more so in the current social media environment. Educators need to become part of this social world in order to ensure that their teaching stays relevant. This article reports on a project undertaken at the University of Pretoria with the aim of introducing social media to the campus-wide Information Literacy (IL) course offered. A research project was launched in which the IL course was assessed and new ways of presenting the current material were developed. This involved repackaging the course content and developing a toolkit with built-in activities for students. Interactive class exercises to ensure student engagement aimed at acquainting students with various social media tools and encourage academic networking and cooperation were introduced. It is believed that this new approach in presenting and teaching the IL course will not only have long-term benefits for students in their on-going studies, but will impact on their future work-lives as well.