Project Information Literacy (PIL) is a nonprofit research institute conducting national, ongoing studies on how adults find and use information as they progress through, and beyond, their higher education years and throughout adulthood. Since 2008, PIL researchers have surveyed and interviewed almost 23,000 U.S. college students and other people living in the U.S. and released 14 large-scale and open access research reports. PIL’s research has examined how they interact with information resources for school, life, work, and most recently, for engaging with news and information about climate change.
What’s new?
> Read the latest research report from PIL: Our open access report examines the ways more than 6,000 people living in America encounter, engage with, and respond to climate change news and information; how these interactions shape their perceptions of the worldwide climate emergency; and how these attitudes impact their willingness to take action, no matter how small it may seem to others. In a follow-up analysis, we look to the future to explore how college students encounter climate change news and information.
> Sign up for a Virtual Chat with PIL researchers: The 55-minute virtual chats are a unique way to build engaging discussions at your institution and to share ideas about improving teaching and learning while suggesting new avenues for inquiry and experimentation. We have three lively chats available for 2025 that cover in varying depth: Climate change anxiety on campus with Alison Head, AI in the classroom with Steven Geofrey, and navigating students’ polarizing questions in one-shot sessions with Kirsten Hostetler. Click here to learn more.
> Read follow-up coverage about the climate change report: The news story about PIL’s climate report and what our findings mean for the upcoming national election; our essay in EdSurge written for educators and academic librarians about how to address climate anxiety and from C&RL News is an overview about “How College Students Respond to Climate Change in Troubled Times: Four Takeaways from Project Information Literacy’s Latest Study.”
> Check out our latest opinion essay, “Here comes the climate wars,” by Alison Head, posted on the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC): “With less agreement about what is true, what can be trusted, and where information has originated, it’s more challenging than ever for the public to reach agreement about how to respond to big, complex problems like climate change. As one respondent summed it up, ‘Climate change is so politicized, people don’t know what to believe.'” (September 27, 2024).
> Worried about AI? Read our opinion essay by Barbara Fister and Alison Head, “Getting a grip on ChatGPT,” which was selected by editors as one of their most read articles in Inside Higher Education during 2023.