Research and Information Skills

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Research and Information Skills

• Portfolio creation
• 2006

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What is a portfolio?

• A portfolio is a purposeful collection of student
  work that exhibits the students efforts,
  progress, and achievements in one or more areas.
  The collection must include student participation
  in selecting contents, the criteria for
  selection, the criteria for judging merit, and
  evidence of student self-reflection. A portfolio
  provides a complex and comprehensive view of
  student performance in context. It is a portfolio
  when the student is a participant in, rather than
  the object of assessment it provides a forum that
  encourages students to develop the abilities
  needed to become independent, self-directed
  learners (Paulson, Paulson and Meyer, in BEDEE1-V
  tutorial letter 104/0/20065)

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Why Portfolio Assessment?

• Portfolio assessment supports authentic
  assessment models.
• Main objectives are to keep track of personal
  progress in the module
• Determine the extent of achievement
• Provides an opportunity to value and assess
  personal accomplishments
• Provides the opportunity to show lecturers what
  and how students have learnt

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Putting the portfolio together

• Requires involvement in following activities
• Deciding on tasks or goals
• Planning the stages of various tasks
• Carrying out plans and adjusting them as
  necessary
• Assessing the success of tasks

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Selecting a framework

• Chronological organise portfolio by date
• Thematic organise portfolio around themes and
  functions
• Problem-oriented organise porfolio around
  problems or issues
• Own organising principle a combination of any
  or all of the above ways

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Keeping track of the portfolio

• Decide on a collection device for portfolio
  materials (files, folders, spiral binding, etc)
• Keep practical element of presenting portfolio to
  university for assessment purposes in mind
• Chosen framework could serve as guideline for
  organising portfolio.

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What items to include

• Indicate personal goals and objectives for
  portfolio development
• Indicate personal goals and objectives for
  Research and Information Skills
• Indicate proposed plan of action for achieving
  these objectives
• Include your reactions to our feedback
• Include elements of self-reflection.

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Reflection

• What you believe is important and why
• What is characteristic about your learning
• What has changed with time
• What still remains to be done
• How different kinds of experiences have
  contributed to your growth and learning
• What personal insights you have gained from the
  experience
• How your opinions and ideas have changed, refined
  or not changed

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Feedback

• Purpose of feedback is to support you. We will
  try to be
• Specific so that you will know what we mean
• Sensitive to your goals and will give our views
  accordingly
• Timely in our feedback
• Accurate in our interpretation of your inputs.

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Portfolio activitiesAssignment 01

• Activity 1 Introduce yourself
• Activity 2 Decision requiring information
• Activity 3 Selecting a research topic
• Activity 4 Quantitative and qualitative research
• Activity 5 Reasons for literature search

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Portfolio activitiesAssignment 01 (continued)

• Activity 6 Types of information sources
• Activity 7 Evaluation of information sources
• Activity 8 Practical computer skills
• Activity 9 Selection of search terms one
  sentence summaries
• Activity 10 Identification of types of records
  and database structures
• Activity 11 Search strategies

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Portfolio activitiesAssignment 03

• Activity 12 Internet activities. These include
• Setting up an e-mail address
• Finding e-mail addresses for lecturers
• Finding specific information on the Internet
• Finding information relevant to research topic

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Portfolio activitiesAssignment 03 (continued)

• Activity 13 using online information resources
• Finding specific information using an online
  library catalogue
• Finding information relevant to research topic
• Finding specific information in online databases
• Finding research related information in online
  databases

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Portfolio activitiesAssignment 03 (continued)

• Find relevant information related to your
  research topic
• Explain what you searched for and how you adapted
  your search
• Indicate how you adapted your searches
• Include a variety of sources from the library
  catalogue, internet and full-text databases
• Provide examples of search strategies
• Evaluate your search results according to the
  criteria in study unit 2

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Portfolio activitiesAssignment 03 (Continued)

• Compile a bibliography / list of reference
  sources by
• By information sources retrieved from the
  internet, library catalogue and online databases
• Including keywords for each reference

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Portfolio activitiesIn-Text activities

• In-text activities are compulsory.
• In-text activities appear in Tutorial letter
  BEDEE1-V 103/0/2006.
• There are 11 activities.
• Each activity is marked with an A
• Each activity counts 2 marks.
• See marksheets in Tutorial Letter 104/0/2006
  (p.36) for a list of the activities.

A
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Exam Portfolio

• Submit exam portfolio to
• Mrs M du Preez
• Dept of Information Science
• Box 392
• Unisa
• 0003

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Any Questions?