A Comparative Research On The Information Literacy Education In The Universities Of China And The United States

With the arrival of the information age, information literacy has becomean inevitable requirement for high quality talents and innovative talents; at the sametime it is an important condition for creating the learning-type society. How to carryout the colleges’ information literacy education is becoming an important subjectincreasingly worldwide on both of the theory and practice. Undoubtedly, TheInformation Education in The United States is the successful model of theInformation Literacy Education. The major institutions or associations (such asAAHE, ALA, AASL, ACRL, IS, IIL, LIRT, etc.), Universities of United States withrich experience in the theory and practice in the field of information literacyeducation have made outstanding contributions in the Information literacy Educationfor American and the World. The Comparative Study on the College Students’Information Literacy Education of China and the United States is the objective needof exploring the universal law of the Students’ Information Literacy Education andenriching the theoretical and practical results of the Students’ Information LiteracyEducation.In this study, based on the comparative describing of the different developmentcourse of the Students’ Information Literacy in China and the United States, theconcept and connotation of the information literacy, information literacy educationand the college information literacy education were explained, analyzed anddistinguished by the Bereday’s four-step comparing (describe, explain, parallel,research). Then California State University and Wuhan University as therepresentative of the comprehensive universities and Purdue University and ShanghaiJiao tong University as the representative of Science and Engineering Universitywere selected for a comparative analysis case study of education, educationalinstitutions, education method and assessment. Based on the case studies, thethorough comparison of the Information Literacy Education in the universities ofChina and the United States was done in the aspects of organization, curriculum form,evaluation standard, education method, etc. Finally, the enlightenments from theCollege Students’ Information Literacy Education of the United States for China were put forward from the three perspectives of government, university and collegestudents in the aspects of legislation, organization construction, standard settings,teaching mode, qualification of teachers, self-education, etc.