REDEFINING THE RESEARCH PROCESS FOR THE 21 ST CENTURY : with the help of The Big6

1. REDEFINING THE RESEARCH PROCESS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY :with the help of The Big6 Karen Libby & Amanda Milligan

2. Information Literacy “Teachers can not fully teach others the excitement, the difficulty, the patience, and the satisfaction that accompanies learning without themselves engaging in the messy, frustrating, and rewarding practice of learning.” --Roland Barth, Improving Schools from Within

3. Why Rethink the Research Process? • Research Goes beyond Accumulating Information • Research Nurtures both Collaboration and Self-Management • Research Delves Deeper and Synthesizes • Redesigning Research can Dissuade Plagiarism • Redesigning Research Engages Students • AhHa!

4. Research Goes beyond Accumulating Information • personal value • make sense of the world • probe essential questions • process of hunting, gathering, and sifting

5. Research Nurtures both Collaboration and Self-Management • sharing ideas and concerns, not to mention problems • “intellectual adventure” • self-management

6. Research Delves Deeper and Synthesizes • teachers can generate enthusiasm • students profit from self-directed teachers, whose knowledge of the making of knowledge lies at the heart of learning, and, therefore, the heart of our growth as a literate society” • work ethic • self-realization Sunstien, Bonnie, Composing a Culture.

7. Redesigning Research can Prevent Plagiarism • students find cheating easy and necessary • students may be less likely to cheat when they know their teachers and parents are informed • understand the ideal research process • instill intellectual curiosity • ethical researching techniques

8. Redesigning Research Projects Engages Students • esearch should be “a sequence of assignments” that fosters meaning for each student, • Ultimately we want students to see research beyond the confines of transcribing the words of others; we want them to experience “a change of perspective, a transformation, a recasting of experience” due to the research process. This is much more likely to occur if we “assign a problem based learning situation” Lathrop, Ann and Kathleen Foss. Student Cheating and Plagiarism in the Internet Era : a Wake-up Call

9. Give Students Helpful Advice • properly cited research lends authority to your voice • what is the point of research, the point of problem solving if you already know the answer? • research is stages of steps, starts, stops, rerouting. You might change your mind.

10. Research is Really About Discovery • motivate students through curiosity • foster the desire to immerse oneself in the entire process of research and inquiry • inquiry-based research projects provide the need to creatively solve a problem; therefore, it is more difficult for students to resort to plagiarism

11. Constructivist theory provides a basis for instruction in the information age. • information problem solving is based on the constructivist theory of learning • students will move from being passive recipients of information to active authentic researchers • research has the dual focus of increasing both the knowledge of the content area and the development of information problem solving strategies.

12. The Big Six,by Michael Eisenberg and Robert Berkowitz, • “Recursive” processes • Students are encouraged to understand the stages of research and move back and forth through these stages, as needed, thus delving into the media with the goal of constructing knowledge. McKenzie, Jamie. Beyond Technology: Questioning, Research and the Information Literate School.

13. What is the Process?—Information Problem Solving

14. Task Definition / Questioning • authentic research begins with a question or an information problem • topical research = word movers • self-generated questions - solving a problem, and making decisions, requires students to think and make judgments independently • students are encouraged to revise and rethink their research questions

15. Pre-search • students need time to develop the purpose of the research • encourage the I wonder question • What do I know? What do I need to know • Educators ask the type of clarifying questions that we hope will eventually be internalized by the learner, questions such as: What type of information do you need? How much information do you need? Do you need an overview or an opinion?

16. Information Seeking Strategies/ Planning • students are encouraged to brainstorm key words and concepts • consider where the best information might lie • students should be coached to “look before they leap” • students with a plan will be more likely to gather information that is relevant to their needs, rather than taking what they findand muddling the original intent.

17. Location and Access/Gathering • students discover the sources that yield relevant and useful information will reduce needless and wasteful printing and photocopying • students are searching for meaning and connections and avidly seeking patterns and insight • students that use logical operators, truncation, or a thesarus will develop fluency and keywords

18. Use of Information /Sorting and Sifting • students engaged in the process, will be able to extract relevant information that serves their purpose • students find that when the hunting and gathering has been successful, then the sorting, sifting, and meaning is far more difficult. • students find the most important skill is discarding that which is irrelevant. • cautious, organized notetaking allows students to reflect: what purpose does the information I found play in answering my initial question? • students at this stage begin to ask, Do I have enough information to prove my thesis? • “to achieve insight, students must fashion needles out of haystacks” (99). McKenzie, Jamie. Beyond Technology: Questioning, Research and the Information Literate School.

19. Synthesizing • arrange and rearrange the information fragments until patterns and some kind of picture begin to emerge. • Ah Ha • this is the most exciting part of the research process, as this is the step where understanding and learning occur, where a melding of new ideas with a student’s knowledge may build a new construct

20. Evaluating • students ask the question, What do I know now that I didn’t know then? • allow time for this reflection • complete several repetitions of the cycle since they don’t know what they don't know when they first plan their research • yhe first attempt at synthesis will almost always provide additional questions and research opportunitiesso the process begins again