"Research" is a word that's often associated primarily with academic, scholarly, and scientific contexts. But we might also conduct research for personal, professional, or creative purposes and when we do, the tools we use and the way we evaluate information is going to look different depending on the goals and motivations of the research we are doing. Because of this, there is value in taking information literacy instruction beyond academic, library-based research to teach students how to become effective users and creators of information in a variety of contexts.
This bonus module will help you start thinking about the contextual nature of research and how teaching information literacy through this lens can potentially help resolve issues related to student overconfidence in the information literacy classroom.
To become effective researchers, students need to learn how to engage meaningfully with the methods and expectations of research in a variety of contexts.
To understand the contextual nature of research, it's necessary to think of research in a broader sense.
If research is contextual in nature, then what are those contexts?
To be successful researchers, students must learn that different research contexts come with different methods and expectations.