My students and other animals. Or a vulture, an orb weaver spider, a giant panda and 900 undergraduate business students ...

Abstract

The article describes how the library team supporting the Faculty of Organisation and Management at Sheffield Hallam University (O&M Library team) developed and delivered a new information literacy initiative for the undergraduate Business and Management first year cohort. Research has shown that although the Net Generation confidently uses technology to acquire information, little care is taken to judge the quality and accuracy of the resources they find. In addition, there is little understanding of how shallow their information seeking behaviours actually are. This causes difficulties in their academic studies and in their professional lives. Further research suggested that an active learning approach would be the most appropriate for this initiative. Technological limitations imposed by the teaching space and time constraints imposed by the faculty led the O&M Library team to develop an initiative that comprised a modular, practical, active learning approach that could be delivered by any academic librarian, regardless of subject speciality, in any teaching space. This article details the initiative and its components, particularly the modular activities, including a Google based icebreaker, an information behaviour typology using animals, and examples of different types of business information. It also shares the positive feedback from lecturers and students and describes possible enhancements that the team will include in the next iteration of this programme.