Evaluating Threshold Concepts for Information Literacy in an Undergraduate Analytical Chemistry Literature Research Project

This study probed student conceptions of the critical dimensions of a topical literature search to identify the threshold concepts limiting their information-seeking skills in chemistry and investigate the role of peer review and self-reflection in informing students’ information-seeking skills through direct examination of student papers in a semester-long research project in a first course in analytical chemistry. Student perceptions of peer review were positive, but objectively, peer review was largely ineffective in improving the students’ actual work. Many persistent problems were observed, including overreliance on a simplistic one-time use literature-searching strategy, ignoring older and newer works when researching a topic, confusing primary and secondary sources, failing to credit original research studies, failing to obtain copyright permission and to correctly credit copyrighted works, and an inability to reproduce ACS style formatting. We have linked these persistent behaviors with the students’ conceptions of core concepts in information literacy. Identifying student conceptions opens the door to developing strategies and activities that promote a deeper and more comprehensive mastery of chemical information literacy skills by undergraduates.