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Lasting Impacts of Credited Information Literacy Library Instruction for Graduate Engineering Students

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Conference

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Publication Date

June 22, 2025

Start Date

June 22, 2025

End Date

August 15, 2025

Conference Session

Engineering Libraries Division (ELD) Technical Session 3

Tagged Division

Engineering Libraries Division (ELD)

Page Count

30

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/56908

Paper Authors

biography

Elise Anne Basque Polytechnique Montreal Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-2354-2016

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Elise Anne Basque has been a Science and Engineering Librarian at Polytechnique Montreal since 2011. She holds a B.Sc. in mathematics and a Master's degree in Information Science from Universite de Montreal, and a B.Ed. in education from University of Ottawa. At the Polytechnique Library, she specializes in mathematics, statistical data, biomedical engineering, and physics engineering. She is involved in information literacy workshops, open educational resources and open access initiatives.

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biography

Julien Chevrier Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal

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Librarian at Polytechnique Montreal since 2022, Julien Chevrier obtained his master’s degree in library science from the Universite de Montreal’s School of Information Science in 2016. Before joining Polytechnique, Julien worked as a librarian in the health sector for 6 years. As well as teaching CAP7005, a for-credit information literacy workshop, his professional interests are open access publishing and bibliometrics.

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Andree-Ann Cormier Polytechnique Montreal Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0009-0001-8300-8539

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Andree-Ann has been the Communications and Outreach Librarian at the Polytechnique Montreal Library since 2022. She holds a Master of Information Studies Degree (University of Montreal), a MA in English Literature Degree (Laval University), and a Bachelor of Education Degree in Teaching English as a Second Language (Laval University). Prior to pursuing a career in academic libraries, she taught English literature at the college (cegep) level.

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Manon Du Ruisseau MDR Polytechnique Montreal

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Manon Du Ruisseau has been working at the Polytechnique Montreal Library for more than 38 years. During the first years of her career, she worked as a library technician and since then she occupied various positions that allowed her to explore all aspects of library services. In 2000, she obtained her Master of Library and Information Science from the Université de Montreal and has been working as a librarian ever since. In 2012, she became Section Head of the Information Consulting Services. At the end of 2023, she held the position of Interim Director for a period of 10 months. Since January 2025, she has been retired.

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Olivia Fernandez Pereda Polytechnique Montreal

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Olivia Fernandez Perada holds several master's degrees, including two from Universite de Montreal, one in geography research and one in library science. For the past 3 years, she has been a librarian at Polytechnique Montreal, where she teaches the CAP7005 course and provides training on geospatial data in various courses.

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Camille Fitch-Kustcher Polytechnique Montreal Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0009-0004-6370-5005

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With a master’s degree in library science from the University of Montreal’s School of Information Science, Camille has always had teaching at the core of her professional activities. She created a self-guided interactive online course on information literacy as the Information Literacy Librarian at Universite de Saint-Boniface. She is now a liaison librarian at Polytechnique Montreal, where she teaches the for-credit course CAP7005 in both English and French.

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Brendan Fitzgibbon Polytechnique Montreal

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Brendan Fitzgibbon has been a librarian and teaching CAP7005 at Polytechnique Montreal since 2022. He obtained his Master of Information Sciences degree from Universite de Montreal the same year, and specializes in research data management.

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Tiphaine Hérault Polytechnique Montreal Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0009-0008-0543-7363

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Tiphaine Herault holds bachelor's degrees in psychology and philosophy, as well as a postgraduate diploma (DESS) in philosophy from the University Jean Jaures in Toulouse, France. She also holds a teaching certification in documentation. After working as a school librarian for 10 years, she moved to Canada and earned a Master’s in Information Sciences from Universite de Montreal in 2023. During her studies, she joined the library at Polytechnique Montreal and became a full-time librarian upon graduation. Specializing in chemical engineering, she also teaches information literacy.

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Arina Soare Polytechnique Montreal

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A former engineer, Arina Soare changed careers and obtained her M.L.I.S. degree from McGill University in 2011.
Since then, she has been working as a Science and Engineering librarian at Polytechnique Montréal, helping students improve their research skills. She specializes in mechanical, aerospace, computer, and electrical engineering and provides instruction in Research Methods graduate workshops in a diverse environment. She
conducts workshops and provides assistance and support on EndNote, LaTeX & BibTeX to students and faculty.

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Abstract

Background: For over 20 years, librarians at Polytechnique Montréal, a francophone engineering university in Canada, have been delivering a credited workshop mandatory to research master’s and PhD students. CAP7005, a bilingual workshop, is recommended to be taken at the beginning of the student’s program, with the goal of developing their information literacy (IL) skills. In 2020, the librarians conducted a study based on course assessments, which revealed satisfaction rates of over 90% in terms of achieving this workshop’s learning objectives. To build on these results, the team wanted to assess what students remembered from the workshop and still used a few months after completing it. This article also seeks to foster discussion regarding the lasting impact of library-based IL skills training.

Purpose/Hypothesis: More specifically, the question this program evaluation activity attempts to elucidate is: What are the impacts of CAP7005 on students’ information literacy skills in terms of learning and putting them into practice, as well as on their awareness and use of library services, three to twelve months after completing it? Additionally, this article assesses students’ general appreciation of the workshop.

Methodology: In spring 2024, an online survey was sent to 380 students who took CAP7005 in 2023 (during the winter, summer and fall terms) and who were still studying at Polytechnique Montréal. These students also had the opportunity to participate in a focus group meant to provide a qualitative insight to the survey.

Results: The response rate was 23%, with 89 complete survey responses and 10 students for the focus groups. Between 89% and 98% of the respondents reported that CAP7005 has helped them master at least partially the IL skills taught, and that 67% to 97% used them sometimes or often. These skills include finding appropriate documents for their information needs, creating advanced search strategies to query bibliographic databases, understanding plagiarism and copyright, and evaluating a scientific article. Also, 91% of respondents indicated that CAP7005 has made them more aware of library services and resources, and 69% used them more as a result. In addition, 64% of the participants would recommend the workshop to their colleagues if it were not compulsory (21% would not recommend it, 15% were neutral), attesting to their general appreciation of the workshop.

Conclusions: Even if the long-term aspect was limited to students who were still enrolled at Polytechnique Montréal, the survey showed that three to twelve months after completing it, students stated the workshop improved their IL skills and usage of library services. As they continue to use these skills in their research activities, some could become habits and thus benefit them in their future.

Students in the focus group mentioned it made a real difference that the workshop was given by librarians. Combined with the survey results, this shows that the librarians’ expertise made an important contribution to graduate students’ research habits, ethics, and critical reading.

Basque, E. A., & Chevrier, J., & Cormier, A., & Du Ruisseau, M., & Fernandez Pereda, O., & Fitch-Kustcher, C., & Fitzgibbon, B., & Hérault, T., & Soare, A. (2025, June), Lasting Impacts of Credited Information Literacy Library Instruction for Graduate Engineering Students Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/56908

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