For course holders
Search & Write in teaching
One of the most important teaching goals of the Search & Write course is to help students become more information literate.
"An information literate person is someone who knows when and why they need information, how to find the information and how to evaluate, use and communicate the information in an ethical way." (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals 2004).
Information literacy enables students to separate out quality information and use it to develop an opinion and provide new knowledge. There is a high demand for information literacy skills in research, business and otherwise in society. The governmental academic reform 'Kvalitetsreformen' emphasises that information literacy is a future key literacy.
Search & Write combines the searching and writing process students go through.
Both searching for information and writing are creative processes and the search for information is an integral part of thesis writing. This is reflected in the activities students go through in the course.
Search & Write is divided into two levels: Basic for new students and Advanced for students at postgraduate level.
How to use the course
This is an on-line course. However, it can easily be adapted to classroom teaching.
In Basic, we focus on the search process and basic referencing skill, ethics and the critical evaluation of sources. In Advanced, the focus is on thesis writing. This is in addition to a thorough knowledge of search techniques, referencing, ethics and source criticism.
There is a certain amount of cross over between the two levels. It is recommended that you study both levels and then select the level which is best suited to your needs. The learning process is identical in Basic and Advanced. The difference between the two is time usage and information need. A student at postgraduate level often has more time available for their thesis than students at undergraduate level. The time aspect also means that postgradute students can expand their information need. Basic can be used as an introduction to Advanced. Parts of Basic are prepared as audio visual presentations. The audio visual component (developed by Aalborg University Library) is in Danish.
Advanced is text based, is suitable for printing out and has good navigation options. For a more complete summary go to A-Z and click to the right place.
User instructions contain materials suitable for print out or for distribution in a teaching situation. There is also university specific information such as external connection, database access and templates for writing master theses or doctoral theses.
Combine parts of the course with teaching
The modules should be integrated into the students' specific writing and learning process if students are to obtain the most from the courses.
If students are starting thesis writing, the Start module is very relevant.
If students are concentrating on the ethical aspects of thesis writing, the referencing and ethics module can be useful.
Search & Write can also be used in supervision situations at the library where the advice given is based on the thesis and the research question the student is working with.
The online course is well suited for distance education students and in independent learning.
Students can select what they want to focus on, depending on where they are in the thesis process.
Search & Write provides a good information source for students who are in the writing process.Through the fictive student stories Odas diary, Christian’s blog and the Sofie blog our students gain insight into the shape of the writing process within specific subjects such as midwifery studies, economics and middle east studies. The students all go through phases that everybody ”knows” and are exposed to when they are about to write an academic text, and needs to find relevant information on a field.
Search & Write for course holders illustrates the teaching principles the online course builds on and provides inspiration to teaching staff. Other libraries can use and participate in the development of Search & Write. Guidelines for use of Search & Write provides more details.
Background
Search & Write is the product of a cooperative project between the libraries of Bergen University College, The Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration and The University of Bergen. Read more about Digital literacy through flexible learning on the project web site.
To enable the students at NHH and at UoB to reckognize their own study situation and assigments we now introduce Christian, a student of Economics and Sofie, a student of Middle East studies.
These students represent the interdisciplinary landscape Search & Write navigates through and also represent the developers background of the tutorial. Both students and librarians face an interdisciplinary reality. Academic subjects are not longer isolated, but are both influenced and developed by each other which is also reflected in the tutorial Search and Write.
Search & Write, march 2010.
