Brainstorming - facilitating a lost skill

Why can't today's students brainstorm? See "Sparking a Brainstorm: Getting Students Organized" by Theresa Westbrock from the LOEX Quarterly (Summer 2009, vol. 36 no. 2). LOEX (Library Orientation Exchange) is a great organization for academic librarians who teach students information literacy skills. Their 38th annual conference was last this month.

QUOTE - "One could argue that the Web can take the place of brainstorming . . . they were used to letting the hyperlinks lead the way."

Thoughts on Brainstorming:

• Students have difficulties brainstorming due to their online search habits
• Brainstorming teaches students to pose better questions, the type with purpose and that lead to thought organization
• Brainstorming helps students slow down the research process
• Brainstorming helps students learn to care about the whole process, including finding quality resources
• By facilitating brainstorming librarians encourage higher levels of information literacy than merely finding the resources***

***See the ACRL Information Literacy Standards) Instead of merely developing the student's ability to access needed information effectively and efficiently (Standard 2) we can look at Info Lit Standard 1.1b & 1.1e (1.1b=Develops a thesis statement and formulates questions based on the information need & 1.1e=Identifies key concepts and terms that describe the information need.