All That Glisters Is Not
Gold
Presenters
Anita Cannon, Jeff Lilburn, Elizabeth Millar
Mount Allison University Library
This session, the 2-hour keynote for our Spring
Teaching Day, examined the links between critical thinking
and information literacy and contextualized the two within
the Essential
Outcomes and Literacies Document which emerged from the
Academic Renewal process.
Information literacy and critical thinking are vital outcomes
of a university education.
The term “Information Literacy”
is not new; it was first coined in 1974 by Paul Zurkowski.
Implicit in the term is the belief that everyone has a right
to information to improve their lives and a lifelong need
to access it.
The Association of College and Research Libraries
defines information literacy as a “set of abilities
requiring individuals to recognize when information is needed
and have the ability to locate, evaluate and use effectively
the needed information.” Students who are information
literate can, among other things:
Determine the extent of information needed
Evaluate information and its sources critically
Use information effectively
Understand economic, legal and social issues pertaining to
information
Critical thinking is the ability to engage in
purposeful, self-regulatory judgment resulting in interpretation,
analysis, evaluation and inference; it is an intellectual
framework for understanding, finding, evaluating and using
information: activities which may be accomplished in part
by fluency with information and sound investigative methods.
The information literate student evaluates information and
its sources critically by assessing the reliability, validity,
accuracy, authority, timeliness to accomplish a specific task.
In 2001, Statistics Canada estimated that 25%
of the workforce are “knowledge workers”. Others
have calculated that knowledge workers spend 15-35% of their
time searching for information. All of us need to make sense
of change, think critically about information and evaluate
assumptions. We are also inundated and overwhelmed by the
amount of information we are receiving. Take a look at these
statistics:
• 378,000 books published in the US and
Britain in 2005 alone
• 12 million Americans reported keeping a blog (Spring,
2006)
• 6 million photos a day uploaded to Flickr a day
• 235 million Google searches daily (July, 2008)
Although 97% of people under 30 say they are
confident in their searching skills,
and 89% of students start their research online, there is
evidence that searches are not well targeted and the results
are not being carefully evaluated. For example, most searches
are simple one- or two-word searches not using advanced features,
few people look beyond the first few results, and most searchers
are not aware of, or are unable to tell the difference between,
paid-for results and others.
In other words, most online searches are done
naively; “Googling” is considered the same as
research. Clicking replaces thinking, and thinking becomes
compliant rather than critical. The first answer found is
accepted; a Wellesley study conducted in 2000-2001 discovered
that most students didn’t seek to confirm that first
answer. As a result, students are “overwhelmingly susceptible
to misinformation” (Graham and Metaxas, 2003). Many
students are unable to identify advertising and propaganda
or special interest material and differentiate it from more
trustworthy material. This is all the more alarming when,
by some estimates, less than 1% of Canadian information is
even available on the “surface” web.
The ability to critically evaluate information
and its sources are the keys to success in research. Yet there
is a notion that answers to complex questions can be found
“as easily as old friends on Facebook” (Brabazon).
Google is a start. But students tend to search
quickly online and they must be encouraged to think about
the quality of info they are finding and using. In short,
digital literacy should not be confused with information literacy.
Online searching has created a “culture
of equivalence” between academic and non-academic sources.
Students need to understand what they are searching, the tools
that are appropriate, and once found, how to evaluate the
quality of the information. This is where critical thinking
and information literacy intersect, in that discernment and
reasoning about the value of that information.
Information literacy instruction is not owned
by librarians. Instructors can encourage students to think
critically about information by designing good assignments
that
• Embed critical thinking instruction into the work,
yet make it explicit.
• Link the course work with the real world.
• Are not just busy work (such as library scavenger
hunts that don’t go beyond “finding” sources).
• Actively engage students in selecting and evaluating
information and using it.
• Help students distinguish between good online sources
(e.g. peer-reviewed journals available online) and popular
websites.
• Provide opportunities for feedback and reflection
on the research process.
• Challenge students and set the bar high.
For sources cited and examples of such assignments
and the many ways academic librarians and university teachers
are working to improve information literacy and critical thinking,
please follow the links on the accompanying PowerPoint presentation.
Please click here to view it.
(Summarized by Eileen Herteis and Toni Roberts,
PCTC)
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