Edtechkat

Project Information Literacy from the University of Washington has just issued its 18 page  mid-project report, based on discussion groups help October - December 2008 on seven U.S. campuses with 86 college students. The research was sponsored by Proquest.  Abstract below.

They also had some interesting findings on the students’ use of libraries pp11-12.

Abstract: A report of preliminary findings and analysis from student discussion groups held

on 7 U.S. campuses in Fall 2008, as part of Project Information Literacy. Qualitative data from

discussions with higher education students across the country suggest that conducting research is

particularly challenging. Students’ greatest challenges are related to their perceived inability to find

desired materials. Students seek “contexts” as part of the research process. A preliminary typology

of the research contexts is developed and introduced. Finding contexts for “backgrounding”

topics and for figuring out how to traverse complex information landscapes may be the most difficult

part of the research process. Our findings also suggest that students create effective methods

for conducting research by using traditional methods, such as libraries, and self-taught, creative

workarounds, such as “presearch” and Wikipedia, in different ways.