Information Competence

The CSU Work Group on Information Competence and the faculty who have designed and implemented 18 projects on information competence have produced the essential groundwork for addressing this essential aspect of student learning. The Work Group's 1997 core set of information competencies includes formulating research questions, identifying and retrieving relevant information, organizing that information, and presenting the results of such inquiry to others. In addition, students need to recognize influential forces in the larger environment in which information is embedded and be critical consumers as well as producers of information.

The projects that stemmed from the Work Group's reports include workshops (CSU Northridge; CSU San Marcos), faculty development (CSU Fullerton) assessment tool development (Cal Poly Pomona), web-based tutorials (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; San Diego State) and activities (CSU Dominguez Hills), and interactive instructional modules (Sonoma State). Some of these projects focused on further refining the list of information competencies (CSU Dominguez Hills), others provided greater precision in measuring competency levels (Cal Poly Pomona), and still other projects were oriented toward developing content for students use (San Diego State).

The first report by the CSU Work Group on Information Competence in 1995 included a basic definition of information competence: "[I]t is generally agreed that information competence, at heart, is the ability to find, evaluate, use, and communicate information in all of its various formats" (emphasis omitted). The Work Group added "information competence is the fusing or the integration of library literacy, computer literacy, media literacy, technological literacy, ethics, critical thinking, and communication skills" (emphasis omitted). The arguments for the necessity of information competency rested primarily on print material and reading. For example, the report stated: "Nearly 1 million items are published world wide each year" and "The average white collar worker reads documents 24 hours a week. The average blue collar worker reads 97 minutes a day." However, the Work Group did stress the importance of developing students' media literacy, particularly in nonprint media.

More recently, the Work Group (1997a) refined the list of information competencies, paralleling the seven information literacy dimensions proposed by Shapiro and Hughes (1996). Although Shapiro and Hughes emphasized the use of new technologies, the Work Group provided a broader conceptualization of information competence. Competencies 2, 3, and 7 highlight this:

(2) Determine the information requirements for a research question, problem or issue in order to formulate a search strategy that will use a variety of resources.

(3) Locate and retrieve relevant information, in all its various formats, using, when appropriate, technological tools.

(7) Understand the techniques, points of view and practices employed in the presentation of information from all sources. ("Information Competence: A Set of Core Competencies," emphasis added).

I am advocating the application of the broader definition of information competencies to include the use of "a variety of resources," locating and retrieving information "in all its various formats," and presenting information "from all sources." Students will still use library resources, traditional media, and the Internet. However, they will incorporate another source of information, interviewing individuals whose voices may not be available in other forms.
Whose Information? In her discussion of feminist science fiction, Cheris Kramarae (1998) observes:

The Encyclopedia Britannica often has been given as an example of information or knowledge that can be digitized and made more accessible to many. That encyclopedia and most other encyclopedias are, of course, very limited works containing not the knowledge of people around the world, but, rather, some of the beliefs and interests of a relatively small number of people. (p. 110).

Print information, whether on paper or in electronic form, privileges some voices while ignoring others. In theory, the Internet was to be the great equalizer, as it is for the most part unregulated. Yet Turkle (1995) notes, "the overall trend seems to be the creation of an information elite at the same time that the walls around our society's traditional underclass are maintained. Perhaps people are being even more surely excluded from participation, privilege, and responsibility in the information society than they have been from the dominant groups of the past" (p. 244).

The number of people online is growing, as well as the diversity of those who access the Internet. A 1998 study of U.S. Internet users found that the number of men, women, whites, African-Americans, and Latina/os online was directly proportional to the population as a whole (Nua Internet Surveys). The researchers noted a dramatic increase in the number of African-Americans online and estimated that 30% of the U.S. population were online at the time of the study.

Yet, some groups have a much stronger Internet presence than others. In January 1999, Nua Internet Surveys estimated that 153.25 million people were online world-wide. This is up from 102 million just two years ago. These may seem like huge numbers, but the most-recent estimation is under 4% of the total world population! Further, over one-half of Internet users were from the U.S. and Canada. Africa accounted for only 1.14 million users and the Middle East fewer than 1 million. Moreover, although women make up about one-half of the Internet users in the U.S., they are greatly under-represented world-wide (Nua Internet Surveys).

This suggests that we must encourage students to pursue alternative sources of information. "Socrates once observed the advantage of human conversation by noting that books always give the same answer no matter how many times you ask for a further explanation" (Sproule, 1997, p. 163). Electronic and paper print materials are important sources of information, yet we should not ignore the wealth of information across disciplines that is available only through direct contact with individuals in interviews. In the "At Your Fingertips" information competence project developed by a Humboldt State team, oral competencies, such as interviewing, are in the information competencies list for journalists (but not for social workers, nurses, or in the list of general competencies). I am arguing that interviewing competencies are an essential aspect of information literacy for all students regardless of discipline.

Interviewing

We engage in some type of interview on nearly a daily basis. We hear interviews on the radio and watch them on television. "Because we are involved in interviews every day, we too often assume that the process is simple and requires little, if any, formal training" (Stewart & Cash, 1997, p. 3). Interviewing competency incorporates all seven core information competencies as I demonstrate in Section #10 below. However, interviewing requires that those competencies be applied in specific ways for an interview to be successful (Stewart & Cash, 1997). Students in my interviewing classes quickly realize that effective interviewing is much more complex and difficult than they thought.

We generally think of interviews as occurring face-to-face, but I have participated in several interviews via email. Thus, interviews are not defined by the medium used to communicate, but most centrally by the asking and answering of questions. "An interview is a communication interaction between two (or more) parties, at least one of whom has a goal, that uses questions and answers to exchange information and influence one another" (Barone & Switzer, 1995, p. 8). Asking effective questions to elicit relevant information is the heart of the interview.

Interviews are distinctly different from social conversation. Although we may make polite conversation in interviews and ask questions in social conversations, all interviews are purposive and goal-directed. As Stewart and Cash (1997) observe, "while conversations are rarely organized in advance, interviews must have a degree of advance planning and structure, even if you have little more than a purpose and topics jotted on a piece of paper or a few questions in mind" (p. 3). Preparation is crucial for any interview, and is particularly important in information interviews. Brydon and Scott (1997) state: "Far too often students go into an interview before researching their topic" (p. 202).

Web-based Learning

The majority of the previously-funded CLRIT projects are web-based and my project will be as well. I am aware of both the advantages and disadvantages of using the WWW for teaching and learning. Last spring, I completed an online course in online facilitation. Recently, I developed a completely web-based critical thinking course that I will teach in June. As the project coordinators for "Information Competence for Business Students" at Sonoma State found, web-based instruction is time and labor intensive. Further, in my review of information competence websites, I found broken links, outdated webpages, and pages that were slow to download. In my experience, web-based instruction must be clear, basic, and straight-forward. Pages must be easily accessible to all students, particularly students with disabilities, and checked regularly for broken links.

Summary

Interviewing requires the application of the seven core information competencies and provides an important source of information for students. Although interviewing may appear easy, it requires careful planning and preparation to effectively elicit the desired information in a sensitive and ethical manner. Interviewing skills are essential for students across the wide range of disciplines represented in the CSU.

It may appear contradictory to develop web-based modules and other learning materials when so many people are not online. I am convinced that web-based distributed learning is effective and fits the needs of some people. I view this project as a way to encourage students to broaden their information resources, and in reporting that information, provide an avenue for voices seldom heard in traditional and new media.