Pattern Recogition

Pattern Recognition: How a Rhetorical Approach to Sources can Transform Information Literacy Instruction
Presented by: Joel Burkholder, York College of Pennsylvania

I was off to a somewhat shaky start attending a pre-conference session at WILU 2012 on Wednesday, May 23rd as I was feeling a bit under the weather.  Luckily, I preserved and by the time the afternoon rolled around, I was my typical upbeat self.

The goal of this first session was to view patterns that we interface with daily from a slightly different perspective; thus creating a novel way of framing information literacy instruction and effectively engaging students. 

The discussion began with a definition of rhetoric as the way in which language is used to influence others.  Joel's first example of a rhetorical situation was to state that all of us just failed his class.  He then asked us to postulate how we were going to persuade him in an email to let us pass.  What kind of language would we use?  What would the tone of the email be?  What greetings and closing statements would we use?  There are three components to a rhetorical situation which are: purpose, author and audience.  Using the example above; the purpose would be that we would like to pass the class; the audience is our professor who we have previously established a formal teacher/student relationship with and the author.  These three components need to interact with one another in order for the purpose to be successfully achieved.  If one of the components changes, then it affects the other two components and the entire situation. 

We discussed popular vs. scholarly journals next by examining the covers of three popular women's magazine.  The covers were formulaic and covered routine material from month to month, so that if you were to read one of the magazines you should pretty much know what to expect of the content on a monthly basis (sex, body image, personal improvement).  Students need to understand the underlining context of information in terms that are important to them.  For example, a civil engineer needs to use scholarly materials in order to create bridges that don't collapse.  Using scholarly materials allows a student to also identify and make use of the discipline's language, so their own writing will take on its own air of credibility.

Genre Theory

• genre as a social act
• it is the language a community uses to accomplish specific tasks
• provides guidelines for participating within the culture / community / context

Patterns of Social Action
Joel made use of this quick video segment Newswipe Parody - how to be a reporter to illustrate that there is a known structure or standard format in news reporting.  Individuals need guidance or specific instruction when trying to understand an unknown format, such as a scholarly journal article for undergraduate students.

Authority
Authority is dependent on bias (what organization is sponsoring the research?), credentials of the author or agency and their reputation.  Three articles discussing the link between autism and vaccines were provided to illustrate the varying levels of authority.  We were asked to consider who is the author?  And how is their argument supported?

Accuracy
Evidence is built upon trust (I know what I am talking about), credibility (use of scholarly references to support and enhance your research), and context.  Truth plays a different role depending on the context, such that, photoshopping in Cosmopolitan is socially acceptable whereas photoshopping in a news report is not.  The example used to describe accuracy was the use of one Wikipedia reference along with 49 scholarly peer-reviewed references within a published paper.  Did the one Wikipedia reference infect the credibility of the entire article?

Bias

• selection and omission
• placement
• headlines
• photo / graphic / caption / formatting
• names and titles
• statistics
• sources
• word choice and tone

In a scholarly article, bias appears in the discussion section of the paper, but steps are typically taken to minimize that bias.

There are times when quality does not equal value.  There are circumstances when crappy research may have value in proving a point or framing an argument.

Identify and Analyze (Closing Remarks)

• how do we access information?
• understand how information is used and identified within a discipline
• each discipline uses information differently