Information Literacy and the Introduction of S.C.O.P.E.

S.C.O.P.E. (doc) | S.C.O.P.E. (pdf)

Students today are more connected than any generation that has come before. You have heard me discuss the concept of Digital Natives and the way they process information. Evidence of this new world can be found in our daily lives and in many of the journals and books of the day. There is talk of global learning and a global workforce. We hear discussions about the evolving nature of knowledge and what it means for our students. We hear pundits talk about the careers our student will have and than the tasks they will be performing don’t even exist yet. How do we prepare our students for the rapidly evolving world we live in?

One way is to help them understand the process of evaluating information they will encounter. What better place to do this than in the world of research. If you have not been back to school recently, the world of research has drastically changed. At the click of a button, you can have unbelievable amounts of information. How do you determine what is good and what is “junk”. What is relevant and what is superfluous? What can you trust and what can you ignore? While this problem is not new to researchers, it is more important today than ever before. The amount of information that is easily accessible can be overwhelming.

Information literacy is at the core of this issue. I have developed a simple process called SCOPE where students can work though some of these issues. SCOPE stands for Suitability, Citations, Objectivity, Person and Electronic. This process can be used when evaluating any resource for research. The purpose of SCOPE is to raise awareness of the resource evaluation process and ask our students to become cognitively aware of why they are choosing to use their selected resources. The SOURCE form requires students to collect all of the pertinent information they will need for a citation should they choose to use the material as a resource. They are also asked specific questions and are required to write a short reflection as it pertains to each component of SCOPE. As originally designed, it was envisioned that each educator using SCOPE with their students would have them submit a form for each reference as part of an appendix. This material could be useful should a teacher find the need to discuss resource selection as the SCOPE process will map their rational for selecting each reference. You can download a copy of SCOPE as a Microsoft Word document and as a PDF. Feel free to adopt and use these materials with your students on their next research project. I would love to get feedback from anyone using SCOPE. Like knowledge, creating this instrument is an evolving and reflective process.