Digital Visitors and Residents. The University of Oxford and OCLC Research, in partnership with the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, are collaborating on a JISC-funded study to investigate the theory of digital residents and visitors with learners in the educational stages: Emerging (Late stage secondary school-first year undergraduate); Establishing (Second/third year undergraduate); Embedding (Postgraduates, PhD students); and Experienced (Scholars). This work will increase understanding of how learners engage with the Web and how educational services and systems can attract and sustain a possible new group of lifelong learners. The trans-Atlantic partnership will support comparison of students' digital learning strategies in different cultural contexts. Further details... Outputs currently available Interim Reports to JISC June 2012 Progress Report 22 July 2011 (.pdf: 560K/13 pp.) Jisc infoKit White, David, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Donna Lanclos, Erin M.
Presentations Recent Publications Bartlett, Sarah. 2012. Mr. University library brings in changes as a result of student study. 9 January 2013 A two-year study of how college students use academic libraries has led to significant changes at a US university library. The study, carried out at five higher-education institutions in Illinois, has guided the libraries to make physical, operational and strategic changes. The ERIAL (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) project examined how students view and use their campus libraries. One of the most striking results, according to Lynda Duke, associate professor and academic outreach librarian and principal investigator for one of the universities, Illinois Wesleyan University, on the project, was the near-invisibility of librarians within students’ academic worldview. Illinois Wesleyan University has now shared some of the ways that this study has impacted processes at its university's library, The Ames Library.
In addition, the library also uses students’ dependence on Google to its advantage. Related internet links. PhDs: Young people's perception of their information experience: implications for teaching IL. Everyone, apparently, wants school leavers and graduates who are information literate (short hand for having data, information and knowledge management capabilities that enable them to cope with, and capitalise on, life, either in terms of daily living, pleasure or work). However, people are highly critical of young people’s capabilities in this area. Why is this? Is it the environment i.e. a lack of information or IT resources? This no doubt plays a part. However, in the UK where we have great libraries that are endowed with extensive paper and electronic resources, we hear that these resources are underused or used ineffectively, despite imaginative attempts to entice the user. Do students inherently lack the capability?
This is unlikely. Are the teachers the problem, in other words the primary and secondary school teachers, lecturers, teacher librarians, academic skills teachers etc.? Is it the fault of the learning institutions? Is it the fault of industry? Answers on a ‘postcard’ ! Are you 'information literate'? The term “information literacy” was first penned in a 1974 report by Paul G Zurkowski for the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. He used it to define “the techniques and skills for utilizing the wide range of information tools as well as primary sources in moulding information solutions to their problems.”
How do you define information literacy? We invite you to leave your ideas and definitions in the comment section. Zurkowski also had a term to define the people who applied these skills to their work: the “information literate.” Over the last four decades, trouser legs and shirt collars have narrowed, and the meaning of “information literacy” has evolved with the advent of the internet and the speed at which information is delivered. In 2009, on the prompting of the National Forum on Literacy, President Barack Obama proclaimed October National Information Literacy Month. What is information literacy? Beth Schuck Stephen Marvin Satish Munnolli Mark Puterbaugh The Author. Graphwords visual thesaurus. Graphwords ( is another thesaurus visualisation tool that uses Wordnet ( Type in a word and it generates a map of associated nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. To view the meaning of a group of words move your cursor over the node and to explore a word and its related terms in more detail simply click on it.
Many thanks to Carol Bream for the alert. Google’s new Knowledge Graph. Deciphering student search behaviour - SEARCH. A new study reveals how students conceal their real search strategies from their tutors. Sarah Bartlett reports Is there a learning black market in higher education? This intriguing question emerges from early findings of the JISC-funded Visitors and Residents project [1], which explores learning motivations and information-seeking behaviours across education stages.
The project, in which OCLC Research is partnering with the TALL Group at the University of Oxford, in collaboration with the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, J. But according to David White, senior manager of development of the TALL Group (ALT Learning Technologist Team of the Year, 2010), students are nevertheless nervous about the validity of these practices and conceal them from their tutors. White believes that information-seeking behaviours are converging across personal and institutional spheres, as a combined effect of the social web, cloud-based applications and the multi-tab environment.
Further Information. Distraction Span: Introduction. With this cluster of The New Everyday we initiate a conversation about social media that sidesteps the panic over youth and digital distraction while not being afraid to look head-on at their everyday engagements with mobile devices and social networking. We look to and include actual media practices to dispel the common diagnosis that networked media is rewiring young minds, displacing valuable forms of engagement, and making sustained reflection a thing of the past. Our aim is to challenge pathologizing discourses that frame young users of social media as simultaneously victims and threat (the teen who doesn't listen, who won't concentrate, who will fail to learn).
At the same time, we want to acknowledge that adults and youth can work together to make better sense and use of the interruptions, disturbances, and amusements introduced by new media. We hope that this cluster will provoke both sustained reflection as well as disjointed rapid-fire thought on the topic. Research Information Literacy and Digital Scholarship.