Project Goals: Identify essential Information Competence Skills for Undergraduate Majors in Philosophy Incorporate Information Competence in the Undergraduate Curriculum in Philosopy  Educate philosophy faculty on Information Competence curricular elements

Information Competence for Philosophy Majors:

• An awareness by students of their need to back up what they state with reliable (or refutable) sources. An awareness that they are apprentice scholars and they cannot only rely on their own knowledge alone.
• A basic awareness of the titles, databases and resources for research in philosophy. The basics of how to get relevant information from books, journals, and papers, not only from this institution but also from other libraries or databases. How to use libraries and databases, not just at CSULB, but anywhere in future life experiences, graduate school, law school, etc. How to be research literate. How to ask the right questions of oneself to get around any library or library’s web page.
• A flexible research vocabulary. The use of synonyms to find the same topic or variants of the topic. How to rephrase the question in several different ways to: a) get around a “null set” of results, b) to get tangential issues they might not have uncovered in the original research question, c) to get at new issues uncovered in the process of research.
• An awareness of the varying quality of sources. What is difference between primary and secondary? How critical are you when you look for material? Did you know you can  find the same topic in a “nutty internet site”, a university web page, a government web site, in a popular magazine article like Time, in an Atlantic Monthly essay type magazine; a professional journal, a proceeding, a footnoted book or a first person narrative or  a heavily footnoted dissertation. In what circumstances can these best be used to sustain AND refute an argument?  How can you identify them? When can the nutty web site be as worthy as a scholarly tome?
• Ability to reassess their route: to critically review, rephrase, reevaluate evidence and findings.

• Incorporation of a unit on "library and computer research methods" co-taught by the Philosophy Instructor and the Philosophy librarian into courses that require a student presentation, speech or paper so that students see a definite link between what they need to learn in the session and outcomes expected of them by the professor:
• PHIL 296-Philosophical Methods (a sophomore-level course, taken by about half of the philosophy majors and minors, those who do not take Symbolic Logic),
• PHIL 497-Honors Seminar (a senior-level course taken by about 8-10 seniors to present results of a year-long independent honors research project), and
• PHIL 597-Teaching Philosophy (a graduate seminar taken by about 10-12 graduate students expecting to teach philosophy).  c
• The unit will include (as adapted for level):
• The first session will be for the librarian overview of areas useful for philosophy research, print and online.
• The second session will be hands-on, in which students in the instructional lab conduct their own searches while the librarian assists in databases, research strategies and ways of modifying research results.  The session should not be at the very beginning of the semester but perhaps one month before the paper, speech, presentation is due.

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Last updated: June 12, 2002