June 2009 Archives

As part of my summer Fellowship in ETS, I'm collaborating with Digital Commons staff to present a workshop on digital storytelling and library research.  The workshop is a precursor to the Learning Design Summer Camp, and is simply a great opportunity to discuss student multimedia creation, copyright and fair use, and information / technology / media literacies in an interactive environment.

Following is the workshop info (including registration link) that Allan Gyorke sent out today.  Hope you can join us!

At our first meeting today about the TLT Faculty Fellow digital literacy acquisition project, we discussed the concept of information literacy, and how it embeds within the multimedia creation process.

As our work begins, I'm collecting general works on information literacy to provide a background for the team.  In the process, I found a recent report with some interesting findings on undergraduate students and the research process.

The University of Washington Project Information Literacy Progress Report, by Drs. Alison Head and Michael Eisenberg, looks at the challenges undergraduate students face finding information for course assignments and personal needs.

The progress report focuses on the issue of "context"---specifically, how students attain context during the research process, in the following forms:

--Big picture context---Selecting a topic, narrowing down a topic effectively, understanding the overall background and landscape of a research topic.

--Language context--Understanding the terms and vocabulary of a specific subject area.  This could also include brainstorming appropriate keywords for use in the research process, and understanding the context of specific keywords (or subject headings) in online databases.

--Situational context---Understanding how information fits within the parameters of the assignment, the research topic, the professor's expectations.

--Information gathering context---The act of finding, evaluating, using and citing research sources for course assignments.

These contexts combine to create the student experience throughout the research process.  What's not addressed in the paper (but which could also be identified) are the affective, emotional skills that students need to move successfully between contexts and successfully navigate research for course assignments.

Some interesting findings in the progress report:

The tendency to procrastinate occurred most frequently among students enrolled at research
institutions. (Color me unsurprised by this one.) This was explained as occurring because students had access to such large online collections that they could always find "something to cite."

Students from smaller institutions began their research sooner rather than later, following a more traditional process of gathering sources from ProQuest, etc... and even requesting materials via interlibrary loan.  Is this because these students were more likely exposed to course-related library instruction in their smaller setting?  This problem alone would make an interesting comparison study between University Park and other Penn State campuses.  The report also notes that students in smaller schools viewed faculty (and librarians) as more helpful and accessible.

I love this quote: "Findability was often the most intimidating part of course-related research."  Students consistently reported trouble finding what they were looking for, online or physically in the library.

In nearly three quarters of students surveyed, their research began with Wikipedia---particularly for the value in gaining an idea of the big picture surrounding a topic, and for assistance in learning the language and terms of a topic area.  One student aptly describes Wikipedia as "A great place to start, and a horrible place to end."

The contexts identified in this report could provide a structure for placing information literacy outcomes within student assignments.   To see how our work on this project and others related to digital literacy progress throughout the summer and beyond, feel free to follow the project's wiki page.