Digital Pedagogies Methods for Learning Information Retrieval Content Modules in South African Library and Information Science Higher Education Institutions

This qualitative article explores digital pedagogies methods for learning information retrieval (IR) content modules in South African Library and Information Science (LIS) higher education institutions (HEIs). The study seeks to establish the content of IR modules, and the digital pedagogies methods used for learning IR content modules in South African LIS HEIs offering LIS education. The population of this study includes the LIS students learning IR content modules. The researcher used document reviews for the IR content module descriptors and assessment plans, and focus-group discussions with the LIS students as data-collection instruments. The collected data were analysed using document analysis and thematic analyses. This study revealed that the content of IR modules comprises information literacy; information sources and resources; authority control; cataloguing; metadata; classification; subject headings; abstracting and indexing; information searching/seeking and retrieval; bibliographic control; information organisation; alerting services; designing personal websites, blogs, wikis and personal databases; scholarly communication; digital scholarship; digital curation; applications of digital technologies; principles, standards, frameworks and models for resource description and discoverability; vocabulary control; and thesaurus. This study further established that the digital pedagogies used for learning IR content modules involves the learning management system known as Moodle, and the online platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Telegram. This article recommends that the South African LIS HEIs teach and learn a standardised and digitally transformed content of the IR modules and adapt with the new teaching and learning methods of digital pedagogies.