Helpful Feedback Linking to Daniel Callison's Interpretation of Information Inquiry

I often search out other people's opinions as I am very interested in what points of view people hold.  Sometimes I find this frustrates others as I may not appear to take the advice that is offered.  This is not my intention of course, merely the way that I work.  I formulate my own ideas and opinions and then like to compare these with those of other people.  After I have taken in the new information that is provided, I decide if I need to make changes or if I am happy with the decisions I have made.  This is the approach I take whenever I am presented with new information.  If I find the new information useful or enlightening, then I hold on to it and use it to inform decisions or in other ways possible.  If I find the information does not come from a reliable source, contradicts what has otherwise been proven to me or I deem it not to be useful, then I discard the information. 

This style of inquiry supports Daniel Callison's (as cited in Lamb, 2005) interpretation of information inquiry.  A need for information arises, information is then analysed and combined to meet the needs of the information inquirer in the best way possible(Lamb, 2005).  Information can be obtained from print, audio or visual sources as well as through interviews, surveys and other sources.  Authentic research and investigation are key elements of an inquiry-based task.  I am pleased to read that the style of inquiry that I apply to my everyday life is supported in research. 

Interactive Components of Information Inquiry

(Lamb, 2005)

Often times I find I can get caught up in an idea and lose sight of other possibilities or restrictions.  This is when I find feedback most useful.  The feedback often helps me regain focus and I can get my thoughts back on track.  I found the feedback from my peers to generally be of great assistance although there were some suggestions which I chose not to follow.  I found the feedback regarding the organisation of my ideas in paragraphs of most benefit.  Even though I had clear topic sentences, I still found it difficult to ensure that I placed the correct information in the correct paragraph.  It was gratifying to hear positive feedback on my work.

I have attached an example of some of the useful feedback I received for my context.

In day to day life I find I can be quite self-reflective in hopes of constantly improving.  I can be quite analytical but at times have difficulty expressing what I am thinking without sounding too critical.  I feel this has to do with my upbringing where people were direct in what they said as opposed to beating around the bush.  I generally find this type of feedback easiest to receive, otherwise I spend far too long trying to read between the lines.  I am aware that most people aren't as comfortable with such direct constructive criticism so I am learning to be more tactful.  I find providing feedback at times can be quite difficult if I feel many improvements need to be made.  I don't know the best way to suggest some changes when I find it difficult to locate positive aspects in the work.  If there are elements that have been done well, then giving feedback becomes easier as I can balance the changes required with positive examples found in there work.  I find writing report cards has helped me improve my ability to provide feedback. 

References

Lamb, A. (2005). Information Inquiry for Teachers. Indiana, USA: Eduscapes.  http://eduscapes.com/infooriginal/inquiry.html 

Reflecting on My Searches

One of the first important tasks of starting out on a new information journey is choosing what resources are available to use.  My mind map tracks a number of the different sources of information that I used to form my context and my Information Learning Activity (ILA).

Perfecting My Search

Below, I have attached videos of the process I went through, using the EBSCOhost database, to find scholarly documents relating to inquiry learning, information/science literacy and primary science.

Initially, I narrowed my search by selecting databases (ERIC, Primary Search, eBook collection and Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA)) that I thought would contain relevant and suitable documents, based on the descriptions provided.  

For my first search I used the words inquiry AND information literacy AND primary education and was surprised to find only two results. One of the results related to science but not to the specific subject area I was interested in.

This prompted me to change my search from primary education to primary science. I was even more surprised that zero results were returned. I thought more carefully about the Boolean operators that I had used and realised that using AND twice meant that all of the words needed to appear in the document before it would turn up as a result.

This reflection prompted me to change my search terms to inquiry OR information literacy AND primary science, as I was interested in both inquiry learning and information literacy in primary science. This search returned 25,391 results, which I thought was a good starting point, but I needed to narrow the results further.

I decided to select only full text documents as abstracts were of no use to my research. Clicking the full text only button refined my results to 10,889. 

To reduce the results further I limited my search to publication dates between 2000 and 2011 to return current documents only. This resulted in 6,057 documents.

Looking through the results, I noticed that the words information literacy and primary science often appeared separately in the documents. I decided to use quotation marks around the words information literacy, as I wanted these words to appear together in the text. Surprisingly, this did not change the results and the words were still found separately in the documents. This was a strategy I had successfully used in other database searches.  I then tried placing primary science in quotation marks and again found no change in the results.

I was still unhappy with the results that had been returned as many documents were not relevant to the specific subject I was interested in.  I decided to change my search words slightly to see the impact on the results.  I removed the words primary and literacy and searched for inquiry OR literacy AND science. There was an increase in results up to 7,746.  By selecting the peer reviewed button, to ensure only scholarly documents were displayed I narrowed the results down to 3,784.

To find the most relevant documents I changed my Boolean operators both to AND. My final search using inquiry AND literacy AND science returned 71 results which was a manageable number of documents for me to search through successfully. 

Through my search process I realised the importance of Boolean operators and the need to try a variety of search terms in order to achieve desired results.

ProQuest Education Journals

ProQuest is another database I have found to be very useful over the years.  With the option of performing an advanced search, I can really narrow down what it is that I am looking for.  On the right hand side I can narrow my search further by clicking on 'scholarly journals'.  I was able to reduce my results by scanning through articles to determine which ones did not exemplify the form of inquiry based learning that I was interested in and easily eliminated any fact-finding inquiry. 

In ProQuest, if I search inquiry-based learning AND primary science, the database would search for 'inquiry-based' as  one word and 'learning' as separate.  It would not necessarily search for 'inquiry-based learning'.  This is the same way that Google works.  This means that what it is really searching is 'inquiry-based' AND 'learning' AND 'primary' AND 'science'.  For this reason, I need to use 'inquiry-based learning' and 'primary science' in quotes so it searches each as a whole phrase.  I experimented with a variety of searches to clearly understand how the use of quotations and Boolean terms altered the results that were returned.  I also narrowed my searches by clicking the boxes that specified 'full text', 'peer reviewed', 'date range 3 years' and 'scholarly journals'.  

A+ Education Search

In my search of the A+ Education database I found that even quite a general search returned few results.  The A+ Education database searches as a whole phrase unless the Boolean operator AND is placed between search terms.  My first search using the A+ Education database returned only 19 results when I used (primary science) AND (inquiry).  I am aware that when I use AND I narrow the search and that by using the Boolean operator OR I would have returned more results but the results would not contain the information I was after.  Using OR is best when there is more than one term for a word.  Primary science and inquiry do not have the same definition therefore by placing OR between the two terms I would not find results containing information on both topics.  I could have narrowed my search using the 'subject headings' on the right hand side of the page but as I had few results returned in the first case, this was not necessary.  Quality is more important than quantity and I found 8 of the entries to be useful to my topic.

In the past I have used this database and have been more successful at returning a greater number of results.  Perhaps this database has few articles relating to science in particular.  I found reading the blurb about the different databases located in the library of QUT to be useful when I initially chose databases to search but some of the databases that I chose contained far more useful articles relating to my current topic.  

Scholarly Searches

Google Scholar is a web search engine I turn to when I am looking for reliable, academic information.  I find that the information it contains is often too complex for primary school students but relevant for use with my university studies.  I feel students in high school would also benefit from using Google Scholar in their web searches.

Google Scholar is a citation database which means that I can click on 'cited by' at the bottom of the results and I will find people who have cited the article in their own work.  This allows me to trace how their ideas have evolved.  It also allows me to locate highly relevant, although older, material.  I also find using the 'related articles' function very useful as it helps me locate other articles based on a similar topic.

Google Scholar returned fewer results than Google for the same search ("scientific inquiry" "investigation" "primary science") although there were still too many at 271, 000.  I had used quotation marks to search exact phrases to help narrow my search.  Even though I used quotation marks, Google Scholar returned results for secondary school science when I searched for "primary science".  In Google scholar, instead of using the term NOT, you need to use a negative in front of search terms you don't want to appear in the results.  I used a negative in front of "secondary science" and "high school science" to reduce the number of results.  My new search went as follows: "scientific inquiry" "investigation" "primary science" "-secondary science"  "-high school science" and resulted in 11,500 entries.

Many of the results were not useful to me as they were either on specific topics not relevant to my ILA, not written in english, or were basic fact finding activities.  I used my information literacy skills to scan the results to determine which ones were relevant and useful.  I  only searched through the first couple of pages of results as I know Google ranks the pages according to their relevance.  This procedure helped me find articles related to my topic.

I found using the 'scholar preference' tab to add the Queensland University of Technology to my library links very helpful as it enabled me to see which results were available as full text documents from QUT. I feel this tab would have been very useful to activate at the beginning of my Masters course as it would have saved me lots of time over my studies.  I look forward to quicker searches in the future!

Information Seeking Process

With so much information available these days, it is important to have strategies available  to help determine whether information is useful and reliable for a specific search.  Often I find my first search takes me to Google as it is readily available and quick to generate results with minimal effort.  This helps me get a basic understanding of the topic I am interested in.  I am always mindful of the results I get as the information is often not scholarly and definitely questionable at times.  This initial search often helps me brainstorm other terms I can use in future searches.  

For my initial search I used the terms 'inquiry and investigation in primary science'.  This search returned 82,100,000 results, a bit overwhelming to look through.  Fortunately, some of the results located on the first page were of great relevance to my information Learning Activity as they related directly to Primary Connections.

This search was improved by placing quotation marks around terms that I wanted to keep together.  This helped limit the results to those with the exact phrases I placed in quotations but the results were still too numerous at 223,000.

I decided to narrow my search to focus specifically on 'scientific inquiry' as this relates more closely to my information learning activity.  By placing 'scientific' before inquiry, I reduced the number of results to 6,140.

Using a negative before a word can help eliminate any unwanted results but I felt this strategy could not be applied successfully to my current search.  I felt frustrated with the volume of information still available to me.  Kulthau (2006)  identifies two critical stages for intervention during the inquiry process, one of which is the Exploration stage.   Confusion and uncertainty are common emotions felt by people during this stage due to uncertainty and an abundance of information.   Knowing that Google sorts web page results based on their relevance, helped me overcome my feeling of frustration and find some useful resources for my context.  To further my information seeking journey I decided that Google Scholar would be my next search engine as I am mainly interested in scholarly information.


References:

Kuhlthau, C. 2006. Information Literacy through Guided Inquiry: Preparing Students for the 21st Century. Retrieved 3 September 2011 from http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~kuhltau/recent_presentations/iasl2/IASL%202006.doc


Ownedboxes. (2009). Web Search Strategies in Plain English [Video file]. CLN650 Information Learning Nexus: [Learning Resources, Expert Searching]. Retrieved from http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_76514_1%26url%3D


therobba. (2007). googles dark side - google conspiracy [video file]. CLN650 Information Learning Nexus: [Learning Resources, Expert Searching]. Retrieved from http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_76514_1%26url%3D