Research Literacy
Forms the basis for lifelong learning. It is common to
all disciplines, to all learning environments and to all levels of
education. IT enables learners to master content and extend
their investigations, become more self-directed, and assume greater
control over their own learning. An information literate
individual is able to:
- Determine the extent of information needed
- Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
- Evaluate information and its sources critically
- Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base
- Use information effectively to accomplish a specific
purpose
- Understand the economic, legal and social issues surrounding
the use of information, and access and use of information ethically
and legally
Research literacy, while showing significant overlap with
information technology skills, is a distinct and broader area of
competence. Increasingly, information technology skills are
interwoven with, and support, research literacy.
Information Fluency
Using critical thinking skills and appropriate technologies,
information fluency integrates the abilities to:
- Collect the information necessary to consider a problem or
issue
- Employ critical thinking skills in the evaluation and analysis
of the information and its sources
- Formulate logical conclusions and present those conclusions in
an appropriate and effective way
Information Fluency may be envisioned as the optimal outcome
when critical thinking skills are combined with information
literacy and relevant computing skills.
Computer Literacy
Rote learning of specific hardware and software applications.
Technology Fluency
Fluency with technology focuses on understanding the underlying
concepts of technology and applying problem-solving and critical
thinking to using technology. Information technology fluency
focuses on a deep understanding of technology and graduated
increasingly skilled use of it.
Problem-Based Learning
A contextualized approach to teaching where the instructor serves
as a facilitator, and students engage in individual and group
research to solve problems with multiple solutions. Having
its origins in medical education, PBL is often compared to
case-based instruction, though its use of case studies is often
more open-ended. PBL offers the students the flexibility and
leeway to construct their own approaches and solutions as the
instructor adopts the role of guide, tutor, and evaluator rather
than the traditional lecturer. A key difference in PBL
education is that students are taught ways of accessing resources
for research, instead of being given a specific set of required
resources. PBL encourages interdisciplinary research, team
participation skills, self-directed learning, and student-student
and teacher-student interaction as students assume increasing
responsibility for their learning.
Critical Thinking
In contrast to traditional methods of passive learning requiring
rote memorization, critical thinking can imply a number of
activities where students conceptualize, apply, analyze, synthesize
and evaluate information. Critical thinking is a
self-reflective process that requires the ongoing assessment and
evaluation of one’s own thinking process. Often critical
thinking will imply a healthy skepticism as rejecting, or
suspending judgment. Solving problems, fashioning inferences,
and calculating likelihoods are all associated with critical
thinking, as is examining and testing possible solutions to see if
they work.
Critical Pedagogy
In opposition to the “banking concept” of education, what Paulo
Freire called the traditional manner by which teachers seek to
“deposit” information into their students’ heads for later
withdrawal, critical pedagogy drives students to examine social,
political, and economic contradictions within their fields of
study, so that ultimately student might have the necessary critical
tools to study and promote social justice. Freire’s answer
was a problem-posing teaching, where students and teachers are
co-investigators in a mutual dialogue.