This week, girledworld co-founder Edwina Kolomanski joins us to share her tips ON building information literacy skills in the Knowledge Age!
Having just completed a Juris Doctor, her third university degree in her 20s, Edwina shares her experience in finding, analysing and evaluating content from thousands of sources and shows how anyone can start building their information literacy skills by considering just a few key questions!
We are all drowning in a river of content!
On March 12 1989, a British scientist by the name of Tim Berners-Lee fundamentally changed the course of human experience on the planet. In a paper entitled Information Management: A Proposal, Berners-Lee explained the structure, intent and theory behind what we now know as the internet.
Edwina Kolomanski, Co-Founder of Girledworld
I bring up this pivotal point in modern history because, 30 years on, the internet has unquestionably changed our relationship with information and enabled this age we’re now living through - the ‘Knowledge Age’ - an age of information, big data and big ideas.
While the advent of the internet transformed the way we live, work and communicate across the planet, it also lit the fuse that ignited the explosion of content we have witnessed over the past decade, and which has sent us all down a river of seemingly never-ending content.
While an excess of information and content has its benefits (like democratising access to information for millions ... if not billions more people across the planet), an oversupply also poses challenges, and requires us to develop more advanced skills in how we navigate the daily overwhelm of navigating SO. MUCH. CONTENT.
This leads me to the main topic of this blog - Information Literacy.
You may not have heard of this skill before, but I guarantee it’s a skill you use daily
Let’s think about a quick example ... a Google search.
While thinking about what to write in this blog, I did a little bit of research to give me some inspiration. Naturally, as a starting point, I typed “Information Literacy” into Google, which recalled over 158,000,000 content sources in less than a second!
With a glut of content to choose from, I noticed my information literacy skills swinging into action and decided then and there, that documenting how my information literacy skills manifest might actually be the most valuable and helpful piece of content I could create on the topic!
But before we jump into that - What is Information Literacy?
Information literacy is a skill that enables us to identify, find, select, analyse, evaluate and effectively use information for a task.
This may sound complex, so thinking about it another way, our information literacy skills emerge when we’re put in a position of finding information, choosing information, deciding what’s trustworthy and utilising that information for a particular purpose.
In a nutshell, information literacy skills help us be more discerning about what content we will use, and what we will discard.
How have I developed my Information Literacy skills?
Pondering where information comes from has been something that I was (forced!) to really consider while studying at university. Having just completed a Juris Doctor (a postgraduate law degree), l have been meticulously building my information literacy with every assignment, essay and research paper I’ve written over the past three years. To put this in perspective, I’ve read thousands of law cases, academic papers, news articles, books, pieces of legislation and have had to navigate sources both locally in Australia, and overseas.
Now, I’m definitely not suggesting that you need to go to law school to build your information literacy skills - there are many cheaper and quicker ways of doing that (!) But hopefully what I share with you below is going to fast-track your skill building in this area!
So, let’s get started:
When deciding what information and content I’m going to use in my work and study, my information literacy skills can be boiled down to a series of questions that I (now subconsciously) ask myself when researching and consuming content.
Questions to ask yourself to boost your Information Literacy skills:
1. WHO created the content?
Is the content from a trusted, well known or reputable source? For example, an article from the New York Times will likely be more reliable than an article on the same topic from an obscure news site that I’ve never heard of before.
2. WHEN was the content created?
As content is so easily created and published, content can quickly become outdated and inaccurate. Make sure you consider when the content was published and whether it’s still relevant today.
3. WHERE was the content created?
Knowing where the content is created is important if you’re looking for content that is location-specific. This was particularly important for me studying law because laws and legal systems can be different from state-to-state and country-to-country, so I had to be careful that the content I was looking for was relevant to the topic I was researching.
4. WHAT type of content is it?
Is the content an academic article, which is likely anchored in research and facts? Or is the content an opinion piece and only expressing the author’s personal opinions and beliefs, without any consideration of the facts or other points of view?
5. Has the content been SPONSORED?
With the rise of content marketing and paid content, it’s important to consider whether the author of the content has a vested interest in content. Pay attention to whether the content is clearly one-sided, favouring one solution, product or company OR is whether it is more even-handed and impartial.
This also means that you’ll typically need to go beyond just looking at the first few search results on Google, which are likely at the top because of excellent SEO (search engine optimisation) or Google Adwords tactics, rather than the content being the best quality.
6. How does this content COMPARE to other information you’ve already looked at?
If you’re looking at more than one source of content (which I recommend you do!), comparing sources is a great way to determine what’s great, and not-so-great. Notice to see whether one source appears to be far more knowledgeable on a subject, or whether the source uses lots of external and reputable sources to back-up their arguments. Comparing content also enables you to see different perspectives and points of view, which can help you develop your own opinion on a topic.
As you can see, these questions may seem simple, but they are a really effective way of thinking about, analysing and evaluating the content in front of you, which is really what information literacy is all about!
Information Literacy is considered a key skill for the future of work. girledworld designs and delivers interactive online learning modules on Information Literacy and other career education programs, in partnership with Future Amp, to give today’s students the skills they need for tomorrow’s world.
To learn more contact our team at hello@girledworld.com