Empowering Future Scholars: Information Literacy for College-Ready Research

Information Creation as a Process

From How Info Works:

• The way information is shared changes the way it is created, and vice versa.
• Good information can come in any format. Every format has its benefits and drawbacks, including assumptions about quality and authority that may or may not be true.
• Formats are changing fast, and researchers have to keep up with how these new formats work so they can understand the information that comes out of them

From the Framework:

Novice learners begin to recognize the significance of the creation process, leading them to increasingly sophisticated choices when matching information products with their information needs.

Sample Strategy for Information Creation as a Process: Source Decks

Knowledge Practices:

Learners who are developing their information literate abilities:

• assess the fit between an information product’s creation process and a particular information need;
• articulate the traditional and emerging processes of information creation and dissemination in a particular discipline;
• recognize that information may be perceived differently based on the format in which it is packaged;

Dispositions:

Learners who are developing their information literate abilities:

• resist the tendency to equate format with the underlying creation process;
• understand that different methods of information dissemination with different purposes are available for their use.

Preparing a Source Deck

1. Choose a relevant and timely topic.

2. Search for a variety of sources across media, databases, ebooks, books, etc. that have varying perspectives, degrees of authority, credibility, and reliability.

3.  Take screenshots or scan the bibliographic information for the source and the first page or screen of the source.

4. Insert 1 screenshot a slide to create a "source deck."

5. Print the slides in full color or prepare to deliver them to students through the PowerPoint.

6. In groups, ask students to look at each source they've been assigned and line the sources up from "most appropriate for a research assignment to least appropriate for a research assignment" or another prompt of your choice. 

7. Ask each group to present their findings to the class and justify their order for the sources. 

There are many variations of this activity. You can focus on authority, credibility, fact-checking, misinformation, etc. 

Debrief with students that different sources of information have different purposes and creation processes. No one type of source is more valid than another; they each have their own purpose when researching a topic.