Information Skills

A future Industrial Engineer needs to develop a critical attitude and be able to build an argument based on different perspectives. Therefore, he/she need to combine information from different sources. Finding and processing (scientific) information as a professional skill refers to the capacity to find efficiently, and evaluate, select, and use information ethically (in other words called ‘information skills’). Related to these information skills, students need to learn several aspects: (a) to identify a need for information; (b) to translate a need for information to an information demand; (c) to identify suitable information sources and comparing them to assess their value; (d) to apply necessary technology (searching available repositories); (e) to select, process, and integrate founded information with already existing knowledge; and (f) to constantly evaluate each step in the process. Then, every time it is determined what the next step can be, and – at the end of the found information – if it really leads to satisfying the information needs. Besides that, students need to learn using appropriate referencing standards.

• Student has insight in the how and why of searching, using and evaluating scientific information;
• Student has insight in how search methods can be incorporated in scientific research;
• Student has knowledge of the publication cycle, of the meaning of citations in scientific literature and of primary and secondary sources of information.

• Student is able to use scholarly databases in an efficient and effective manner to perform a thorough literature search.
• Student is able to evaluate the retrieved publications on relevance, quality and citations.

• Student is able to use scientific databases to find information in an efficient and effective way.
• Student understands how to determine the quality and relevance of search results.
• Student is able to transform relevant search results into citations in a desired style.
• Student shows scientific integrity and is able to prevent plagiarism.
• Student knows when and how publications of others should be paraphrased or cited.
• Student is able to use reference management software for scientific literature.