Activity 2A: Reflection on Digital Fluencies

Brabazon, T. (2008). BA Google: Graduating to information literacy. Chapter 1 from The University of Google: Education in the (Post) Information Age . Ashgate.

This book is available via Google Books.

I found this an inspiring reading but was also stunned by the revelation of how students approach their learning and specifically their writing in higher education today. The use of Google as a serious referencing tool and their unwillingness to engage with scholarly writing at the undergraduate level is a disturbing revelation for me. I am not surprised that students should have a problem in this area, just the extent of how they use the internet as revealed by Brabazon and her students.

I have relied heavily on Google Scholar during some of my recent studies but I am usually looking up refereed papers and readings from the reference lists of scholarly papers. And why do I use Google Scholar? Because the complexity of library databases of every library I've approached absolutely confound and frustrate me!

Looking back at my undergraduate studies in the early 80's I am reminded of the difficulty I too had in adjusting to the scholarly culture of university learning, teaching and research. I struggled to understand how to conduct literature reviews, incorporate references and write good essays without ever having any systematic training in these higher education skills. However I never resorted to using magazine and newspaper articles or other non-scholarly writing to replace scholarly readings for my university assignments. Perhaps if the internet were available to me back then I might have used it as Brabazon's student did, because I too was part of the first generation in my family to attend university and had no prior experience of the requirements of scholarship. It was a deep mystery to me and I had no one to lead me through it. Somehow or other I muddled my way through and graduated with a mediocre degree. I didn't really get it until I did my masters degree.

So I argue that the problem of inadequate information literacy amongst undergraduates has always existed but the availability of the internet search engines has exacerbated the problem and made it more visible. Teaching students the basic skills of scholarly research and writing and digital information literacy should be regarded by universities as an essential foundation in every programme of study. Why would university teachers assume that students have these skills?

I think that Brabazon did a fantastic job of changing her curriculum to build an information scaffold and hit the nail on the head when she said "Research training and sklls are valuable. For students to attain them, they must be embedded in assessment" (p 48). The information literacy courses run by libraries are great but students will learn best if the training is woven into their course assignments where they can develop and apply the skills within authentic activities.