Knowledge-based societies – and e-learning

The new, dual professionalism for librarians requires us to be teachers. My goal in taking courses on globalization and adult learning is to establish a knowledge-base in pedagogies, and to bring that knowledge to my information literacy efforts. Search is affected by global change which I have written about <a href=”http://migrator.rab.olt.ubc.ca/googlescholar/2006/08/Glocalization-in-Search—Is-this-Search-2.0?/”>here, and here, and here.

My goal during my 2007 sabbatical is to understand emerging knowledge-based societies, and their implications for learning. Some of the specific research goals that I plan to pursue:

– To read widely about post-industrial digital and knowledge-based societies;
– To understand how new e-information and technologies create learning opportunities for all, despite varying resources, geographies, cultures, economies and religio-political affiliations of participants;
– To research how radical, new forms of social software can be used to create new forms of learning, and hence knowledge;
– To research and write about open-access publishing (and search) to improve evidence-based medicine;
– To contextualize knowledge to inform my teaching, and professional practice.