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Tacit Knowledge and the Student Researcher

Barbara Fister’s good article in Inside HigherEd:

Tacit Knowledge and the Student Researcher
 
 
Snippets:

Barbara started compiling a list of issues of tacit knowledge that many of us – older folks –  have about information and how it works based on our own experiences that many of our students haven’t had.   Here’s the list (check out the article for explanations):

Journals and magazines are published as ongoing series.

News is different than opinion.

Books don’t have to be read cover-to-cover to be useful.

Citations have the information you need to track down the source.

Databases and catalogs (usually) don’t search inside books and articles.

Catalogs are (usually) local; article databases (usually) aren’t.

Call numbers are a system.

Some things are organized alphabetically. 

Not all sources stick to the facts.

“In addition, there are things we geezers often assume about “digital natives” that are mostly not true. They aren’t always adept at search (mostly because they don’t know the specialized vocabulary of academic topics and don’t know enough context to narrow or broaden a search or quickly sort through results). They don’t generally welcome the chance to learn and use new technology in class. They don’t know a lot about the software they use daily, such as how to set margins or hanging indents or how to insert page numbers – though they come up with workarounds. They don’t all prefer screens to paper. They are three times more likely to read print books than ebooks.  And – imagine! – they actually read books. A teenager is more likely to have read a print book in the past year than an adult is, according to a  report released by Pew this week. ‘

Stephen
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Posted on: June 27, 2013, 1:29 pm Category: Uncategorized

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