Information literacy supporting student motivation and performance: Course-level analyses

Examining data from over 3000 students in 102 course sections across seven colleges of a large, public, research intensive university in the United States, this study investigates the relationships between information literacy (IL) and course-level academic performance and student perceptions of their learning environments. The results provide evidence of the following: 1) students who synthesize information and communicate the results tend to perceive higher levels of motivation than students who do so less often; 2) there is a significant positive relationship between synthesizing information and communicating the results and course level learning gains. The results point to the efficacy of IL being integrated into learning disciplinary course content, as well as the benefit of prioritizing high-order IL activities, such as synthesizing information, over other the aspects of IL, such as searching or formatting citations.