Information Literacy and Research Process

After completing 1^st trimester of Foundation study program, I started my next semester with new passion and motivation. I developed wide range of inspiration and an encouragement in me because I passed the 1^st trimester with fabulous grades and I was satisfied with it.

On the 1^st week of this semester, our lecturer started with the ice-break session to get know each other. It was a great opportunity for me because I had the same lecturer in Information Technology (IT).  She gave a brief about the outline in Information literacy. She told us about the assessment and their respective schedule of our projects. Before starting the topic, she gave a written assignment to check our fundamental knowledge. Our concepts were not so week about the given assignment.

She started with the definition of information literacy because it is necessary for us to get the basic knowledge. The framework of information literacy is the process to fulfill the requirement in our research paper. Actually, information literacy is the skills, ideas that we use to analyze, interpret the information and ways of thinking. According to the American association, information literacy is the research of information to solve the problem in information. It has many names, information skills, information management, information competency and problem based learning. These names show the interior framework of information literacy. After that she told us about the elements of Information literacy.

•      Media literacy
•    Computer literacy
•    Library literacy
•    Critical thinking literacy  
•       Internet literacy
•      Research literacy 

The question arises in our mind, who needs information literacy? Basically, it is used in every field to solve the problems in information needed. For example,

• students need to make their projects more effective
• Businessman use to check and analyze the information  for better improvement to get more profits
• Managers use information literacy in banking to calculate the transaction
• And in every organization weather it’s profit or non-profit organization

What is the information literate person? The question is very simple because I have got deeper concept of information literacy. A person who uses the information literacy framework is called information literate person.  But this work has many steps that person use to solve the problems.  Firstly, he identifies the information to check its scope, plane to gather the information, evaluate the information. After that he manage the information either it is relevant or out of the project because next step is to present to others. It is very important because it the simultaneous process of taking decision and helps us to analyze our information. It creates confidence to make them sure the information is effective and useful for the relevant work. Information literacy is a modal and it has many processes such as,

·         Big 6

·         Mc Kenzie Research Cycle

·         Alberta model

·         Pitts Research model

·         Seven Pillars model

·         Action Learning model

Big 6 are crucial to be learnt to analyze the information. Our lecturer taught us about its frame work from the definition.

“The framework that we use in information literacy to guide others through six step process to solve the problems in our research”. 

This process is very simple. Firstly, we find the task definition which is the meaning to understand. After understanding the definition, we search the information which can be online or from book or other sources. We locate and access the information by determining the different resources and then prioritize the information which is more relevant and useful either its online or from manual source. Thirdly, we locate the information where we can find it and select the appropriate and suitable information. The next step is to use the information by reviewing, reading or by touching and take out the information. After that, we organize and analyze the information to present others. Lastly, we evaluate the information to judge the information and requirement needed has accomplished.

In research we can use the simplest form to solve the problems by identification and implementing some strategies

•          Choose the topic
•          Narrow down the topic by understanding its deeper meaning critically
•        Develop the statement and formulate the question.

First we choose the topic name which is the basic strategy in research. Then we narrow down the topic by asking different question to ourselves. What we know about the topic and what we want to know about it? Lastly formulate the question where, how,  who, what, when, and why we are going to know about the topic.

The problem statement is to define the research problem,  to demonstrate different steps to solve the problem, choose the facing problem and state the problem in an appropriate way.