Definition and use of Information Fluency

What do people think about the use of the term “information fluency”?

Who exactly is supposed to teach information fluency? The same people who teach basic researching skills? How well are undergraduate students in general (and specifically those at Gustavus Adolphus College) learning research skills and become fluent in information?

I thought this website had some interesting definitions as quoted below.

Digital Information Fluency (DIF) is the ability to find, evaluate and use digital information effectively, efficiently and ethically. DIF involves knowing how digital information is different from print information; having the skills to use specialized tools for finding digital information; and developing the dispositions needed in the digital information environment. As teachers and librarians develop these skills and teach them to students, students will become better equipped to achieve their information needs.

What information am I looking for?
* Learners identify key concepts in a research question
* Learners create effective and efficient search queries

Where will I find the information?
* Learners understand the organization of digital information
* Learners effectively and efficiently select digital collections based on their characteristics

How will I get there?
* Learners select digital search tools based on their effectiveness and efficiency
* Learners select appropriate search strategies to effectively and efficiently locate reliable digital information related to their academic learning goal(s)
* Learners apply appropriate search strategies in order to efficiently locate reliable digital information related to their academic learning goal(s)

How good is the information?
* Learners evaluate the quality of a search result to determine its usefulness in the search process
* Learners evaluate the quality of a search result to determine the reliability of its content
* Learners evaluate the quality of a search result to determine the reliability of its source

How will I ethically use the information?
* Learners ethically use digital information

Overall competencies (Applicable in all phases of the digital information fluency process):
* Learners acquire the dispositions necessary for successful digital information fluency:

o Demonstrate confidence in finding a solution when engaged in the digital information fluency process
o Demonstrate persistence to continually engage in the digital information fluency process
o Demonstrate focus to avoid distractions when engaged in the digital information fluency process
o Demonstrate open-mindedness to a variety of strategies and tools when engaged in the digital information fluency process
o Demonstrate curiosity for exploring ideas when engaged in the digital information fluency process

* Learners acquire self-regulation necessary for successful digital information fluency:

o Demonstrate meta-cognitive thinking to adjust their strategies and tools when engaged in the digital information fluency process
o Demonstrate attitude of adaptability to respond to inconclusive or ineffective results when engaged in the digital information fluency process

graduation thoughts

I found some of the best commencement speeches which doesn’t exactly relate to this class, but at the same time, what doesn’t relate to information fluency?

Also, here is an amusing comic related to people continuing with education after getting their undergraduate degree.

Here’s an interesting website on information fluency which includes some tutorials and search challenges. Something worth checking out.

Writing info from interviews

In the fall of 2008, I interviewed some people on their writing process for my Academic Writing class. I thought it was interesting that both this class and the other had me interview people in my discipline, but we focused on different questions for the interviews. However, both the researching and writing techniques have specific components for disciplines but also general “rules” for everyone.

The main conclusion from the other class’s discussion was that the main differences between disciplines is format which also relates to tone. If you think about it, the types of resources also relate to the format and tone, since physicists normally wouldn’t use the New Yorker to support a point while a humanist might. Granted, there are still differences between scholarly and popular resources, but the lines becomes more blurry with some disciplines.

The general “rules” for writing (most people would agree) would be:

• Includes fresh, important issues
• Has organized arguments
• Refutes counter arguments
• Correctly addresses the audience (with form and tone)
• Clear & unique writing style

Research info from interviews

From my interviews in the English department, I found that professors take very different approaches to locating information but similar methods of deciding on information. They mostly pick topics by what interests them and they just can’t stop thinking about. One person used the graduate thesis as the premise of the research experience while the other used a recently published book. For the thesis, the professor found specific information related to the thesis topic through searching dusty archives, online databases, physical journals, and related videos. The other professor’s main sources were novels and journal articles. Even though the types of resources were different, they both only used the relevant information. They said one of the things that makes a researcher good is his/her ability to choose the critical information from a large amount.

Political Humor

This semester I took a class called Political Humor, where we spent a lot of time discussing the impact that politicians’ use of humor has had on elections in the past. I was amazed to see how much information was available both online and in book form on the topic. Even more amazing was the fact that I remembered so much about candidates that were in the game even before I was born, just based on what jokes they made or were made about them.
Its amazing the massive sways in cultural and political opinions that can so quickly make or break a campaign. The reason I’m writing about this in my blog is I’m wondering whether anyone else has noticed this as much as I have. I truly believe that George Bush will forever be remembered by the charicature that was painted by the media and comedians. Will Bill Clinton’s lasting legacy be remembered by whoever first edited his addresses to the press to have his finger wagging “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” and “In fact I did have a sexual relationship..” back to back. Think back about what you remember most about our former politicians and see where that idea was rooted…you might be surprised.

Internet advertising

I think its absolutely amazing to see the new and creative ways that website designers and managers are making their money. The internet sites that require paid access are just simply not attracting as many customers as the free one, obviously. However, the amount of money that the free websites are bringing in from their advertisers is absolutely staggering. While some of their ads are unobtrusive and are simply links on the sides of the windows, other companies have used pop-up windows, ad-ware and even worse. I think that companies should have every right to sell space on their pages, but shouldn’t be allowed to take control of any computer function away from the user. The problem here is that creating any sort of rule creates the need for regulation of the rule. So far there is no major internet policing bureau, but I don’t know how far away we are from that point.

Marketing with social networking sites

With more free opportunities, I think more people and organizations are trying to utalize free marketing techniques. “Building a Web of Influence” and “Webcast your Brain Surgery? Hospitals see Marketing Tool” are articles in the New York Times that addresses this topic. The brain surgery articles includes a video of an awake craniotomy where the patient is awake. I reccomend checking out the second article in particular, espeically since it was published on May 24th, 2009 and it brings up morality issues regarding organizations using new marketing tools.

Recent thoughts

Talking about creative  commons, this organization (Internet Archive) provides other sites, one specifically that is working on putting all public domain texts into audio which they create by volunteers reading the texts. Although I think it’s good that public domain texts are more accessable, it brings up the issue of how the people are reading the texts. Granted the public domain texts’ authors are probably deceased, so they can’t argue if the readers are correctly interpreting their writing. However, the readers are creating documentation with only their interpretation.

Identity

Going back to our last class discussion,where we talked about our interviews and research…I thought it was so interesting when the topic of identity came up. Of course the idea and definition of identity is talked in classes,  but never before did I even give a thought to just how much identity relies on social concepts. When you really thinking about it, one could argue that there mere living locations and dividers that people create to describe where they reside are only created through society and therefore exist because we believe and accept them. I’m not necessarily referring to cities, but more “west sides” “downtowns”, etc. At first I thought it was silly that after hurricane Katrina, just how much the people held on to the exact placing of their home. Yet, when you think about it, we do the exact same thing here. I can’t even imagine the identities that we even construct in our own minds when we hear that someone is from “St. Peter”, or “Minnetonka”, etc. Is crazy even the assumptions that fall along with the differences of growing up in St. Peter, as opposed to being a student at Gustavus. It not only that people get stereotyped as belonging to a whole different group, but also the “members” themselves associate themselves as so alike with the “others” that they think of it as a huge part of who they are.

Multilingual Goal

I’d have to say that the most eye-opening part of this information fluency class is the extent to which we have looked at each subject of discussion and examined it from the perspective of a variety of disciplines. I’ve found that (especially for juniors and seniors) once you get into your majors classes, its so much harder to even remember perspective, research, and ideas that are outside of that discipline. This idea has made me create the concept of “multilingual” in terms of understanding information and “lingo” from a variety for discipline focuses. After all, it is almost a whole new language when you look at the terms in psychology compare to philosophy, or biology compare to sociology, etc. It is also scary to think about the things that could get “lost in translation” when disciplines try to interpret and understand research (outside of their expertise) and ideas that are thrown around or “proven”. This makes it so so much harder to most forward in knowledge. After all, I don’t think a subject exists that doesn’t deal with a variety of approaches and aspects. Either way, I don’t think anyone can argue that it wouldn’t be more productive to conjoin between areas to come to a more knowledgeable/modern conclusion.