Addressing below proficient information literacy skills: Evaluating the efficacy of an evidence-based educational intervention

Over the course of three years, an educational intervention was developed to teach information literacy (IL) skills, change perceptions of IL, and to recalibrate self views of the abilities of first year college students who demonstrate below proficient information literacy skills. The intervention is a modular workshop designed around the three-step analyze, search, evaluate (ASE) model of information literacy, which is easy to remember, easy to adapt to multiple instructional situations, and can provide a foundation for building information literacy skills. Summative evaluation of the intervention demonstrates that students who attend the workshop see an increase in skills and awareness of information literacy as a skill set. Increases in skills, however, were not sufficient to move participants into the proficient range. While workshop participants were able to reassess preworkshop skills, skills gained in the workshop did not result in recalibrated self-views of ability. Like the development of skills, the recalibration of self-assessments may require multiple exposures to information literacy instruction.     

Search markets and search results: The case of Bing

Bing and Google customize their results to target people with different geographic locations and languages but, despite the importance of search engines for web users and webometric research, the extent and nature of these differences are unknown. This study compares the results of seventeen random queries submitted automatically to Bing for thirteen different English geographic search markets at monthly intervals. Search market choice alters a small majority of the top 10 results but less than a third of the complete sets of results. Variation in the top 10 results over a month was about the same as variation between search markets but variation over time was greater for the complete results sets. Most worryingly for users, there were almost no ubiquitous authoritative results: only one URL was always returned in the top 10 for all search markets and points in time, and Wikipedia was almost completely absent from the most common top 10 results. Most importantly for webometrics, results from at least three different search markets should be combined to give more reliable and comprehensive results, even for queries that return fewer than the maximum number of URLs.     

Health answer quality evaluation by librarians,nurses, and users in social Q&A

Health information consumers and patients increasingly take an active role in seeking health information online and in sharing their health problems and concerns in online support groups and social media venues. However, they may risk being influenced by unreliable and misleading information in such environments, as no intermediaries monitor the quality of this information. This study focuses on evaluating the quality of health information exchanged in one of the social media venues, by investigating how librarians, nurses, and users assessed the quality of health answers in Yahoo! Answers, a social question-and-answering (Q&A) service. Through statistical analysis differences among the three participant groups, how the background characteristics influenced their assessments, and the relationships between characteristics of the content of answers and quality evaluation criteria were each considered in detail. Librarians and nurses shared similar ratings of answer quality, but had differences in their level of medical knowledge and the types of services they offer, resulting in minor differences across criteria. Users perceived the quality of health answers in social Q&A to be higher than librarians and nurses for almost all criteria. Depending on the sources of information presented in health answers, librarians, nurses, and users gave different quality assessments. Implications exist for research into and practice of evaluating the quality of health information, which need to address both search and domain expertise along with the sharing of socioemotional values preferred by users.     

The Cynefin framework: A tool for analyzing qualitative data in information science?

Interpreting qualitative research data and presenting it in ways that enable potential beneficiaries of the research to use it readily and appropriately is increasingly important in the context of the research impact agenda. One way of doing uses the Cynefin framework. Cynefin, which is rooted in knowledge management and complexity science, has been used in a range of contexts to support decision-making and strategy development in dynamic and challenging situations. However, it has not been widely used as a data analysis technique or in the information science discipline. An exploratory evaluation uses it to interpret the rich, nuanced qualitative data from a three-year research project that engaged people worldwide to explore issues and practical strategies for managing electronic records, a significant information management challenge. The evaluation demonstrates that the Cynefin framework provides a strategic lens through which to view electronic records management (ERM). Cynefin prompts new questions to be asked, leading to new insights and a deeper understanding of the ERM challenge. Most significantly, it provides a new construct for re-perceiving the challenge in a holistic way and offers a strategic approach to taking action for change. This evaluation suggests that it is an appropriate and effective framework for use in qualitative research on challenging information management problems, with the potential to support the transfer of research into practice.     

From “time pass” to transformative force: School-based human rights education in Tamil Nadu, India

This article presents data collected at the level of practice to highlight one non-governmental organization's approach to human rights education and how household-, school-, and community-level factors mediated student impact. Findings suggest that a variety of factors at the three levels contribute to the program's successful implementation in government schools serving marginalized students (where most HRE programs are in operation in India today). These responses emerge along a continuum from ‘time pass’—a commonly used term in India for anything that does not directly contribute to greater performance on high-stakes exams—to ‘transformative force’, wherein students internalize knowledge and values related to human rights and take action based on it. Responses to HRE were characterized in four areas and representative examples are provided of each: (1) personal changes; (2) attempts to intervene in situations of abuse; (3) reporting (or threatening to report) abuse; and (4) spreading awareness about human rights.     

Increasing process orientation with business process management: Critical practices’

This paper studies the role of business process management in creating a higher business process orientation. The purpose is to analyze previously suggested practices to identify those that are critical at a certain business process orientation maturity level and those that are not. A case study is used to identify the critical success factors. Then a statistical analysis of a sample of 324 companies is undertaken to operationalize the success factors in the form of critical practices. Organizations following these critical practices at a certain level will reach higher process orientation sooner.     

The emotions aroused by a vocational transition in adolescents: why,when and how are they socially shared with significant others?

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - Adolescents (N = 359) completed a self-report questionnaire assessing the emotional impact of an...     

Understanding our link to the Great Apes—the 2003 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Sciences awarded to Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall is the recipient of the 2003 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Sciences for her long-term scientific studies of chimpanzee behavior. Not only were her studies the first of their kind, her meticulous behavioral recordings led to major changes in our understanding of the social links that exist between ourselves and our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. In discussing the importance of Dr. Goodall's work, Stephen Jay Gould (the late Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University) said ... “Science gains enormous power in replications of observations, but Homo sapiens is a single species and we can never know, by studying ourselves alone, whether important aspects of our behaviors and mental capacities reflect an ancestral evolutionary heritage (transmogrified through our uniquely evolved intelligence and its social correlates), or new features evolved or socially acquired only by our lineage. Chimpanzees are the best natural experiment we will ever have for exploring this central question, for chimps are our closest genealogical cousins and therefore hold more of our common evolutionary heritage than any other species can. Chimpanzees are not so much the shadow of man as our mirror, only slightly blurred by the mists of time”.     

Grounded theory for generating theory in the study of behavior

The use of grounded theory procedures for the study of information behavior has contributed to generating theory in this field. Thirty-one works were analyzed with regard to a) their relationship to the context in which the research was carried out, b) the aspect of information behavior researched, c) the use of grounded theory procedures, and d) the generation of theory. Most of the studies were carried out in the context of health information, and grounded theory procedures were for the most part only partially applied. The theoretical propositions produced depended on the subject being studied. Although this methodology is suitable for the study of an individual's interaction with information from that individual's own point of view, documentation of the procedures involved is often deficient.     

Stakeholder analysis is key to client-supplier relationships of global outsourcing project success

Outsourcing as a logical consequence of globalization has caused a shift towards the integration of labour forces where communications play a significant role in the success of outsourcing partnerships. Utilizing the lens of an outsourced telecommunications case study we examine how a problematic client-supplier relationship across global loci was transformed by implementing a stakeholder analysis. We discuss how ineffectual project communications caused confusion, disinterest and apathy of client stakeholders challenging the outsourcing partnership. Our insight evidences not only the necessity to transparently address cultural challenges but emphasizes a crucial need to explicitly validate the different audiences. From the increased clarity and purpose provided it proved possible to instigate solutions such that real benefits to the project were realised. We suggest a number of key learning points as ‘lessons learnt’ to enlighten current and future practice of outsourcing relationships across global projects.