Webcast of talk by Alison Head

On January 10 2012 Alison J. Head, Berkman Center Fellow, will have her talk on Searching for Context: Modeling the Information-Seeking Process of College Students in the Digital Age webcast live and then archived. The talk will be at 12.30 pm US eastern time (see http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20120110T1230&p1=43 for times elsewhere)
"What is it like to be a college student in the digital age? In this talk, I present a working typology of the undergraduate information-seeking process, including students’ reliance on and use of Web sources. Since 2008, as part of our ongoing study at the University of Washington’s Project Information Literacy, we have surveyed more than 10,000 students at 40 colleges and universities (including undergraduates enrolled at Harvard College). We have investigated how college students find information and conduct research—their needs, strategies, and workarounds—for solving information problems that occur during course-related research and in their everyday lives. We have found the large majority of students we have studied across all types of higher-education institutions in the U.S. still attend college to learn, but many are lost in a thicket of information overload. They struggle with managing the IT devices that permeate their lives. Our findings indicate that nearly all students intentionally use a small compass for navigating the ever-widening and complex information landscape they inhabit. These and other findings of Project Information Literacy have profound implications for teaching, learning, work, and play in the 21st century." Instructions at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2012/01/head
Photo by Sheila Webber: "Let's gater with good friends" - sign outside Starbucks, Camrose, Canada, November 2011