Collective Information Literacy

• In Event: Massively Multiplayer Online Games, Teenage Guys, and Learning: Experiments in an After-School Game-Based Casual Learning Lab

Abstract

Purpose
Information literacy is an essential part of 21st Century Literacies (Partnership, 2009) and lifelong learning skills. Traditionally information literacy skills and standards have been designed around educational institutions and resources (AASL, 1998; ACRL, 2000; Lowe & Eisenberg, 2005). But with the intense information dissemination and creation of online communities, it is important that people have and use these skills outside of educational institutions. This study explores information literacy skills that arise in the MMO World of Warcraft (WoW).
Perspectives
Information literacy is roughly defined as a process used by an information seeker to find, evaluate, interpret, synthesize, and disseminate information. These standards were created as a measure of assessment to determine a student’s information literacy skill mastery. The problem with these types of standards is that they are not designed for collaborative or informal learning environments. Informal learning in science reasoning, math, reading, etc. along with many 21st Century literacy skills have been shown to happen naturally in virtual worlds, especially MMOs (Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2009; Steinkuehler, Compton-Lilly, & King, 2009). Situated learning and knowledge construction takes place in and around MMOs (Gee, 2004). Collective information creation and use illustrates (Levy, 1997), that collective information literacy takes place in these collaborative settings.
Methods
The data in this study was collected during the eight-month ethnographic study of an informal learning lab based on the MMO World of Warcraft. Data collection and analysis methods are detailed in the introduction.
Results
Traditional information literacy is focused on a single person’s journey to fulfill an information need, generally using institutionally sanctioned resources as the source of information. In contemporary online collaborative spaces, information literacy becomes collective because the community is involved in a person’s journey to find information and information resources range from corporate websites to wikis to the individuals in the community themselves, with the community’s knowledge being just as valuable as other sources. The patterns of information literacy discerned in these data, both within the game and across its surrounding information community, are a case in point. Here, a player (referred to as the seeker) would decide that they had an information need and seek the information from the community. The information would be disseminated from one or many players to the seeker, and then the seeker or the seeker with the help of the community would evaluate and synthesize the information. Information literacy skill and proficiency are tied to expertise and experience in an MMO and its information community.
Scholarly Significance
Without information literacy skills it is very difficult to navigate and evaluate the vast amount of information available through the Internet. These skills make children ready to become 21st Century literate and encourage lifelong learning allowing them to continuously seek, evaluate, synthesize, interpret, and disseminate information through out their lives. This study challenges traditional conceptions of information literacy, suggesting renewed focus on the collective nature of such activity in order to better account for online collaborative contexts such as MMOs.

Author

• Crystle Martin, University of California - Irvine