Determining Data Information Literacy Needs: A Study of Students and Research Faculty

Abstract

Researchers increasingly need to integrate the disposition, management and curation of their data into their current workflows. However, it is not yet clear to what extent faculty and students are sufficiently prepared to take on these responsibilities. This paper articulates the need for a data information literacy program (DIL) to prepare students to engage in such an "e-research" environment. Assessments of faculty interviews and student performance in a geoinformatics course provide complementary sources of information, which are then filtered through the perspective of ACRL's information literacy competency standards to produce a draft set of outcomes for a data information literacy program.

The Data Engagement Opportunities Scaffold: Development and Implementation

“…Five sets of competencies have been proposed in the literature that generally describe skills needed to manage and organize data; apply metadata; and curate data for long-term preservation and re-use (Calzada Prado and Marzal 2013;Carlson et al 2011;Qin and D'ignazio 2010;Schneider 2013;Piorun et al 2012). The competencies developed have been platforms for a variety of learning objectives and educational curricula targeted to a number of educational disciplines (Shorish 2015;Frank and Pharo 2016;Whitmire 2015).…”

“…The DIL competencies were drawn from Carlson et al (2011), one of the five competency lists published in the literature at the time the tool was developed. The five competency lists do not substantially deviate from each other.…”

Gaining Competency: Learning to Teach Data Visualization

“…Librarians engaged in research data services can make use of the 12 data information literacy competencies (Carlson et al 2011) to guide development of researcher data skills. Several of these competencies correlate with activities classically situated in the library, such as "metadata and data description" and "discovery and acquisition of data," but there are also competencies that have traditionally laid outside of the library, of which "data visualization and representation" is a key example.…”

“…Avoids misleading or ambiguous representations when presenting data. Understands the advantages of different types of visualization, for example, maps, graphs, animations, or videos, when displaying data" (Carlson et al 2011). In one study, researchers ranked the data visualization competency as being of the highest importance of the 12 competencies (Carlson et al 2013).…”

Data Management Training for Graduate Students at a Large Research University

“…al. 's study of faculty and graduate student data information literacy needs describes gaps in graduate student knowledge of basic data management skills and recommends data information literacy as a natural extension of the jurisdiction of librarian instruction (Carlson 2011). Insight gained from a case Correspondence to Jessica Adamick: jadamick@library.umass.edu Keywords: data management, data management training, graduate students, university libraries 180 study exploration of graduate-level data management education will contribute to the advancement of library-developed data management curricula.…”