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2006The state of research skills
10 Comments | Posted by Steve in Culture, Information Literacy, News, Teaching & Instruction
The dilution of research skills and the need for information literacy, a topic we have discussed frequently, has made its way to mainstream discussions once again: Searching for Dummies.
Also interesting is mention of another topic we debated, Wikipedia. The article cites a grass roots effort by grad students to put good information into the open encyclopedia.
Higher education is fighting back. Librarians are teaching “information literacy” and establishing alternative Web indexes. Graduate students, in the front lines as teaching assistants, are starting to discuss joining Wikipedia rather than fighting it, as many instructors still, quixotically, do.
10 Comments for The state of research skills
Dave | March 27, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Author comment by Barry | March 28, 2006 at 11:28 am
‘Ulatables:
Before I get lost in the world of eMusic downloads (I love having a subscription), I wanted to comment. After reading this post yesterday I forwarded Tenner’s piece from the Times onto some of my coworkers.
One reply included a Newsweek piece by Steven Levy. Levy attended a talk by Linda Stone on “continuous partial attention.” That is, how most of us have one eye on our PC, the other on on our Blackberry or cell phone all the while we pretend to listen to our coworkers. It’s not that we aren’t paying any attention to any of these items, its that we aren’t paying enough attention to one of them at a time, leading Stone to questions how productive we can actually be under such circumstances.
But what does this have to do with libraries?
What happens to our students – our ourselves – when we pair “satisficing” with continual partial attention? I believe something like this:
“Hear the news out of Iraq?”
“What happened?”
“Well, something big. I don’t have all the details but I can tell you it isn’t good. It was all over CNN, and I think the bloggers on OSM were on top of it as well.”
“Wow, I’ll have to look into that. Can you hold on, I have another call…”
And so on and so forth…
The Levy link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11899893/site/newsweek/
Dave | March 28, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Happily, for our etymology, economist Herbert A. Simon was born and raised in Milwaukee, and educated and taught and the University of Chicago.
Barry, I like this idea of “continuous partial attention”, thanks for passing on that silly article form Newsweek. I suffer from this, too.
In fact, a couple of weeks ago when Steve and I had a few quiet, tired words together, we both admitted that we seldom remember the plots of novels we’ve read. Yet we never reread books.
Steve suggested that he remembers books only as impressions (or “colors”), for example, “I liked that book,” or, “I hated that book.”
I wonder if this is a product of our “continuous partial attention” or of our continual bombardment with information from other media.
Author comment by Barry | March 29, 2006 at 1:07 am
Oddly enough, the CPA (see how I shortened that?) article changed my morning routine at least for one day. To set things up, I normally wake up, turn on the TV and fire up the PC. Within moments I am watching CNN, reading the Denver Post online while keeping an eye on my iToons whilst my daily podcasts update. Between all of that, the coffee pot screaming from the kitchen and Oscar the Cat trying to bite my toes, well, you can see how it might be difficult to absorb anything.
This morning, however, I turned off the TV. I didn’t just turn off the sound, but the entire thing. Lo and behold, with only five things going at once rather than six I learned far more about West Coast jazz in the 50s that I normally would have.
Will this potentially good habit continue tomorrow?
Author comment by Barry | March 29, 2006 at 10:39 am
To continue with the CPA thread, a University of Memphis Law Professor has banned laptops from her classroom:
“Professor June Entman says her main concern is that students are so busy keyboarding they can’t think and analyze what she’s telling them.”
Full story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060329/ap_on_re_us/law_school_laptops
Dave | March 29, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Barry and Steve -
I have a couple of teaching sessions coming up about archival research, and I’ve decided to open the sessions with these concepts of CPA and “satisficing”.
I think an instructional session increasingly needs context – a moment to step back and explain why these students are being taught something. Archival and paper-based research is becoming increasingly alien to students, even the simple patience just to read through a box of papers for a couple of hours is an unlearned skill.
[Barry, my morning coffee is often the only time I read poetry these days (which you know is my primary interest). If I have ten minutes to read five pages of poetry, good for me. Turn off that idiot box!]
Steve | March 30, 2006 at 10:11 am
The challenge is explaining to people that they don’t know what they don’t know and not doing it in a manner that is condescending. College students, though they may have poor info lit skills, are not dumb. I think that you could try to explain this to them from a theoretical point of view. It is one of the (fascinating) intellectual problems that all students need to face if they are going to take their educational life past a certain point.
So…my vote would be to explain the theory behind the complex problem because students are certainly capable of understanding it.
Dave | March 30, 2006 at 10:47 am
Steve, when you say “explain the theory behind the complex problem”, what do you mean?
What’s the theory behind the problem?
While I agree that there’s always a risk of being condescending, I’m not too concerned about that because of my instructional style. I want to give firm, concrete examples and not throw theories out – these tend to be less memorable, don’t they?
I’m also not interested in telling students what they don’t know, but in acting as a mirror to their behaviors. “See yourself and how you behave; is this the most effective way to approach your project?”
Author comment by Steve | March 30, 2006 at 4:07 pm
Hmm…the things that make natural sense in my head that don’t compute for others.
The theory is exactly what you explained above, “the concept of ’satisficing.’”. Introduce the students to Herbert Simon and explain his theory. Ask them what it means to be “informed” in our current culture. Then bridge this to the research paper that is their current task at hand. Ask the students if they feel that it is sufficient to apply the same standards regarding knowledge and background information to their casual lives and their research papers. Bring up the notions of academic expectations and excellence. Finally, bridge this to library materials through a demonstration of the first screen search results in a search engine and the presumably richer archival materials that are in your collection.
Does this make more sense?
Dave | March 30, 2006 at 5:09 pm
Actually, yes, we were on the same page the whole time. Herbert Simon! In a class on atomic science! In a class on Wallace Stevens!
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Steve –
Thanks for posting this, and providing the link.
I’m going to zero in on the concept of “satisficing,” coined by the economist Herbert Simon. The word’s combination of “satisfying†and “sufficing†(or sufficient) seems like a great insight into our culture’s new notion of being informed, well informed, and even expert in a subject. That is, the new notion of being informed is, “I read a two-sentence paragraph on that subject on Kool Moe Dee’s blog.â€
This new “informed†culture knows a very little about a lot of things, as opposed to the old school way of knowing a lot about a very few things. Historians point out that this shift began with the invention of printing – in the cobbled towns of Germany – in the 15th century. It has continued to compound itself, and still does.
I think that Edward Tenner misses a significant point, though. Many of the younger faculty and graduate students (who are teaching) don’t have basic research skills themselves, first of all. And second, many of them are encouraging students to do research using the free web without giving them adequate warnings, tips, or feedback. Not to mention the fact that many faculty never encourage a student to discuss research with a librarian.
The hint that TA’s and faculty “starting to discuss joining Wikipedia†is even remotely enough to correct the issue of poor research skills demonstrates that we have a long way to go. Thanks, Johann Gutenberg, for a big plate of nothing.