Developing Critical Thinking in online search

Digital skills especially those related to Information Literacy, are today considered fundamental to the education of students, both at school and at university. Searching and evaluating information found on the Internet is surely an important competency. An effective way to develop this competency is to educate students about the development of critical thinking. The article presents a qualitative-quantitative survey conducted during a course in Educational Technologies within a five year Degree program. The outcomes of the survey reveal some interesting behaviors and perceptions of students when they are faced with the Web search process and the characteristics of their critical thinking processes: some aspects of critical thinking are generally well supported, but others are acquired only after specific training. Experience shows that if properly motivated by metacognitive reflections and a clear method, students can actually critically evaluate the information presented online, the sources, and the sustainability of the arguments found. Positive results also occurred when the evaluation process was done in a collaborative modality

The effects of cross-age mentoring in an online collaborative environment

This mixed method research was designed to examine the effects of cross-age mentoring in an inter-institutional online learning community. The research questions focused on the impact of mentoring on high school students’ confidence in their information seeking skills, perceptions of their information seeking standards, and the application of these standards to an information seeking task. Also of interest was the dialogic interaction between the students at the two sites, the impact of the facilitator on the process, and the university students’ perceptions about their experience. The participants included 26 students (mentees) enrolled in an American history class at a rural high school and 18 pre-service teachers (mentors) enrolled in an introductory educational technology course. Mentoring groups comprised of four-five high school students and three-four pre-service teachers interacted via a synchronous online courseware system. Both classes met at the same time of the day, twice weekly, allowing for synchronous interactions. The project was implemented over a five week period during which pre- and post-tests of information seeking confidence and standards were administered and students were engaged in their information seeking tasks. During the course of the project the online interactions were archived and saved for later analysis. Results revealed that there was no change in the high school students’ confidence in their information seeking abilities. The assessment of their evaluative standards revealed that they became more aware of the importance of evaluating the accuracy of information they located. In addition, a positive correlation was found between their understandings of the importance of evaluating information to determine its relevance to the task at hand and the disposition toward a more expert approach to seeking information. Performance on the information seeking task was positively influenced by conceptual scaffolding provided by both the facilitator and the pre-service teachers. Feedback that encouraged the high school students to consider conceptual issues was discovered to be most effective. The findings from this research contribute to the literature on cross-age mentoring between higher education and K-12 students as well as providing insights about strategies that influence students’ abilities to locate, evaluate, and synthesize information

Differences on Information Commitments in Consumption Domain

Information commitments are a profile of evaluative standards and information searching strategies on the Internet. The purpose of this study is to examine the reliability and validity of the information commitments instrument in consumption domain, and differences among scales underlying the instrument. A total of 258 university students participated in the survey who have experiences in online shopping. Using confirmatory factor analysis technical, this study has identified valid measures for each construct underlying information commitments in consumptions domain. The results indicate that participants preferred to utilize “content” to judge the usefulness of the information, and use “multiple sources” to evaluate the correctness of information, that they oriented to use search strategy “elaboration” in verifying online consumption information. Gender differences are also revealed on standard of the “multiple sources” and the “content”

Users' trust in information resources in the Web environment: a status report

This study has three aims; to provide an overview of the ways in which trust is either assessed or asserted in relation to the use and provision of resources in the Web environment for research and learning; to assess what solutions might be worth further investigation and whether establishing ways to assert trust in academic information resources could assist the development of information literacy; to help increase understanding of how perceptions of trust influence the behaviour of information users

Library Trends 51 (2) Fall 2002: Teaching and Assessing Information Skills in the Twenty-first Century: A Global Perspective

published or submitted for publicatio

Work in Motion / Assessment at Rest: An Attitudinal Study of Academic Reference Librarians A Case Study At Mid-Size University (MSU A)

It is reasonable to assume the existence of a new "dynamic" that influences how to measure reference services in libraries and how we evaluate the reference librarians who provide those services. Traditional, face-to-face delivery of reference services is reported to be declining, and there is myriad evidence, albeit largely uncollated and little evaluated, that suggests reference librarians are delivering significant and increasing amounts of the services they render in network environments. These trends raise questions, in turn, about how well we understand the current state of affairs in reference services, particularly where the management and evaluation of reference services in network environments are concerned. The purpose of this study is to investigate relevant circumstances and conditions bearing -- directly and indirectly -- on changes in the nature, form, substance, and effects of reference services -- through the reference librarian experience. Specifically, this attitudinal study will account for and assess changes in reference services (in the context of a medium-sized private university with a national reputation for successfully integrating information technologies into the educational process), with the further aim of developing an understanding of how to capture statistics and evaluate reference services and personnel in this dynamic environment. Reference librarians at a second mid-sized public university library were also interviewed for comparative data analysis in this study

Innovative learning in action (ILIA) issue three: Employability, enterprise & entrepreneurship

The theme of the 3rd issue of ILIA is Employability, Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, reflecting the University of Salford’s Learning and Teaching Strategy and our Goal “To produce graduates with the skills, creativity, confidence and adaptability to succeed in the labour market and make a meaningful contribution to society”. The creativity, problem solving and change orientation this implies recognizes Salford’s distinctive strengths in this regard, and provides us with a conceptualization of employability which embraces enterprise and entrepreneurship, manifest in the form of selfemployment, but equally relevant to those working within organizations i.e. to intrapreneurship. The contributions to this edition provide us with examples of excellent practice demonstrating how practitioners at Salford have responded to the challenge of providing a quality learning experience for our students. Consideration of the papers and snapshots reveal how colleagues have embedded employability into teaching and learning and assessment strategies, and into frameworks of student support, in differing and innovative ways, across the institution. As this edition of ILIA goes to print work is underway to develop an Employability Policy and Strategy for the University. Designed to provide a coherent and progressive approach to Employability, Enterprise and Careers Education and Guidance, this Strategy will be able to build on the good practice evident both in this edition of ILIA and across the institution. ILIA therefore has once again provided us with a range of perspectives on a key area of curriculum design and development. It also has provided an opportunity to reflect on practice and student learning, to share experience and hopefully to identify future areas for collaboration

Guidelines for e-reference library services for distance learners and other remote users.

Until recently the provision of distance education was undertaken mainly by various professional associations and commercial agencies offering vocational training. Library provision to meet the needs of registered students was limited. Over the past 30 years, however, the delivery of higher and further education to students studying at a distance has become a core part of the activity of many academic institutions: a few specialist higher education institutions such as the Open Universities established in Britain and India, and some conventional universities that established teaching centres away from their main campuses

INVESTIGATING THE ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN CREDIBILITY ASSESSMENTS AND INFORMATION USE TASKS WITH RESPECT TO DOCUMENT GENRES IN THE CONTEXT OF UNIVERSITY TEACHING

Higher education requires intense information practices for knowledge diffusion, application, and innovation. Faculty assess and use a variety of documents when they teach their students. They make complex credibility assessments, and they use information with varying degrees of perceived credibility to achieve their teaching goals. Unfortunately, existing credibility research often stops once documents are selected. Our knowledge of the associations between credibility assessments and information use remains limited. Additionally, scholars agree professional tasks are associated with the genres of the documents used to accomplish these tasks. For example, instructional genres – including tutorials and lesson plans – are particularly useful to tasks related to educational pursuits. Despite the potential benefits that the identification of genres might provide in searching, navigation, and comprehension of information, researchers rarely exploit it to facilitate faculty’s document assessments and information use in support of their teaching. To solve the above problems, this study aimed at uncovering the associations between credibility assessments and information use tasks with respect to document genres in the context of university teaching. Specifically, it investigated whether there were associations: (1) between the criteria faculty employed to assess the credibility of the documents they used to support their teaching and the genres of these documents; (2) between the credibility criteria they employed to assess and the information use tasks they performed to use these documents; and (3) between the genres of these documents and the information use tasks they performed. Understanding the above associations could enhance our knowledge of the roles of document genres in making credibility assessments and information use decisions in the context of university teaching. This study took a mixed-method, bottom-up approach to uncovering the above associations. It first employed qualitative citation analysis to identify the genres of the documents faculty used in their courses based on the citations in their teaching materials (e.g., syllabi, lecture slides, lab notes, and links to resources). Customized genre repertoires that detailed the contexts in which different genres were used in Excel format were created. Semi-structured interviews were then implemented to collect data about the courses included in this study, the general criteria faculty employed to select documents for their courses, the tasks they performed to use the information in the genres this study selected for in-depth interviews, and the criteria they employed to assess the selected genres. Interviews were fully transcribed for qualitative content analysis. The results of this study indicate the criteria faculty employed served as function enablers that bridged the selected genres and the information use tasks they performed to use these genres. Credibility was one of the function enablers that enabled faculty to use the selected genres to perform different tasks. It played different roles in different tasks. It played a leading role in teaching tasks that developed students’ advanced learning skills and helped students to continue their learning. It also played a leading role in information use tasks that involved subject experts, professional orginations, and diverse genres originated from heterogeneous sources. The results also indicate the information use tasks faculty performed served as inclusion and exclusion criteria for genres. The information use tasks determined the information characteristics of genres that mattered in faculty’s task performance. This study shed new light on existing knowledge about genre-task associations by: (1) Exploring these associations in the context of university teaching; (2) Explicating these associations through the perception of credibility; and (3) Adding the criterion-genre and criterion-task associations to complement these associations. This study also enhanced our understanding of credibility in the context of university teaching. Finally, this study made several methodological contributions, including: (1) Transforming citation analysis from bibliographic records to research tools that engaged participants and ensured the accuracy of data; (2) Transforming citation analysis from bibliographic records to customized genre repertoires that preserved the contexts of information use; and (3) Developing rules to consistently select genres for investigating task-genre associations across disciplinary boundaries

An exploratory survey of reference source instruction in LIS courses

We surveyed 40 reference instructors at 28 North American ALA-accredited programs of library and information studies about instructional methods they used in teaching about reference sources in print and electronic formats. Results indicated that instructors spent more time teaching students about electronic than about print sources. General reference courses included a larger variety of instructional methods for teaching print sources than did subject-specific courses. Commonly-used instructional methods for print sources included instructor-led discussion of the sources and hands-on assignments completed outside of class time. For electronic reference sources, commonly-used instructional methods were instructor-led discussions and modeling searches. The study identified an apparent conflict between instructors’ desires to develop a deeper knowledge of print and electronic sources, and their ability to ensure access to sources, work with technology, and manage changing interfaces. We conclude with three options that LIS practitioners and educators might take to address this conflict.Post-printIncludes bibliographical references