Information Literacy: A Critical Component in Engineering Practice in the Twenty-First Century

As available information proliferates, the necessity of being able to correctly select, interpret, and measure the “goodness” of the information, and therefore how much it should be relied upon, becomes more and more critical to all fields, but especially to the practice of engineering. However, this is a skill which is not taught or stressed in many engineering education programs today. Ranging from when, or whether, a certain method or process or theorem is applicable to a hypothetical problem in the classroom, to what sources of data and what software simulations should be used to estimate hardware failure probabilities in crisis situations such as the Columbia space shuttle takeoff damage leading to the breakup of the shuttle upon reentry, ability to select, evaluate, and apply the best available information is critical to success. Yet while most engineering educators and practitioners would agree that this is a vital skill set, the burdens of assessment required by ABET EC2000 have led some programs to concentrate almost exclusively on the ubiquitous ABET a-k. The question then arises as to how, or whether, information literacy fits in with the current ABET accreditation requirements. Also, in an era when more and more state legislatures and university administrators are reducing the number of hours engineering programs are allowed to include in their graduation requirements, educators reasonably ask how anything else can possibly be squeezed into already time -crunched programs. This paper presents common standards of information literacy, a discussion of why it is necessary to engineering study and practice, how information literacy meshes with current ABET requirements, and how it can be incorporated into existing courses without an undue burden on faculty or students. The conclusion is that information literacy is more than a necessary element of education: it is the very essence of education.