Telstar

Reference Management and Digital Literacy

The first presentation after lunch was me, so you’ll have to wait for a blog post on ‘References on the Web’ until I get to write it up!

Now Helen Curtis going to talk about the links between Digital (and Information) literacy and Reference Management. [apologies to Helen I didn’t capture this as well as I would have liked – she covered much more than I’ve got here] – her slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/helencurtis/

At the University of Wolverhampton, long history of using EndNote, used mainly by staff – researchers and postgraduates.

Few drivers to change this – in 2006 University introduced ‘Blended Learning Strategy’; seeing increased use of online resources; development of graduate attributes – including digital literacy. Also other drivers – impact of web technologies and growing concerns around academic conduct and plagiarism.

Role for reference management:

• significant for digital lieracy
• use tools to develop information managemet skills
• less emphasis on learning particuar s/w – more on behaviour and application
• Become much more relevant to undergraduate use
• new and emerging tools are web-based

Seeing move from personal list of references, aimed at researchers with large lists of references, to more flexible tools – sharing and collaboration becoming more significant.

New approaches:

• Teach principles of information and reference management
• Involvement in curriculum design/team teaching
• Linking use to assessment
• Using the tools to aid understanding of referencing and constructing a reference
• Using the tools as evidence of engagement with scholarly resources
• Exploiting the sharing collaboration features

Introduced group of students to using EndNote web – got v positive feedback – (paraphrased) ‘this was the first assignment where I didn’t lose marks on referencing’