Developing Information Literacy in the Malaysian Smart Schools: Resource-Based Learning as a Tool to Prepare Today's Students for Tomorrow's Society

Abstract

Today's students are surrounded by more information coming from more sources than ever before. In order to deal with the vast amount of information they will encounter in school, life, and work, they must develop skills not required of previous generations. Since schools cannot teach all that students need to know, a better way is to teach them to manage the information resources. Although schools should still identify the basic information that students need to know, schools must also teach "information literacy", that is, the ability to find, interpret, use, and communicate information from a variety of sources. Resource-based learning is a tool to help students handle information. It is based on the belief that students learn best by interacting directly with learning resources instead of just listening to classroom lectures. The learning is in line with the Malaysian Smart School Concept in that it is more self-directed, self-paced, and self-accessed, and hopefully, more meaningful. Since the skills of information literacy cannot be taught in a content vacuum, resource-based learning integrates the classroom and the school resource centre or the school library. Students go through a problem-solving process that requires them to define the need for information, determine a search strategy, locate the needed resources, assess and understand the information they find, interpret the information, communicate the information, and finally, evaluate their conclusions in view of the original problem.