1. Joining (scholarly) Conversations
First Nations Knowledge Services Without Borders Institute
Margy MacMillan

2. Joining Conversations
Remember that Habs game when McPhee went after Neely…
Joining Conversations
Yeah, and they dropped the gloves and danced ?
my partner
his brother
Conversations in areas you don’t know – impenetrable because of codes, names, etc. + cannot extract correct information me

3. Joining Conversations
Sch ?
Students have similar issues with scholarly materials – impenetrable codes, jargon, allusions
Results in misunderstanding, frustration, exclusion
Assigned to use these by faculty who often don’t remember the difficulties involved
Students in one study reported affective issues – being intimidated Seen as barrier to success – “how can I be a biologist if I can’t understand this?” Me
Scholarly Article
Power, A. (2005). Mouse that Roared: Addressing the Post-Modern Quandary of Mash-ups through Traditional Fair Use Analysis, The. Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. L., 8, 531.

4. Joining Conversations
What do we need to know to join a conversation?
We’ll talk about this

5. Scholarship as Conversation*
Joining Conversations
Scholarship as Conversation*
From the new ACRL Framework on Information Literacy One of six frames that get at deeper understandings of how information works
Frames make IL more interesting to teach, and likely to learn – need to balance immediate needs with deeper conceptual iunderstanding
* ACRL Framework

6. Joining Conversations
ACRL:
“…a given issue may be characterized by several competing perspectives as part of an ongoing conversation in which information users and creators come together and negotiate meaning…”
“…Developing familiarity with the sources of evidence, methods, and modes of discourse in the field assists novice learners to enter the conversation…”
Quotations from the definition of this frame…
Not written conversationally…
Apply to more than just scholarly information, more than just academic libraries
- need this to join political discussion, take up new hobbies,

7. Information Scholarship as Conversation Joining Conversations
So – not just scholarship as conversation – this is how we gain information all the time, just don’t always think of it this way.
Listen, get a sense of the codes, try small steps into the conversation, gain confidence in the discourse, and so on
So why don’t we apply this more consciously to learning, especially to academic learning?
Dirty secret – in academic conversations, subtext is that jargon and form are to some extent MEANT to exclude, make it harder, like some weird hazing ritual, to prove your self ready to join the conversation

8. Joining Conversations
What changes if students understand Scholarship as Conversation?
How can we help others join conversations?
We’ll talk about this
How does it change their approach to learning, to knowledge, to their understanding, to their confidence (perry’s stages of College student development)
Helping others – understand the barriers, provide safe practice spaces, describe it as a conversation, not fixed – may cause some discomfort.

9. Joining Conversations
How does this look in (my) practice?
Using metaphors in teaching
Citation chaining
Comparing older and newer articles on a topic
What I’ve done
Using metaphors – I talk about a literature review as a party – different people/articles sharing views on topics – how you bring voices in , describe areas where they agree or disagree, etc. Have also personalized this by saying – so Debbie and Jane found this in their study, but Sharon and Jim found that while their study confirmed some of Debbie and Jane’s, they got different results with younger participants
Citation chaining – using google scholar for academic time travel – use references to go to the past of an article, ‘cited by’ in google scholar to go to the article’s future – see the conversations stretching forward and back
Comparing – so here’s what Susan and Yayo found in 1980, and here’s a study on a very similar topic by Dex and Chyanne from two years ago – that cites Susan and Yayo – how has our understanding of this changed
Or even just taking an article on something like social media from 5 years ago and asking the students what might be different if they ran the study today – gets away from the idea that scholarly knowledge is fixed and unmoving – may be different for other kinds of knowledge.

10. Joining Conversations
Thoughts?.... And…. Thanks!
Margy Macmillan
MRU Library First Nations Knowledge Services Without Borders Institute