plethaurus

According to a series of studies by Carol Kuhlthau and her colleagues, searching for information on a particular topic can involve an emotional journey.

Given an essay topic, for example, you start with optimism, confident that some useful information will emerge from your initial search. As you acquire facts about the topic you start to feel swamped, faced with too much information and uncertain about how to make sense of it all. Then you start to analyse, joining pieces of information together and forming your own ideas about the relevance and value of the data, perhaps drawing some conclusions. At this stage, your confidence returns and you feel relief at having found a viable way to tackle the topic.

Kuhlthau illustrates the parallel emotional and cognitive changes that occur during the search process: she calls this the Information Search Process model.

Kuhlthau et al (2008) have reviewed more than 30 studies relating to some aspect of the Information Search Process model, and themselves conducted a new study with 574 school students. They conclude that the Information Search Process is generally sound as a theoretical model and as a practical framework for identifying when to intervene in a student’s learning process.

Other observations from their literature review:

• boys tend to gather and complete, while girls prefer to investigate and formulate
• girls tend to start with optimism and end with doubt; whereas boys tend to be more confident as they complete the research process
• in a digital environment, students tend to assume information will be readily available; the search process tends to end because of deadlines rather than because the original question has been answered satisfactorily, and students’ sense of relief is related more to task completion than to a successful learning outcome
• in educational settings, and particularly when online resources are involved, people tend to skip the early stages of planning their research; however, time spent on refining the topic and developing a research strategy has been shown to produce less frustration and a smoother transition from information-gathering to synthesis and acquisition of knowledge
• “When the model is used as a framework for guiding inquiry, students move away from simply collecting and compiling information to please teachers; rather, they become involved in thinking processes that require extensive exploration of ideas and formulation of thoughts before developing their own deep understanding of their topics and presenting it. By allowing time for reflecting and formulating while they are exploring and collecting information, they avoid missing the critical stages of learning.”
• “If students are aware that increased frustration and anxiety is to be expected mid-way through the construction process they become less discouraged when it happens… Teachers and librarians who guide students through inquiry projects can emphasize this for students and be ready to intervene in helpful ways.”

Except for the last two points, which are quotes from the article, the note above are my interpretation of the article’s findings. What catches your eye in the original paper?

.

Reference

Kuhlthau, CC, HeinstrÖm, J and Todd, RJ (2008). “The ‘information search process’ revisited: is the model still useful?” Information Research, 13(4) paper 355. Available at InformationR.net/ir/13-4/paper355.html

You might also be interested in...

• Web search usage trends (0)
• Toolkit: Xobni plugin for Outlook (0)
• Thriving in tough times: start with what you know (0)
• Sincerity, gravity - and don’t forget the levity (1)