Key Factors in the Development of Information Literacy Skills in Engineering

This article presents the results obtained in the research on the development of informational competence in first -year students of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Santiago de Chile; the perspective from which we approach the study of the informational competence of students is based on the idea that this competence is an essential part of the professional competence of future engineers. In this article, we will present the results of the behavior of Selfperceived Information Competence (SIC) and Observed Information Competence (OIC) in the four sub -competencies of information competence. Factor analysis techniques were applied to reduce dimensions to eliminate redundancy among the original variables; five key components were identified. Also, sub -interrelationships were detected between the sub-competences of information competence that may generate local synergies within the competence. It stands out that of the four sub-competences, information seeking is the one that presents the greatest difficulties in self -perception as in the observed competence, while the observed competence of information communication was the best evaluated. No statistically significant differences were found between demographic variables and levels of information competence development.