What if becoming information literate were an adventure?

What if becoming information literate were an adventure? This question was posed in a keynote for the Creating Knowledge Conference 2021. It was answered in a thought piece by examining adventure-based ways to prepare students to be information literate adults through the principles and mechanisms that people find arousing and pleasurable and that are not classically a part of university pedagogy. How might these mechanisms be used to engage students more in the IL learning process and to encourage them to pursue being an information literate person as a lifelong endeavor? Adventure is presented as an experience that is situated, soft or hard, emotionally charged, challenging and rewarding. The risk aspect of adventure, often linked to danger, is also examined. Some of the dangers that exist in the management of information are explored (e.g., traps in sharing practices, seductive novelty and bypassing reason) as well as the personal costs of not managing information literacy well. How we nevertheless find danger alluring is explained in terms of arousal, as well as how we navigate zones of danger and delight with the help of protective frames. In order to arouse and sustain student engagement in becoming information literate adults, the value of interest is also introduced with the four-phase model of interest development. Suggestions for where to get started in translating the mechanisms of adventure, danger and interest into theoretically motivated and enjoyable teaching in order to support student growth as lifelong information literate adults are woven into the text for reflection

What if becoming information literate were an adventure?

What if becoming information literate were an adventure? This question was posed in a keynote for the Creating Knowledge Conference 2021. It was answered in a thought piece by examining adventure-based ways to prepare students to be information literate adults through the principles and mechanisms that people find arousing and pleasurable and that are not classically a part of university pedagogy. How might these mechanisms be used to engage students more in the IL learning process and to encourage them to pursue being an information literate person as a lifelong endeavor? Adventure is presented as an experience that is situated, soft or hard, emotionally charged, challenging and rewarding. The risk aspect of adventure, often linked to danger, is also examined. Some of the dangers that exist in the management of information are explored (e.g., traps in sharing practices, seductive novelty and bypassing reason) as well as the personal costs of not managing information literacy well. How we nevertheless find danger alluring is explained in terms of arousal, as well as how we navigate zones of danger and delight with the help of protective frames. In order to arouse and sustain student engagement in becoming information literate adults, the value of interest is also introduced with the four-phase model of interest development. Suggestions for where to get started in translating the mechanisms of adventure, danger and interest into theoretically motivated and enjoyable teaching in order to support student growth as lifelong information literate adults are woven into the text for reflection

Is information literacy ability, and metacognition of that ability, related to interest, gender or education level? A cross-sectional study of higher education students

How information literate are students in higher education, and how accurate is their metacognition related to that ability? Are students’ perceived needs to learn more and their level of interest in becoming information literate related to their pursuit of information literacy (IL) skill development? First-year undergraduates, master’s, and PhD students (N = 760) took an objective IL test and estimated their scores both before and after the test. IL ability, as well as students’ estimation of their IL ability, increased with higher education experience and IL test experience, though also varied notably within groups. Low-performers tended to overestimate their abilities, while high-performers tended to underestimate them—both evidence of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Furthermore, gender comparisons revealed that men tended to estimate higher, and more accurate, scores than women. Finally, PhD students reported greater interest in becoming information literate than undergraduates. Although undergraduates felt a greater need to learn more, PhD students were more inclined to pursue IL growth. For both groups, interest in becoming information literate correlated far more with their likelihood to invest effort into developing IL competencies than their perceived need to know more. What implications might these findings have for how we conceptualize the teaching of IL

Here's the TRIQ: The Tromsø Interest Development Questionnaire based on the four-phase model of interest development

The Tromsø Interest Questionnaire (TRIQ) is the first suite of self-report subscales designed for focused investigations on how interest is experienced in relation to Hidi and Renninger’s four-phase model of interest development. In response to the plethora of varied interest measures that already exist in terms of theoretical grounding, form, and tested quality, the TRIQ subscales were designed with a consistent form to measure general interest, situation dependence, positive affect, competence level, competence aspirations, meaningfulness, and self-regulation answered in relation to some object of interest. Two studies testing the subscales’ performance using different objects of interest (self-chosen “object-general,” and prespecified “object-specific”) provide evidence of the subscales’ internal consistency, temporal reliability, and phase-distinguishing validity. Patterns across the two studies demonstrate that the TRIQ is a sufficiently reliable and valid domain-tailorable tool that is particularly effective at distinguishing phase 1 (triggered situational) from phase 4 (well-developed individual) interest. The findings raise interesting questions for further investigation about the distinction and distance between all interest phases, the push-pull factors that influence how interests evolve and additional subscales to add to the suite

Knowing and doing: The development of information literacy measures to assess knowledge and practice

This study touches upon three major themes in the field of information literacy (IL): the assessment of IL, the association between IL knowledge and skills, and the dimensionality of the IL construct. Three quantitative measures were developed and tested with several samples of university students to assess knowledge and skills for core facets of IL. These measures are freely available, applicable across disciplines, and easy to administer. Results indicate they are likely to be reliable and support valid interpretations. By measuring both knowledge and practice, the tools indicated low to moderate correlations between what students know about IL, and what they actually do when evaluating and using sources in authentic, graded assignments. The study is unique in using actual coursework to compare knowing and doing regarding students’ evaluation and use of sources. It provides one of the most thorough documentations of the development and testing of IL assessment measures to date. Results also urge us to ask whether the source-focused components of IL – information seeking, source evaluation and source use – can be considered unidimensional constructs or sets of disparate and more loosely related components, and findings support their heterogeneity

Note to first-year university students: Just do it! In the end, the fact that you study may be more important than how you study.

Education is important to society, yet many students do not complete the educations they start. In the present study of 426 students at a Norwegian university, we examined the predictive value of study-related variables with regard to student status one and five years after initial enrollment (stayers versus dropouts). The logistic regression analyses indicated that older students and students who spent less time studying were more likely to drop out after the first year. Students who completed less ECTS during the first year were more likely to drop out after five years. Contrary to our hypothesis, learning approaches and procrastination were not significant predictors for dropout. Overall, just studying and staying (on) the course mattered more for student success in the first year than self-reported measures on how the academic work was actually done. A caveat relates to the low response rate of the study (∼9%), which is addressed in the discussion

Study Habits and Procrastination: The Role of Academic Self-Efficacy

Inefficient study skills increase the probability that study work is perceived as difficult and aversive, with procrastination as a likely result. As a remedy, more effective study skills and habits may be encouraged. However, research indicates that good study skills and habits may not by themselves be sufficient to remedy problems, as this relationship may be mediated by efficacy beliefs related to academic functioning. We investigated this hypothesis across three student samples (total N = 752). As predicted, structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that study self-efficacy mediated the study habits—procrastination relation. The mediation effects were medium to large. We conclude that training of, and advice on, study skills and habits should be accompanied by measures that build study self-efficacy

What if becoming information literate were an adventure?

What if becoming information literate were an adventure? This question was posed in a keynote for the Creating Knowledge Conference 2021. It was answered in a thought piece by examining adventure-based ways to prepare students to be information literate adults through the principles and mechanisms that people find arousing and pleasurable and that are not classically a part of university pedagogy. How might these mechanisms be used to engage students more in the IL learning process and to encourage them to pursue being an information literate person as a lifelong endeavor? Adventure is presented as an experience that is situated, soft or hard, emotionally charged, challenging and rewarding. The risk aspect of adventure, often linked to danger, is also examined. Some of the dangers that exist in the management of information are explored (e.g., traps in sharing practices, seductive novelty and bypassing reason) as well as the personal costs of not managing information literacy well. How we nevertheless find danger alluring is explained in terms of arousal, as well as how we navigate zones of danger and delight with the help of protective frames. In order to arouse and sustain student engagement in becoming information literate adults, the value of interest is also introduced with the four-phase model of interest development. Suggestions for where to get started in translating the mechanisms of adventure, danger and interest into theoretically motivated and enjoyable teaching in order to support student growth as lifelong information literate adults are woven into the text for reflection

How Study Environments Foster Academic Procrastination: Overview and Recommendations

Procrastination is common among students, with prevalence estimates double or even triple those of the working population. This inflated prevalence indicates that the academic environment may appear as procrastination friendly to students. In the present paper, we identify social, cultural, organizational, and contextual factors that may foster or facilitate procrastination (such as large degree of freedom in the study situation, long deadlines, and temptations and distractions), document their research basis, and provide recommendations for changes in these factors to reduce and prevent procrastination. We argue that increased attention to such procrastination-friendly factors in academic environments is important and that relatively minor measures to reduce their detrimental effects may have substantial benefits for students, institutions, and society