The importance of Information Literacy

Information Literacy and Research Skills Pave the Road to Develop Leadership Skills

Andras Bori

University of Phoenix

Information Literacy and Research Skills Pave the Road to Develop Leadership Skills

Introductory Section

In early 2009 my life took an unexpected turn due to immigration challenges. At the time, I was working at Yahoo as a project manager and came to a point in my life when I just achieved many goals except one. I completed my master’s degree in IT management, became a Project Management Professional and a certified scrum master. I used three years of my working visa when I came to realize that Yahoo will not help me to get a green card.

I started to look for a job, and I got to interview for a couple of different positions with Citrix Systems. My interviews went well, and I subsequently got an offer to become a Sr. Process Engineer. I have never had any formal training and did not know what a Sr. Process Engineer does. I had to conduct extensive research to define the role and learn as much as possible. I also had to come up with a plan on how to succeed and become a leader.

Through this experience and my research, I discovered how important it is in the workplace to have strong information literacy skills. Within this paper, I will provide analysis and evaluation of the relationship between information literacy the Scholarship, Practice and Leadership (SPL) Model in the field of information technology.

Analysis Section

Russel’s (2009) research started with the assumption that teaching information literacy skills at the university level was late. By the time students get to the university level already learned to use the Internet to address their needs. She concluded that starting to teach information literacy skills at the Primary school level is advantageous it is not too late to start at the university level.

Turusheva (2009) also investigated if information literacy can be developed effectively at the university level by providing hands-on training and tools to students for searching, evaluating, analyzing and presenting information. Her findings supported by research found that student can make significant progress when they engage with teachers in hands-on training focused on solving a problem while working on their thesis.

Badke (2010)’s research expand on Turusheva’s observations about focusing on problems solving. He argues that the key to motivating students to take ownership of their information literacy learning is to teach them a four-step process to find solutions to problems. The first step in the process is to set a goal. The second step of the process is to establish a plan. The third step of the process is to optimize the tools, and the last step is to teach evaluation of information quality.

Rich investigated how information literacy skills can be used to solve problems in the workplace. He emphasizes that universities should prepare students with information skills such as accurate searching, judging authoritativeness, and use of variate of channels. We should enable students to learn how to find high-quality information through any channels that are available that future employer’s value. He also points out that companies will want the majority of the problem solving not only be based on external resources but be based primarily on resources available within the company’s internal networks.

As part of my research, I identified three main ideas. The first one is how to teach and use information literacy, the second one is to determine the components of information literacy, and the third is the role of information literacy in the research process. To arrive at these three main ideas, I broke down the papers and identified the parts. I looked for trends that emerged that I could use for grouping main ideas together or to determine any differences. Subsequently, I evaluated my finding with a focus on how the recommendations can be used in the Information Technology sector to improve information literacy skills as well as to help employees to develop their scholarship, practice, and leadership skills.

Authors Badke, Turusheva, Rich and Russel discussed four main themes. The first one was the importance of teaching how to identify high-quality information, the second one was to show a framework for research, the third one was to switch the focus of education from a fact-finding to problem-solving, and the last one was that students prefer the Internet over libraries. Authors Badke, Turusheva, Rich and Russel agreed that teaching students to be able to identify the quality of the sources and select high-quality information as part of their research were a primary objective of improving information literacy skills. Although they may suggest slightly different approaches Badke (2010), Turisheva (2009) and Russel (2009) agreed that teaching a framework to solve problems was important. They had differences in their recommended approach, but analysis, evaluation, and synthesis was standard for all three.

Authors Badke, Turusheva, Rich and Russel also reviewed the need for change from just focusing on gathering information to solving problems. With the rise of the Internet, information became a commodity, so spending time learning facts is no longer relevant as the answer to any fact based question is available within seconds. On the other hand learning how to use that vast amount of information to solve problems is a skill that not only keeps the learning more enjoyable it is also the skill employers looking for in their employees.

Last they all discussed how students prefer the Internet over libraries. The Internet provides easier and quicker ways to search and find information compared to the complex, difficult and time-consuming methods used in libraries or library databases. Russel’s and Turusheva’s idea about being able to improve information literacy at the university level are similar. However, Russel believes it is late to start when students enter college, whereas Turusheva’s research showed significant results even if training began at the college level. Russel’s (2009) research started with the assumption that teaching information literacy skills at the university level was late because students by the time they get to the university level they already learned to use the Internet to address their needs. She concluded, however that starting to teach information literacy skills at the Primary school level is advantageous it is not too late to start at the university level. In contrast Turusheva’s research was conducted starting from freshmen’s coming into college to when they graduated and had to write a dissertation. Turusheva’s research showed significant progress suggesting that it is not late to start at the University level.

Another interesting difference was how Turusheva (2009) and Badke (2010) argued that finding information is not the main point of Information literacy, but problem-solving is. On the other hand, Rich (2009) mainly focused on teaching accurate searching and judging authoritativeness on information that is coming in on different channels.

The focus of this research was to review a handful of articles dealing with information literacy and how information literacy could be improved based on technology available at the time. On the other hand, however, the challenge of IT is that the speed of innovation continually reshapes how people find and consume information. Technology companies are creating solutions that are becoming more context-aware. Machine learning is a daily topic of the majority of information technology firms. I recommend that the research on how to develop information literacy should include the needs of the next generation and should expand to learn how technology can be better leveraged to speed up the problem-solving process.

Evaluation Section

I used the following evaluation criteria to establish credibility for the sources used in this research. I reviewed if a scientific journal, a dissertation or a conference published them. The researchers also needed to be studying the literature for information literacy and have to have the referenced journals cited both within the text and also in the reference section. An additional plus within the articles was if the researcher supported the findings of his or her research of the literature by conducting empirical research as well.

The assumptions underlying the criteria were that there was previous research carried out on how Information literacy plays a role in the development of individuals to role model a scholarship, practice, leadership behavior. Based on the analysis my conclusion is that there are four major factors that are relevant in today’s workplace to developing the next generation of leaders. The four factors are the role of technology, the need for detecting quality, having an excellent framework, and to be able to solve problems.

According to Badke (2010), technology driven by the emergence of the Internet is here to stay. There has been a rapid movement of information from libraries to the Internet making information available much faster and easier. In spite of that change premium content is still locked away behind a password and as a result, researchers may stop at lower quality content diluting the accuracy and quality of research. My conclusion is that quality is an important factor and employers should invest in making premium content easily available to their employees.

The next challenge identified has to do with the systematic method of approaching research using analysis, evaluation and synthesis to solve real world problems. Badke (2010) emphasized how turning research into a quest of solving problems will help in getting people to engage in the research process more proactively. I agree and would also offer that the quest at the workplace should originate from solving business problems and to address customer needs.

Rich (2009) also points out that future employers are seeking people with skills that can tackle problems. I agree with the study that there is an abundance of information in today’s workplace. The primary skill is to be able to, first of all, identify what problems we need to solve. Followed by the ability to devise ways to collect, analyze, evaluate data to synthesize the information and come up with a conclusion that drives the business forward. This finding also supports many of the current trends that encourage the use of AES cycle. I agree with Rich and would add that in the information technology industry; there is an emphasis on small rapid iterations to speed up the learning process as well. I would also recommend for companies to invest in organizing their internal content in a way that makes it easy for employees to find the information they looking for.

Authors Badke, Turusheva, Rich and Russel have argued that one of the primary goals is to teach the researchers how to identify high-quality information. I agree that finding the right quality information is important; however I disagree that learning to search in an archaic system should be one of the primary goals. The focus should be on learning how to leverage technology to its fullest to identify high-quality information. Companies are already innovating and developing technology that will help to identify relevant and high-quality information. Technology companies are in the process of continuing to build more context-aware platforms. This new wave of innovation will lead to a place soon, where information will be ranked based on quality instead of popularity and advertisement. I would love to see the research to be extended to evaluate how far we are from having a quality based search engine that enables finding relevant, high-quality information effortlessly. Hopefully, we are close to having a viable solution that would eliminate the need to invest a lot of time to teach students to learn to use libraries and any other outdated technology. As a result, the focus of learning could continue to shift toward problem-solving.

Synthesis Section

Ultimately my goal is to demonstrate that Information literacy skills are vital in the information technology industry to the future success of employees, delivering successful solutions to customers and desired financial outcomes to shareholders. At companies like Adobe, Citrix, and Yahoo it continues to be a challenge to improve information literacy in the workplace. Companies expect that people arrive having their information literacy skill set already developed. However due to the ever changing nature of large corporations, the ability to quickly learn and adapt is a vital survivor skill for both the employee as well as the company. People go through many different careers, where they keep reinventing themselves. Being able to conduct research and finding solutions to fill skill gaps as well as to solve problems is a mandatory requirement to stay with an employer in the long run.

As a result, of my professional experience, I offer the application of information literacy to focus on addressing three challenges. The first challenge is to create a framework to solve problems that maybe no one answered before. The second is to adjust solutions to problems that others have solved before, however, solve it in a way that differentiates you from the competition. The third is to focus on implementing a solution to a problem that someone else already solved and just tailor it to your particular environment. In these situations, all three skills of the AES framework are utilized, however, the speed of learning via iteration is a vital factor as well. Organizations that can learn the fastest and adjust their solution based on the information learned can get ahead of their competition and gain an advantage. To speed up that learning I recommend that companies should heavily invest in information literacy training for their employees to improve the quality of their publications. I also recommend creating a system that makes the searching and identification of relevant information easy and efficient saving time spent looking for data.

At the employee level, the same concept applies to professional experience. The rate of change in the skills required is so rapid that employees continuously have to use the AES framework to acquire new skills. Employees also need to learn to prioritize what skills to acquire to be able adapt to changing requirements in the workplace.

References

Badke, W. (2010, July). Information as tool, not destination. Online Mag, (), 52-54.

Rich, M. (2009). Millennial students and information literacy: educating for employability.. Proceedings of the European Conference on Research Methods for Business & Management Studies., (), 285-290. Ebscohost.

Russel, P. (2009). Why universities need information literacy now more than every. Feliciter, 55(3), 92-94.

Turusheva, L. (2009, December). Student's information competence and its importance for life-long education. Problems of Education in 21st Century, 12(), 126-132.