Have you heard this before? "I have no idea why I have to take a research course. I've been doing research for years, and I know this stuff already." Those unfortunate words came from the mouth of an incoming graduate student. Strangely (at least to him), when that student turned in his first assignment for my research strategies course (after presumably not reading the chapter in the textbook), he scored near the bottom of the class.

Whether we teach information literacy courses for credit or do info lit orientations, this is a common problem. The "bored and resentful" element is always there, scowling or openly challenging the necessity of having "needless" information literacy inflicted upon them. In the face of such confidence in their own abilities, our temptation is to believe them, arguing, "I realize you probably know most of this. Still, there's always something new to learn." Sadly, that kind of reasoning doesn't compute in the mind of a busy student. If I know it, why do I have to learn it again?

But should we believe students' self- assessment? Are the bored and resentful as competent as they think they are? What if, in many cases, their estimate of their actual skill level is way off?

At the lowest level of reward we find the snacks or other favors for attendance, tools that work surprisingly well despite the fact that our students know how manipulative they are. At a higher level are extra credit perks arranged with amenable professors. The highest of all is the truly entertaining session in which the rare librarian finds a way to make mere instruction fun without gimmicks or rewards.

But take average students. They have been using the internet since age 10 or so, have already turned in their first college research paper with five references in the bibliography (for which the grade was a B), and have maybe discovered a journal database that searches the way Google does. Then, deep into the semester, a librarian shows up in class to demonstrate library search tools and explain research skills. Instant resistance. Let's face it: No amount of entertainment will overcome the belief that this is a wasted hour. What more is there to know, for pity's sake? Everyone in the room already grasps what research is about. In "Lessons Learned: How College Students Seek Information in the Digital Age" (http://projectinfolit.org/pdfs/PIL_Fall2009_ YearlReport_12_2009.pdf), Alison Head and Michael Eisenberg put it this way:

"Students conceptualize research, especially tasks associated with seeking information, as a competency learned by rote, rather than as an opportunity to learn, develop, or expand upon an information- gathering strategy which leverages the wide range of resources available to them in the digital age."

So why do we, our students included, so rarely see the magic? Simply because most research assignments are programmed to sap the life out of those who do them. Students often complain that they don't understand what the professor wants from them and that their research assignments are among the most tedious and nerve-wracking tasks they have to perform. They generally believe they already possess whatever research ability they are ever going to have. Thus "research" becomes a matter of using their clunky and inadequate skills to waste hours of precious time gathering illusive data in order to report on it in an orderly way.

If you had no conception of what better skills might be learned and every research project was another experience in negativity, there wouldn't be any question of why there was no magic. Those of us who train people to become information literate need constantly to remember that, balanced against resistance, is a whole other world in which reenvisioning the task could make the journey amazing.

How do we show them the magic? One of the best ways to start the process is to help them turn whatever research assignment they have into a quest. Emphasize that simply gathering existing data and synthesizing it (information as goal) is boring. Instead, help them turn their project into a hunt for truth (information as a means to solve a problem).

We spend so much time showing students how to use research tools such as catalogs and databases that we fail to help them deal with the fundamental issues of identifying an issue and developing a research question or thesis statement to address it. We don't position student research as a quest for answers instead of a synthesis of existing data.

Consider a training session in a company that sells paper products. "Information literacy" in that setting is getting a grasp of the knowledge functions of the operation - what we sell, how we sell it, and so on. The magic comes from shaping everything in terms of the goal: How do we best get our product out of the door and into the hands of a happy, satisfied customer?

If you can show students the magic in any information quest, you have a doorway to help them learn how to improve their ability to follow that quest.

Let me boil the magic down to one concept: In any research task worth being called "magical," information stops being a goal and becomes a tool; research stops being a dreary exercise in compilation and becomes a quest for what we must yet discover. The magic is in the quest.

References

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121-11 34.

Gross, M., & Latham, D. (2009). Undergraduate Perceptions of Information Literacy: Defining, Attaining, and Self-Assessing Skills. College & Research Libraries, 70(4), 336-350.

Head, A. J., & Eisenberg, M. B. (2009). "Lessons Learned: How College Students Seek Information in the Digital Age: Project Information Literacy Progress Report"; http://projectinfolit.org/pdfs/PIL_Fall2009_Year1 Report_12_2009.pdf.

William Badke

Trinity Western University

William Badke (badke@twu.ca) is associate librarian at Trinity Western University and the author of Research Strategies: Finding Your Way Through the Information Fog, third edition. (iUniverse.com, 2008). Comments? Send email to the editor (marydee@xmission.com).
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