Analysis of the Research Process and Content Curation
Analyze the research process by discussing how you acquire, organize, and evaluate resources. What process do you go through while researching and evaluating resources? How do you organize or curate the resources? Please share the link to your curation method for this course.
I think it is important to distinguish between being a consumer of information and a curator. When the Learning Scientists article mentioned, "Information Overload" I immediately thought of the past year's political cycle and the political cycle that I have been tuned into since 2010. Generally, information is brought to me through social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, the information is then evaluated based on a quick read-through of the content and if I choose to share it is then 'organized' chronologically by my share or repost. I do this frequently sometimes all too often and find that posts that don't include additional commentary or an opinion gets very few reactions.
Note I didn't say I evaluated the resource for bias and I didn't make sure to establish the credibility of the source. While in hindsight I realize I am part of the reason we have a growing distrust in the public of the 'media' because of the continuous bombardment of 'fake news'. I think it is time for citizens to start doing their part to combat the anti-intellectualism in the age of information by curating resources.
I notice that I work very differently depending on the purpose for which I do my research. For my academic career, my research abilities have grown and have developed with my work for Marian University. The structure and expectations of the course emphasized using curated content to teach these lessons. I have used tools like Wikispaces for class, Pinterest with a coworker and bookmark tools for myself to capture things I would like to curate.
Recently our grant writing class had me do a good deal of content curation by creating a grant proposal that is to be submitted. This is all information that has been collected and resynthesizes to create a document which you can view here. Honestly, no one has bothered to teach me to curate content through my K-12 education so I am rather poor at it. The most research I have had to do was to compile and cite resources for a paper which usually meant a few books or scholarly journal articles since content from the Wild West Web was usually off limits for scholarly work.
I think I have found an area to really focus on during this course and am looking forward to learning and growing a lot during this course.
