Factors affecting university students’ information literacy education: An empirical study using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

Abstract

With the continuous development of information technology, information literacy education is becoming more and more important for university students. However, information literacy education in Chinese universities is still in the development stage and the cultivation effect needs to be improved. Therefore, this study takes the teaching of Information Retrieval as an example, based on constructivist learning theory and social exchange theory, reveals the influential factors related to the cultivation effect and explores the causal rela-tionship between each variable and the cultivation effect through a qualitative comparative analysis research method with a configura-tion perspective. This study finds that university students in information literacy education can be classified into four categories: context-driven, class-guidance, meaning-realised and motivation satisfaction. For these four types of university students, this study proposes corresponding countermeasures for information literacy cultivation in order to enhance the effectiveness of cultivation.