Data, Information, Intelligence
During the course I had sometimes the feeling that data and information were mixed.
In the military there is an intelligence directorate (J2), which has the task to analyse the environment (terrain, enemy etc.).
Here data is symbols or facts out of context; thus it is not directly or immediately meaningful. It is completely unprocessed. Information is data that is placed in some sort of interpretive context, thus acquiring at least some meaning and value; but it’s not yet processed. Intelligence results from puting information in an actual context, processing it.
Armin,
This is a great point and one that we instructors need to remember as we do our instructional planning. We need to put our content into units that are sequenced and make sense to the learners. When we do this their content retention will increase and learning will be accelerated.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
I have discussed this in other forums as well. I do a fair amount of lab in my course and the collecting of data as it is described by Armin, is the easy part for most students. It is the questions about that data which seek to confirm they have analyzed the data and even come to some sort of conclusion about it that really is a struggle. The best method I have found to train students to analyze is to start with the most basic conclusions they could make about the data and slowly increase the complexity of the questions. Eventually most either come to a diagnosis or at the least we identify where their weakness is.
