An Exploration of the Information Literacy and Academic Writing Skills of Final Year Undergraduate Nursing Students In Buea, Cameroon

ABSTRACT: Nursing students need information literacy and academic writing skills to conduct research. Theaim of this study was to explore the information literacy and academic writing skills of final year undergraduatenursing students in Buea, identify the various challenges faced during academic writing and to outline theirperceived opinions on the effective assistance of educators during academic writing. A cross-sectional studydesign was used. The study duration was for five months. A sample of 200 final year nursing students waspurposively selected to take part in the study from four nursing institutions in Buea, Cameroon and distributedby probability proportionate to size. Data was collected using a semi-structured questionnaire and analyzeddescriptively using SPSS 23.0. qualitative data generated from the open-ended questions were analyzed usingthematic content analysis, grounding and transcriptions. The Chi-square test was used to measure associationbetween categorical variables. Majorityof the respondents reported to have moderate information literacy skills102(51.0%) and moderate academic writing skills92(46.0%). Also, they faced challenges during academicwriting such as: poor supervision 128(64.0%), ineffective feedback from supervisors 120(60.0%), poorknowledge on search engines 114(57.0%), incompetency making conclusions on work read 112(56.0%),ineffective teaching of academic writing 106(53.0%) and poor usage of search engines 102(51.0%). Therespondents suggested that effective and efficient teaching of academic writing 130(65.0%), effective feedback80(40.0%), close supervision 60(30.0%), effective teaching of information literacy 25(12.5%) and searchengines 23(11.5%), and seminars 7(3.5%) could enhance their academic writing.

KEYWORDS: Academic Writing, Buea, Challenges, Information literacy, Nursing Students, Skills,Undergraduate