Congratulations to Alicja Pawluczuk and Lyndsey Middleton (née Jenkins) on the recent news that the conference submissions that they made in March this year to Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) 2018 have been accepted. The conference takes place in Kraków, Poland, 9-11 October 2018.
Alicja‘s contribution to the conference will be a full paper entitled ‘Digital youth work: the youth worker’s balancing act between digital innovation and digital literacy insecurities‘. At the conference Alicja will present an analysis of data that she collected by interview with 20 digital youth workers in 2017 on the ways in which they perceive, and evaluate, the social impact of their work. The main finding to be shared is that externally-governed evaluation practices fail to engage digital youth workers in the development of the skills necessary for the assessment of the impact of the interventions that they manage. For example, rather than being encouraged to evaluate the changes that arise from their work, they are more focused on identifying evidence of impact.
Alicja has completed this research as part of her doctoral study. For further information about Alicja and her PhD research, which is co-supervised at Edinburgh Napier University by Dr Gemma Webster, Dr Colin Smith and me, please see https://www.alicjapawluczuk.com.
Lyndsey‘s contribution to the conference will be a poster entitled How do we use information to help us learn to innovate in the workplace? A case study of a Scottish University. This has been accepted on the basis of an abstract that includes details of 33 interviews and 8 focus groups that Lyndsey conducted at a Scottish university in 2017. These generated data for analysis that have allowed for the exploration of the relationship between (a) information behaviours and (b) the use that employees make of information when learning how to innovate. The main findings to be presented in the poster are that: (1) information literacy contributes to the initiation of workplace learning; (2) information sources (primarily external information, internal databases and people) are important to workplace learning; and (3) ease of access to information, as well as information sharing, facilitate the learning of innovative work behaviours in the workplace.
Lyndsey has completed this research as part of her ESRC and Skills Development Scotland funded doctoral study. For further information about Lyndsey and her PhD research, which is co-supervised by Professor Robert Raeside, Dr Laura Muir and me, please see https://lyndseyjenkins.org.
#isic2018 presenters Alicja Pawluczuk and Lyndsey Middleton
