As I was wrapping up the semester grading semester projects and looking back on the numbers from our first-year instruction program, I heard about the report from the Institute for the Future entitled “Future Work Skills 2020.”
What I appreciate about the report is its focus on skills, as laid out on their site:
Many studies have tried to predict specific job categories and labor requirements. Consistently over the years, however, it has been shown that such predictions are difficult and many of the past predictions have been proven wrong. Rather than focusing on future jobs, this report looks at future work skills—proficiencies and abilities required across different jobs and work settings.
Many of the ten skills outlined can be linked to ACRL’s Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Below are a few of their skills and definitions, taken verbatim from the report on pages 8-12, and linked to the ACRL standards:
- Sense-Making – ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed (Standard 3)
- Novel & Adaptive Thinking – proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule based (Standard 4)
- New-Media Literacy – ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication (Standards 3 and 5)
- Cognitive Load Management – ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques (Standards 2 and 3)
Having the luxury of teaching a three-credit course means I am able to design exercises and assignments that help students build these skills, but I don’t think a full course is required to do many of these things. Instead, a collaboration with faculty could make many of these things happen in one-shots and in short series of classes.
Ask students to delve into the credentials of the author of the source they’ve found – understanding how information has originated gives insight into the meaning and intention of the information.
Teach students – and require them to use – a variety of search tools beyond Google, the catalog, and databases. How about specialized search engines? Combine this with the requirement to investigate credentials, and even the most stalwart of Google users starts moving beyond that first page of results.
I might suggest that the tenth skill, Virtual Collaboration, can be learned in the course of information literacy instruction as well. For example, URI, students’ email is through Google Apps for Education. Despite the link to Google Documents at the top of the window, many students haven’t discovered the ability to author documents and presentations as groups. After a brief orientation, however, they’re off and running, and are thrilled to see their classmates’ edits in real time. Compiling and sharing a group bibliography with links becomes simple. (This could be modified to be done in a learning management system if yours supports simultaneous editing of group documents.)
Did you read the report? What was your reaction? And do you have techniques you use to help students develop these skills that you can share?
Amanda Izenstark
University of Rhode Island