A Research On Enhancing Critical Thinking Capability In Information Literacy For College Students

Web2.0 environment is a virtual reality world. In this world, there is tremendous amount of vast information and a mingling of good and bad, which is no longer clear and certain, true and reliable. The phenomena of "Wocaonima", "Society of Low IQ ", "Syndrome of Web Search" and so on all fully vindicate the fact of severe lack of information literacy, especially critical thinking ability.Aimed at the phenomenon of lack of critical thinking ability of network information users and based on systematical analysis on the literature relevant to information literacy and critical thinking, this research discusses the definition of critical thinking, builds the capacity model of critical thinking in information literacy, analyzes the status of critical thinking ability in information literacy of college students and explores the models and ways of web-based instruction conducive to cultivating of critical thinking of college students by applying literature review and survey procedures. This study suggests that the capacity model of critical thinking is mainly composed of two levels of thinking skills and the tendency of personality. The level of thinking skills include questioning, identifying, comparing, contrasting, analyzing, reasoning, synthesizing, evaluating and self-regulating, while the level of the tendency of personality include openness, independence, fairness, curiosity, truth-seeking and self-confidence. From the perspective of instruction model, this study suggested that through careful design and implementation of instruction, Webquest, Miniquest and Big6 are the three models of web-based instruction helpful to improve critical thinking ability of college students.This study is divided into five parts: Part I The research overview. It discusses the background, content, significance, methods of the research problem and illustrates the development profiles of domestic and international research on information literacy and critical thinking.Part II The outline of critical thinking. Based on the outlining of the basic concepts of critical thinking, it introduces the theory of critical thinking under the different perspectives, thus providing necessary basis for building the model of critical thinking ability in information literacy.Part III It builds the model of critical thinking ability in information literacy. Based on fully carding and integration of the relevant literature and aims at the actual conditions of Web2.0 information environment, it abstractly generalizes basic elements of critical thinking ability from the two dimensions of thinking skills and the tendency of personality, and illustrates the models and various elements.Part IV Survey on the status of critical thinking of college students in the networked environment. It designs a questionnaire survey under the guidance of the capacity model of critical thinking, to understand the status of critical thinking ability in information literacy of current college students and statistically analyze and discuss the results.Part V Aimed at the survey on the status of critical thinking of college students, it explores the three models and ways of web-based instruction for cultivating critical thinking by way of designing and analyzing on the case.Finally, it provides the conclusions of this paper, and points out the possible deficiencies of this research and the improving fields in the future.