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Succeeding in postgraduate study
Succeeding in postgraduate study

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3 Assessing your current DIL skills

The digital and information literacy skills checklist will help you to gauge your current level of confidence in understanding digital practice, and finding, using and creating information.

Activity 4 Evaluating your digital and information literacy skills (Part 1)

Timing: Allow approximately 10 minutes

Use the digital and information literacy skills checklist [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]   to evaluate your current skills and identify areas that need to be developed. You can use this as a reference point at the start of your postgraduate course and as you make progress with your studies, so keep it close at hand, and do make sure that you review and reflect on your progress regularly.

Discussion

Consider evidence that you can provide to demonstrate your attainment of each skill. At this point you are not expected to be able to demonstrate a high level of attainment covering all areas for each skill, but you should use this checklist to identify your current strengths and focus on skills that you need to develop further.

The activity below should help you to evaluate your current knowledge and confidence in the following key areas: searching for information, and evaluating and referencing your sources.

Activity 5 Evaluating your digital and information literacy skills (Part 2)

Timing: Allow approximately 20 minutes

Attempt the following simple diagnostic tests to evaluate your current knowledge of the following areas: (1) carrying out a general search, and (2) evaluating and referencing sources.

Diagnostic test 1: Carrying out a general search

Diagnostic test 2: Evaluating and referencing sources

Discussion

The ‘general search’ activity (Diagnostic test 1) assesses your understanding of how the internet works and how you can enhance general online searches. The ‘evaluation and referencing’ activity (Diagnostic test 2) allows you to check your knowledge of how to evaluate different sources of information and correctly reference these in your assignments or professional practice. You can repeat the short tests as often as you wish.