On Tuesday, April 26 and Wednesday, April 27, 2022, the ASIS&T 24-Hour Global Conference took place. Themed “Networking, Sharing, and Learning: Challenges and Opportunities”, it provided a platform for discussions of the means by which people network, share, learn, and innovate in online spaces.
Marina Milosheva presented our work on the information needs workshops research that we carried out last year with me, Dr David Brazier. The title of the presentation was: “A Participative Approach to Understanding the Hidden Curriculum: Lessons from Three Virtual Information Needs Workshops”.
Shortened Abstract
Information needs are fundamental building blocks of the information behaviour and information retrieval literature. However, the concept of an “information need” is rarely discussed or defined, particularly in the context of everyday life information seeking.
Furthermore, little is known about the means by which information needs are formulated within the “hidden university curriculum”: the informal learning space which comprises unspoken rules not taught in formal academic education.
To generate knowledge of information needs in the context of the hidden university curriculum, three virtual information needs workshops were conducted with PhD students and early career researchers. In these workshops, a participative design methodology was utilised, driven by the goal of co-designing artefacts, workflows, and work environments to suit virtual collaboration and knowledge exchange.
Workshop facilitators used a combination of Microsoft Teams tools such as whiteboards, chat boxes, polls, and breakout rooms to support co-design. As a means of evaluating the effectiveness of the workshops, participants completed two questionnaires: one before the first workshop and one after the last workshop.
Overall, the virtual workshops were successful in generating tangible outputs and elucidating attendees’ information needs. As a result of the workshops, a multitude of artefacts were produced in a collaborative manner.
For the full abstract please see:
Zenodo Repository for ASIS&T 24-Global Conference – https://zenodo.org/record/6401777
Edinburgh Napier University Repository – http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/output/2861919
Presentation Slides – A Participative Approach to Understanding the Hidden Curriculum: Lessons from Three Virtual Information Needs Workshops
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