Identifying educational core competencies for the Information Age

Abstract

The Information Age cries out for education to be re-conceptualised, restructured and re-vitalised from its Industrial Age model. Information has become a tacit, taken-for-granted entity, which education has ignored. If education is to capitalise on the opportunities offered by the Information Age, many bold steps have to be taken. A novel course titled Information Search and Analysis Skills (ISAS) was developed, based on a specially designed monthly publication IT-Digest, to train thousands of students in ICT. The course offers students a mechanism by which the very subtle transformation from data to information to knowledge can be clearly understood and practised. The paradigm shift from teacher-driven to learner- driven follows, as an obvious consequence of course objectives. The paper converts this experience into a full proposal for a core-competency course on information literacy and information skills. Such a course has very wide implications, as it could also be made independent of subject area, cultural and language issues. © 2001 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.