A Study of the Pedagogical Significance of Knowledge Understanding and Information Access:A Quasi-experiment with the Introduction to Library and Information Science Course Based on Recent LIS Findings
Given the vital importance of higher education in determining the quality of each discipline's future talents,higher education issues,especially pedagogical issues,are important topics in nearly all disciplines.Such studies normally draw on educational or cognitive theories to inform their investigations.However,from the perspective of library and information science(LIS),these theories have a common inadequacy:they often overlook,hence unable to explain,the importance of students' information access and use in learning.As information access and use are basic concepts in LIS,it is unrealistic to expect other disciplines,such as education studies or cognitive science,to effectively address this gap.This study attempts to build on previous LIS research findings to further bridge this gap from a LIS perspective.It aims to examine the rationale of setting "knowledge understanding" as a teaching/learning objective and to test the role of information access and use in achieving this objective,so as to confirm the pedagogical position of this "objective-means" pair,to explain the indispensable value of information access in students' learning,and to shed lights on pedagogical design both within and beyond LIS.It does so through a quasi-experiment study,which draws on recent research findings from within LIS and uses Introduction to Library and Information Science course at Nankai University as the experimental setting.Informed by recent LIS findings on the relationship between understanding and information,the experimental course incorporated a number of knowledge understanding tasks into its teaching objectives and designed its lectures,off-class information access and use,individualized tutoring,in-class discussions,and tests accordingly.The results of the experiment were measured through a number of methods,including pre-and post-experiment questionnaire surveys,pre-and post-experiment interviews,30-days diaries,2 in-class tests.The results show that knowledge understanding forms a distinct teaching/learning objective,both in terms of students' perceptions and in terms of the process of realization.The results also show that this objective is achieved through methods that center on information access and use,whose major roles can be categorized as follows:facilitating the appearance of the taught knowledge to students' consciousness,enabling both teachers and students to examine students' progress of understanding,supporting the conduction of other teaching/learning activities,such as in-class discussions.These results confirm the vital importance of information for knowledge understanding and the pedagogical significance of these "objective(knowledge understanding)-means(information access/use)" pair,and urge higher education institutions and libraries to give them due consideration in curriculum design and learning support services.1 fig.2 tabs.29 refs.
Information accessKnowledge understandingPedagogyIntroduction to Library and Information Science courseQuasi-experiment
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