Skills Training
I T Workshops
Please click here for I T Workshops.
Information Fluency
What is information fluency? The term 'information fluency' describes the skills you need to identify, locate, evaluate and utitilise appropriate information for your needs. It includes how to
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use the library and IT
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find information in print and electronic form, such as ejournals or web pages
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evaluate information
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use it appropriately
Having good information skills can help save you lots of time when planning for assignments. Demonstrating these skills in your assignments can also help you to get better grades.
Information Fluency Questionnaire
If you would like to evaluate your information fluency skills, please complete the Information Fluency Questionnaire. This questionnaire has been designed to help you identify areas of information fluency that you feel confident about and areas for which you would like to develop your skills and understanding further. It links to tutorials you may find helpful. It is a Word document designed with interactive boxes, to be accessed on the web. When you have completed it, save it and e-mail it to James Fraser as an attachment.
Information Fluency Tutorials
LIS have created twelve tutorials to help you develop your skills in finding, evaluating and using information for your projects and assignments. These tutorials can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. Click on the links below to access them.
You can download the Information Fluency Tutorials leaflet. This is in PDF (Portable Document Format) and requires Acrobat Reader to open it. If it does not open automatically when you click on the link, please look at the PDF files and Acrobat Reader page for further help.
A basic guide to finding what you're looking for using the library catalogue.
Identifying the Information You Need
This tutorial helps you to work out exactly what types of information you need for your assignment and where to find them.
Overview of Information Resources for Your Subject
This tutorial will provide an overview of all the different kinds of information searching resources that are available for your subject area.
Using Electronic Books (e-Books) from netLibrary
Many electronic books (e-books) are now available to you via the library website. This tutorial guides you through the steps need to find electronic books for you subject.
Effective Search Techniques Part 1 - Using Keywords
This tutorial teaches you how to construct an effective search strategy and how to combine keywords using Boolean operators.
Effective Search Techniques Part 2 - Truncation, Wildcards and Phrase Searching
A tutorial to explain the use of truncation, wildcards and phrase searching and a quiz to test your knowledge.
Effective Web Searching Using Google and Google Scholar
Search Engines are based on huge databases containing words and other details taken from web pages, found by an automated search of the Internet. This tutorial will look at how to make best use of search engines, and features Google.
Intute is a free online service providing you with access high quality Web resources for education and research. The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites and write high quality descriptions of the resources.
As you identify relevant web sites for your studies it is important that you evaluate them to assess their quality. This unit looks at ways to judge the quality of the internet resources that you find. The tutorial features the Intute Virtual Training Suite.
Evaluating Information for Your Assignments
This tutorial teaches you how to evaluate the value of information you find for your work.
Using Information in your Work
This tutorial will teach you how to evaluate and incorporate the information you collect from your research into your work.
Referencing with the Harvard system
How to cite and reference a range of resources in your work using the Harvard system.
How to use the College's referencing and bibliographic software.
Support
If you would like help with Information Fluency, you can make an appointment with a Learning Advisor. Please ask in the library or contact one directly - please look at the Subject Contacts page for details.
You may also find the Guides to electronic resources leaflets useful.
I T Workshops
During the year we shall be offering workshops on specific IT topics, such as
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Introduction to Word
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Using Blackboard
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Getting the best from Email and the Internet
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Using the Network
We will also be offering drop-in sessions to which you can come if you have any queries or problems regarding IT or particular software applications.
Please look at the programme of current workshops (pdf file) for details of where and when these sessions are running. (If you have problems opening this file, please look at the PDF Files and Acrobat Reader page.) If you need any help with IT or software applications, please contact your local IT helpdesk.
To book a place on a workshop or for more information, please e-mail ITWorkshops@ucsm.ac.uk with details of the workshop, campus, date and time you wish to attend.