Conference Agenda

This article explores the potential of experiential education for students in the field of information culture. Specifically, it investigates experiences using information for learning and knowledge building, focusing on the materiality and sensory/sensitive dimensions of these experiences: giving equal attention to things, objects, materials, and sensory experiences (Thrift, 2008; Savolainen, 2020). In this view, information is understood in a broad sense, as “related to becoming informed”: something is information if it is informative (Bukland, 1991). The idea is that students are not disembodied cognitive beings (Bruner, 1986, p. 5), they are active beings who learn through action and experiences (Dewey, 1925), active agents in the historical process of constructing their own world (Bruner, 1986); and that in this process, the body has an active, productive and sensuous role, throughout the information activities: each object, each material constitutes a path towards knowledge, each gesture expresses a becoming in service to its construction (Ingold, 2018). Field experience is inductive, it is both a voyage of world discovery and of self-discovery.

In this perspective, referring to an active self, articulating the sensitive and the social (Laplantine, 2009), the experience is creative. From primary experience, in its subjective version, a way of experiencing the world, to secondary experience, more reflective, which clarifies it by organizing it, experience is formative and transformative; it participates in the creation of useful knowledge (Dewey, 1925). Knowledge is thus constructed in the flow of experiences, with phases of self-reflection and distancing; it is not a linear and mechanical process. Culture – like information culture as “culture” - is alive, context-sensitive and emergent (Bruner, 1986).

We propose investigating and questioning here these different relationships to materials, objects and information, involved in the learning process and knowledge construction, by considering how knowledge is informed by experience, putting the body and the mind on alert in a same movement. In addition, we propose conducting this investigation and questioning from an anthropo-social perspective, by focusing on the dynamics that emerge, paying attention to the ordinary, the banal, as well as to the unexpected or the event, to what “happens and becomes” (Laplantine, 2022).

The empirical data that informs this article is drawn from a research project in school context, still ongoing in its qualitative part (2019; 2020; 2021). They are ethnographic data, collected over time, in immersion, closely to the actors, without an a priori grid (which would orient towards an interpretative system), but with a requirement of globality (rich observations, interviews, informal conversations, documents, photographs). Consistent with this approach, the references to an interpretative universe remain open: functioning as starting points, theoretical levers (vs. framework), they form a space open to reflection, intuition and the uncovering of meanings.

For this article, we focus on three projects observed in secondary schools, aiming at opening the school to the world, beyond the school space, and in which the sensitive/sensory dimensions play an important role (walking, as a learning path; creative production using the five senses; tinkering and making in fablabs/libraries). The passage through the material, the sensitive, the sensory is of great heuristic potential in the construction of knowledge and culture.

References

Buckland, M. K. (1991). Information as thing. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42(5), 311–388.

Dewey, J. (1925). Experience and nature. Chicago: Open Court Publishing.

Ingold, T. (2018). Anthropology and/as education. London: Routledge.

Laplantine, F. (2009). Le social et le sensible. Paris: Téraèdre.

Maury, Y. (2019). Expériences sensibles en bibliothèque: Peut-on parler d’un tournant? Revue Cossi, 6, 27–40.

Maury Y., & Kovacs, S. (2020). In-former le territoire local par l’exercice scolaire. In C. Tardy & M. Severo, Dispositifs du visible et de l’invisible dans la fabrique des territoires (pp. 59–78). Paris: L’Harmattan.

Savolainen, R. (2020). Elaborating the sensory and cognitive-affective aspects of information experience. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 52(3), 671–684.

Turner V. W. & Bruner, E. M. (1986). The anthropology of experience. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Initially, the purpose of this study had been only to explore information behavior of freshly retired scholars from a wide range of Polish university faculties. However, as the research progressed, it appeared that information practices, along with their affective background, described by former faculty members followed an astonishingly salient pattern resembling mourning. Following this path, I adjusted the research goals to provide the answers to the following questions: a) in scholar’s everyday life, is retirement a triggering event likely to provoke an information mourning? and, b) if so, what are the behavioral manifestations and consequences of such an information mourning process? This study pursues four goals: 1) to identify and describe retired scholars’ information behaviors that mightconstitute information mourning; 2) to assess the harmfulness/neutrality of these behaviors for ex faculty members’ wellbeing and, in cases of observed negative impact, reflect on possible remedies; 3) to identify and describe constant and individually variable coping strategies applied by scholars in order to mitigate information losses(see Williamson, 2005; Israeli, 2020); and 4) to interpret the findings in the light of information ecology.

The study consisted of a series of 12 individual in-depth interviews conducted with researchers in the humanities and sciences who had retired from Polish universities within the last 2 years. , . The interviews were treated and processed en bloc as a set of narratives and submitted to discourse analysis using the method of cognitive metaphor mapping. Based on this textual material only, I extracted simple and ramified metaphors and interpreted them following a nomothetic approach without any preconceived assumptions (Massey & Ehrensberger-Dow, 2017; Csatár, 2014). Interviewed scholars tended to consider their retirement from university as a colossal personal loss, often described in terms such as banishment, amputation, and orphancy. The majority of the interviewees felt outcast from their familiar identity-shaping information ecosystem. The scale of experienced loss seems to set off a regular process of mourning with its typical stages of rebellion, anger, resignment, and so forth. Based on key assumptions of information ecology, as theorized inter alia by Fidel, Nardi and O’Day (Fidel, 2012; Nardi & O’Day, 2000) and research findings on information behavior of seniors (Williamson, 2005; Kim et al. 2016), combined with the conceptual framework of information horizons by Diane H. Sonnenwald (2005), information mourning could be defined as morbidly prolonged, harmful disturbance of individual information space caused by a loss of physical and immaterial connections with a larger community. Caught in the spiral of grief, the individual does not have enough agency left to recover without aid. It appears, however, that the affective heaviness of being cut off from the university information ecosystem might by relieved, and coping mechanism enhanced, by putting in place some simple practical remedies. The aim of these remedies should be to restore the sense of belonging and rebuild broken attachments with the academic community and, hence, accelerate readaptation. I will describe these remedies in the paper.

References

Csatár, P. (2014). Data structure in cognitive metaphor research. Peter Lang Edition.

Fidel, R. (2012). Human information interaction: An ecological approach to information behavior. Mit Press.

Israeli, T. (2020). Losing information is like losing an arm: employee reactions to data loss. Behaviour & Information Technology, 39(12), 1297–1307.

Kim, M. J., et al. (2016). Seniors’ loyalty to social network sites: Effects of social capital and attachment. International Journal of Information Management, 36(6), 1020–1032.

Massey, G., & Ehrensberger-Dow, M. (2017). Translating conceptual metaphor: The processes of managing interlingual asymmetry. Research in Language, 15(2), 173–189.

Nardi, B. A., & O’Day, V. (2000). Information ecologies: Using technology with heart. Mit Press.

Sonnenwald, H. (2005). Information Horizons. In K. Fisher, S. Erdelez, L. McKechnie (Eds.), Theories of Information Behavior (pp.191–197). Information Today.

Williamson, C. (2005). Ecological theory of human information behavior. In L. McKechnie (Ed.), Theories of information behavior: A researcher’s guide. (pp. 128–132). Information Today.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on information phenomena is being actively researched in information sciences (e.g. Lloyd & Hicks, 2020; see Montesi, 2021 for a review). The pandemic created unique possibilities to study different populations in extreme circumstances and unique crisis situations. One such unique situation emerged on the Faculty of humanities and social science at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. There, a group of 20 library and information science (LIS) students in an online information literacy course were faced with the task of reflecting about their information experience at the height of the pandemic. The material they submitted showed authentic and deep free reflection on a subject of interest related to the real, lived experiences of participating students. In this report we will show how emerging Croatian LIS professionals experienced the pandemic.

The task created what Bruce et al. (2014) frame as the intersection of the experience of information using and experience of learning. This assignment offered a unique research opportunity to study an information experience through student-created media. Students were asked to create a video log during the semester about the problems they faced because of the pandemic and the global health crisis. They reflected upon the impact of those events on experiences of information and their information practices. Through a subset of questions they were asked to consider how practices have changed, ways in which they encountered information, strategies they used to resolve their information needs, and how they responded to information they were exposed to sought themselves.

We provided the students with some technical information on how to create their video logs. Out of 20 undergraduate students attending the course in their final (third) year of study, 18 students gave permission to use their video logs for research purposes, thus creating a unique convenience sample of rich content about the information student experience during the pandemic. The resulting videos were 4 minutes and 17 seconds long, on average. Together the films totaled an hour and twenty-five minutes of filmed material. This study used an intepretivist grounded theory approach in studying the films. We focused on a systematic exploration of the diversity of students’ information experience during the COVID-19 pandemic as the basic phenomena of interest. We also sought to portray the kinds of information needs, behaviors, and practices they found relevant to their information experience during the pandemic. We will map examples and contexts of the students’ information experience, illustrating the phenomena relations, strategies, and consequences about which the students freely reflected. We also considered the students’ stances and chosen approaches to video creation. This included taking account of the students’ personal experience, their attempts at expert analyses, their artistic expression of experience, and so forth.

We transcribed and coded the video logs in accordance with the grounded theory approach (following Strauss & Corbin, 1990). We organized the coding process as an inductive qualitative research process involving a stage of open coding. This was followed by an axial coding stage where elicited codes were combined into more general categories. These general categories defined aspects of students’ information experiences and formed the basis for a deeper understanding of the diversity of students’ information experience. We interpreted the results in the context of Croatia and related phenomena as perceived by emerging LIS professionals. We will explore whether the applied pedagogical method created authentic learning experiences for LIS students and whether it can, on the methodological level, be used as a basis for information experience research. Since this research emphasized information experience, future research needs to explore the same learning experience as an informed learning event.

References

Bruce, C. et al. (2014). Information experience: approaches to theory and practice. Emerald Publishing Limited.

Lloyd, A., & Hicks, A. (2020). Risk and resilience in radically redefined information environments: Information practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Proc. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol., 57, e336. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.336

Montesi, M. (2021). Human information behavior during the Covid-19 health crisis. A literature review. Library & Information Science Research, 43(4), 101122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2021.101122

Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. M. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Sage Publications, Inc.

The main objective of this research is to define the correlation between film criticism, social issues in films and student audience reception, and how media literacy affects this process. In this case study the quantitative research will be used as a main method. A questionnaire will be used to question 400 students in 4 different Croatian universities. Croatia will be used as a case study and the results will be compared to those of other researches in this field.

A detailed questionnaire will be used with questions about the students (age, gender, etc.), how many of them read film reviews and where (printed media, online written media, video blogs, social networks, etc.), and the way the film reviews and different social issues in the films affect their decision to watch the film and its reception. We will also ask them how and which film books from university and public libraries they read influenced their choice and reception of films, and how the film courses they attended at their universities affected their choice and reception of films.

Qualitative research methods will also be used, with in-depth interviews with film professors at these 4 universities, in order to see how they present the importance of film criticism to students, what social issues in films they discuss with students, how the students react to film reviews and to films that deal with different social issues in their discussions on classes and in written papers.

In analyzing and commenting on the results of this research, the works of renowned researchers in these fields will be consulted. Eliashberg and Shugan (1997) empirically researched the correlation of critical reviews and box office; Livingstone (2004) considered how far existing theories and methods for researching audiences can be extended to new media; McDonald (2007) emphasizes the need of critical evaluation of films challenged by cultural studies and media democratization; Hobbs (2011) demonstrates how to incorporate media literacy into the classroom, providing the tools teachers need to effectively foster students’ critical thinking and communication skills; Gillespie (2012) claims that criticism is opposing the consumerist approach to culture and resisting the monetization logic of the cultural market; Frey (2014) writes about the challenges of film criticism in the age the new media and Eagan (2020) proved the influence of contemporary film reviews, especially negative ones.

This study will show how different aspects of media literacy affect the ways in which students choose and evaluate films. On the basis of this research an evaluation model will be established, applicable to other countries, and could have a wider impact on film literacy researches at universities. It should also be emphasized that the proposed research model, taking into account the specifics of theatrical and literary works, could be applied to theatrical and literary criticism. Therefore we believe that this research will give relevant scientific results, inspire new studies in mentioned similar contexts and give valuable input to a better understanding of information and media literacy.

References

Eliashberg, J., & Shugan, S. (1997). Film critics: Influencers or predictors? Journal of Marketing, 61, 68–78.

Livingstone, S. (2004). The challenge of changing audiences or, what is the researcher to do in the age of the internet? European Journal of Communication, 19(1), 75–86.

McDonald, R. (2007). The death of the critic. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Hobbs, R. (2011). Digital and media literacy: Connecting culture and classroom. Twelve Oaks: Corwin.

Gillespie, R. (2012). The art of criticism in the age of interactive technology: Critics, participatory culture, and the avant-garde. International Journal of Communication, 6, 56–75.

Frey, M. (2014). The permanent crisis of film criticism. The anxiety of authority. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Eagan, O. (2020). The influence of film critics on movie outcomes. In Oscar Buzz and the Influence of Word of Mouth on Movie Success. Cham: Palgrave Pivot.