Information Researcher is up and running

 

A refresh of Information Researcher is now available. This assessment and tutorial package identifies weaknesses and strengthens skills in information fluency.

The subscription package consists of a six item Pretest, followed by a 9 unit set of interactive tutorials on all information fluency skills. A ten item Certification Exam concludes the learning experience. This was originally developed for the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University and has been revised based on user feedback.

A free preview of the Tutorials is available here.

To test your information fluency skills, try the Three Free Search Challenges, adapted from the Pretest.

Students Use What They Know

When your search skills consist of Googling and Browsing, you must make the most of them.

There are other search skills, of course, but you can't use what you don't know.

Try this, for example: who is the registered owner of General Delivery University (easy)? And what is the address of the registered owner (not so easy)?

This is a Deep Web search, if you use Google as your starting point. Google can access the information, but the owner has two addresses. One is easy to find by googling. The other is easy to find using a Deep Web search (searching a different database).

This is an item I included in the current version of Information Researcher. When students give me the wrong answer, I know they've been googling. When they give me the 'right' address, I know they got it from a different database. Students find the wrong address by fact checking the copyright holder's name. Students find the address registered to the domain using something else.  Hopefully, they learn there's more to searching than Google along the way.

I leave this as a Challenge. I'll be changing the assessment item in Information Researcher soon, because the registered owner is 1) now deceased and 2) his ownership of the domain is due to expire within a year.

College Ready Information Fluency

Over the past three months I've been working on Information Researcher, our newest self-paced course for middle school and high school students.

This package will be put to the test soon by 1,000 students enrolled in Northwestern University's Center for Talent Development summer programs. The goal is to strengthen these students' digital research skills, to improve their performance in demanding coursework; to achieve college readiness.

What is college readiness? Answers will vary from institution to institution. We've based our definition on the Digital Information Fluency Model, focusing on competencies that individuals need to "get it right" most of the time.  The "it" is online research and has multiple facets.

The course consists of three parts: a 5-item practice test, 14 tutorials and 10 certification test items. Each item is performance-based and involves live searching and/or evaluating involved in representative school assignments.

The practice test gives students an opportunity to test out of the course. A passing score is 80%, a level that most individuals who have mastered search strategies and techniques can attain. It's not easy. No one passes it without training.  The skills assessed are 1) learning how to use an unfamiliar search engine, 2) using backlinks to evaluate the authority of an unknown source, 3) tracking down the owner of an unknown Web site, 4) fact checking the accuracy of content and authority of a source, 5) determining the freshness of information that lacks a published date.

In addition to these, the tutorials involve students in the following tasks: 6) browsing links to home in on information, 7) using keywords effectively with a search engine, 8) truncating URLs to reveal hidden information, 9) triangulating information to fact check accuracy, 10) using advanced operators to retrieve information, 11) detecting bias, 12) tracking down missing information for reports and citations, 13) deep web searching, 14) finding Red Flags and 15) applying search strategies effectively in a variety of challenges. The posttest incorporates the same competencies.

The target average score for middle school students is 65%; 75% for high schoolers. Before training, average scores are ~40% for middle schoolers and ~50% for high schoolers. Repeated exposure to training leads to even greater improvement.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on what constitutes college readiness in terms of information fluency. And if you'd like to preview a bite-sized portion of the course and give some feedback before we put the course online, let me know by writing to carl@21cif.com.