CUNY Information Competency Tutorials Are Made Up

CUNY Information Competency Tutorials are made up of eight different tutorials and quizzes. The topics covered in the tutorials include: Determine Your Information Needs, Define the Research Topic, Locate and Retrieve Relevant Information, Use the Technological Tools For Accessing Information, Take the Quiz, Evaluate Information, Communicate Using a Variety of Information Technologies, Understand the Ethical, Legal, and Socio-Political Issues Surrounding Information and Information Technology, and Use, Evaluate, and Treat Critically Information Received From the Mass Media (Information Competency Tutorials, n.d.).

These eight tutorials will not only teach you how to become an A+ researcher but will develop your information literacy and critical thinking skills. The tutorials follow a set of CUNY information literacy learning goals and objectives that all students should achieve by the time they have completed 60 credits. The first tutorials are intended to prepare a student to use library and other information sources in order to do research. The third tutorial explores possible information resources and teaches how to search them.

One will learn how to access information using various print and electronic finding aids. They will also see that some Reference sources are useful for background and others for data while still others have extensive information that help them focus or refine their research. The fourth tutorial is a lesson on how to use various electronic resources including: an overview of Databases including information on records, fields and indexing, search strategies, and an overview of the Web and how to use it.

The fifth tutorial shows how to determine the usefulness and value of retrieved information. One will learn to ask themselves: is the information relevant/appropriate, is the information timely, is the information reliable, is the information complete and is the information accurate? The sixth tutorial is an overview of how information is communicated using various technological tools to include e-mail, power point and Web pages. In the seventh tutorial one will learn about the legal and social issues confronting information.

The last tutorial has to do with the usefulness and credibility of information communicated through the media (Information Competency Tutorials, n.d.). Overall these tutorials are very easy to use and well organized. They provide a lot of very helpful information for students who have to do research. The key to successful research is to know what you are looking for and how to going about finding it.

These tutorials provide an excellent overview of how to define the subject that one is looking for and then goes through the various avenues that are available for finding information. There is also a lot of information presented on the different forms in which information can be located and communicated (Information Competency and Ohio University's Libraries, 2008). Information competency is the ability to successfully recognize and act on information needs. These needs include locating, evaluating and using suitable information to make rational decisions.

Even though information competency requires technology and computer skills, it entails a focus on content, communication, and analysis rather than mere utilization of technology. By way of critical judgment and reasoning, people who are information competent are able to have more control over their own learning at all stages of life. Information is exploding in both quantity and formats in today's world. Current estimations are that information in all forms is doubling every four to five years.

Just as students should graduate with the ability to write, they should also know how to recognize and evaluate the information on which their writing and decisions will be founded (Information Competency and Ohio University's Libraries, 2008). The best way to get the most out of these tutorials is to go through them very slowly and really pay attention to what is presented. This ensures that one will pick up the most information and retain that information when they get ready to do their research.

There were a couple of tutorials that are very important in order to carry out good, solid research. The first of these is how to locate and retrieve relevant information. There is nothing worse than setting out to do research and spending a lot of time doing it to find that in the end you have nothing that is of any use. This is why this tutorial is very helpful.

It defines the steps that one should take in order to look for and then determine what information is going to be helpful to ones project and what is not. With the amount of information that is available today it can oftentimes be very overwhelming to even know where to start when looking for information. One good point that this tutorial points out is the notion of how to go about figuring out what key words to search on in order to get back the most useful information.

The second tutorial that could prove to be very useful is the one in regards to how to evaluate information. Being successful at doing research is not just a matter of finding information but it has to be relevant and useful information in the end. This tutorial goes.