Image by Lisa Risager from Denmark (WordPress 10th anniversary  Uploaded by palnatoke) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

As a blogger I follow some favorite blogs.  A recent post in one of them highlighted research as a conversation.

LaGuardia (2015) summarized the first two phases of a Project Information Literacy study.  Phase 1 interviews found that recent graduates followed blogs in various ways: lurking, fully participating, etc. (¶ 6).  These strategies would be akin to levels of  participation in a conversation, from passively listening to fully engaged.

The post itself furthers the conversation by directing readers to the Project Information Literacy Reports.  After all  I can read the Phase 1 report (Head, 2014) to make an informed comment about the piece I mentioned above.

This concept seems obvious, yet bears repeating.  West (2015) devotes an entire lesson to the topic.  If people already follow blog conversations in daily life, we can use those conversations to explain scholarly conversations.

References

Head, A. J. (2014, July 29). Project Information Literacy’s lifelong learning study, phase one: Interviews with recent graduates.  Research brief.  Retrieved from http://projectinfolit.org/images/pdfs/pil_lll_phase1.pdf

LaGuardia, C. (2015, August 6). College graduates, critical thinking, and information strategies [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/08/opinion/not-dead-yet/college-graduates-critical-thinking-and-information-strategies/#_

West, B. (2015). Starting points: The role of blogs in scholarly conversation.  In P. Bravender, H. McClure, & G. Schaub (Eds.), Teaching information literacy threshold concepts: Lesson plans for librarians (pp. 32-36). Chicago, IL: Association of College & Research Libraries.