Education Commons^™

Teaching Information Fluency: How To Teach Students To Be Efficient, Ethical, And Critical Information Consumers, Carl Heine, Dennis O'Connor

Carl Heine

Searching is becoming easier than thinking. Enter a query in a search engine, and the searcher is instantly flooded with results. Information has never been easier to retrieve and consume. At the same time, determining the quality of the results remains a daunting task. Despite the attempts to make search tools "brain dead easy"1 to use, searching that reduces the need to think invites problems. Machines cannot reliably predict what each individual is hunting for, machines cannot determine what is credible, yet that is the direction search engine development is headed.

Where Is The Evidence? Realising The Value Of Grey Literature For Public Policy & Practice: A Discussion Paper, Amanda Lawrence, John Houghton, Julian Thomas, Paul R. Weldon

Dr Paul Weldon

The internet has profoundly changed how we produce, use and collect research and information for public policy and practice, with grey literature playing an increasingly important role. The authors argue that grey literature (i.e. material produced and published by organisations without recourse to the commercial or scholarly publishing industry) is a key part of the evidence produced and used for public policy and practice. Through surveys of users, producing organisations and collecting services a detailed picture is provided of the importance and economic value of grey literature. However, finding and accessing policy information is a time-consuming task made harder by …

Determining Data Information Literacy Needs: A Study Of Students And Research Faculty, Jake R. Carlson, Michael Fosmire, Chris Miller, Megan R. Sapp Nelson

Michael Fosmire

Researchers increasingly need to integrate the disposition, management and curation of their data into their current workflows. However, it is not yet clear to what extent faculty and students are sufficiently prepared to take on these responsibilities. This paper articulates the need for a data information literacy program (DIL) to prepare students to engage in such an “e-research” environment. Assessments of faculty interviews and student performance in a geoinformatics course provide complementary sources of information, which are then filtered through the perspective of ACRL’s information literacy competency standards to produce a draft set of outcomes for a data information literacy …

A Multi-Institutional Project To Develop Discipline-Specific Data Literacy Instruction For Graduate Students, Sarah Wright, Michael Fosmire, Jon Jeffryes, Marianne Stowell Bracke, Brian Westra

Michael Fosmire

What data stewardship skills are needed by future scientists to fulfill their professional responsibilities and take advantage of opportunities in e-science? How can academic librarians contribute their expertise in information organization, dissemination and preservation to better serve modern science? With support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), four research libraries have formed a partnership to address these questions. The aims of the partnership are to identify the data stewardship skills, including data management and curation, needed by graduate students at the research discipline level, to identify trends that extend across the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) …

Where Do Older Australians Receive Their Health Information? Health Information Sources And Their Perceived Reliability, Pippa Burns, Sandra C. Jones, Donald C. Iverson, Peter Caputi

Sandra Jones

Background: Chronic disease prevalence is increasing, in part due to the ageing population, adding further pressure to Australia's over-stretched primary health care services. While patients are encouraged to self-manage their chronic disease(s) in order to minimise the impact on their day-to-day functioning, little is known about where older adults receive health information and their perceptions of the reliability of these sources. Such knowledge would facilitate the development of self-management support strategies using health information sources that are acceptable to older adults. Methods: A cross-sectional design was utilised to investigate where older adults receive their health information and their perceptions of …

Nf92-108 Sources Of Information — Organic Or Sustainable Vegetable Production, Laurie Hodges

Laurie Hodges

This NebFact is a list of companies, organizations and government offices that supply information for the gardener and small farmer who are looking at instituting organic or sustainable vegetable production.

Nf92-105 Sources Of Information On Herb Production And Marketing, Laurie Hodges

Laurie Hodges

This NebFact gives you information on herb production and marketing sources.

Information Literacy: Finding And Using Information, January 2009, Heather Leary, Anne R. Diekema, Wendy Holliday

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

This course is for learning information literacy skills, especially those related to using an academic library and the Internet for college-level research. The course uses a modified problem-based learning approach to give you an authentic and hands-on experience with the subject matter. The purpose of this course is to help you learn about information, the tools that can be used to find, evaluate, and share it, and to practice the skills you have learned.

It is designed for students and teachers in higher education, but can be modified easily for other learners. The course assumes basic Internet capabilities (browser navigation …

Teachers' New Roles In School-Based Communities Of Practice, Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

School classrooms can be conceptualised as bounded communities of practice made up of teachers and students working together to learn and build knowledge. The widespread use of information and communication technologies enables these communities to create knowledge, cross boundaries and build up intellectual capital. This paper, based on a qualitative study of thirty-two teachers in Victorian state schools, offers a model of four teachers’ roles that reflects the current situation, and suggests ways in which these roles might be developed to enhance knowledge building. It argues that safe, knowledgeable communities within boundaries, together with active boundary-crossing, can provide the conditions …

Govdoc-L, Raleigh Muns

Raleigh Muns