What is a skill?
It's an in-depth knowledge that can relate to knowledge, know-how or interpersonal skills. To be endowed with a skill is to have the ability to act effectively in a situation, to demonstrate mastery because you have the necessary knowledge and the ability to mobilize it wisely.
And what does it mean to be informed?
Everyone has their own way of getting informed:
- Via different sources: journalists, influencers, anonymous, trained experts, professionals, etc.)
- Via different channels: television, web, social networks, print media, videos, etc.
Practices are varied, heterogeneous and evolve with experience, life, schooling and sociability.
In a society where information is everywhere, accessible all the time and in a non-hierarchical way, our role as information professionals in higher education is to give students, at this precise moment in their lives, the keys to knowing how to be well informed according to the situations they encounter.
The Association française des directeurs et personnels de direction des bibliothèques universitaires et de la documentation (ADBU), in its reference guide on the subject, breaks down information skills into 4 main areas:
- Identify information needs and available sources
- Be able to access the necessary information efficiently
- Critically evaluate the information obtained
- Be able to produce and communicate the results of research.
Acquiring information skills means acquiring essential abilities in our society, it means having the means to participate in and contribute to debates, it means being free, enlightened, critical and aware of the world we live in.
At MBS, we are committed to training students in these skills. We work closely with our teaching staff, co-developing sessions on these subjects or putting thematic e-learning modules online, to ensure that learners assimilate this essential, cross-disciplinary knowledge, whatever their course of study.
And if, despite everything, you're wondering whether information skills training is really useful for students, I invite you to read the two articles available on the Tribune Compétences Informationnelles website:
- Raphaël Gromilund, training librarian at the Library of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, who published on October 7, 2024: “Do information skills increase students' academic success?”
- Jean Philippe Accart, head of the Sciences Po Reims campus library, who publishes on October 7, 2017: “Compétences informationnelles et employabilité: y a-t-il un lien de cause à effet?”
October 2024
