Info-Chase Capacity

From my grade seven teacher remembering me as "oh, you were the curious one" to a now-retired BU staff person commenting "here comes Curious George", I seem to be experienced by others as having an active curiosity. To me, it is just normal. I want to understand.

I have had an strong autodidactic approach to my learning but have also pursued a rich formal academic life. It is not surprising that I expressed an interest in doing an interdisciplinary Masters in Research Methods at the University of Manitoba fifteen years ago but was advised against it as not being do-able. I see now that the University of Bedford offers just such a degree as one route to Ph.D. work.

Perhaps it is for the best that such a degree in research methods was unavailable, because it might well have kept me from realizing that "info-chase" is one of my five tactical capacities, not a main occupational focus for me. Nevertheless, I do seek to professionally develop my operational tools for work, and such a degree would doubtless have turbo-boosted my capacity in that area.

I find that the Internet with its search capacities is an excellent development in the past few years. I continue to develop my search capacity using this tool, and am delighted when new features are developed or discovered. Being able to participate in the general sharing of information and leads to resources by way of such web sites as this one is an important part of my learning as well, as it keeps the flow going, and prevents the clogging up of the outlet with a subsequent backing up of the inlet.

Handling the overwhelming quantity of information is a challenge to most of us who deal with it on a daily basis. I have found that a new technique adapted from ____/s excellent book How To Read A Book[] has assisted me in this area. For two years I have been

• "scanning" books and articles and recording both their basic reference information and my initial assessment of the item.
• coding and ranking the items as to their personal value and potential use to me
• entering the titles, codes and ranking onto my database for easy sorting and priorizing

This process has enabled me to concentrate on the "cream" of the literature in an area I am working in, without wasting time on secondary material. It also enables me to gain an introductory level understanding of a wide assortment of literature, much of which I would never have otherwise been exposed to. New material is integrated into my reading agenda, as well as books suggested by other collogues, in a way that keeps me from getting sidetracked yet prevents me from being closed to new material. Being a slow reader, I have to be selective in what I read.

Paradigm Pioneering , which is such a large part of my activity, has a large "info chase" component to it as well. In this case it is a recursive sue of a research flow model for the purpose of articulating a procedural rule-set for a given paradigm, usually in the course of a problem solving task related to the "ditch pushing" or "community animation" capacities I utilize in my work.