The building of online learning does not only draw on the writing of textbooks and contents on websites and in digital libraries. Every so often, faculty members include what is known as “gray” or “fugitive” literature. These are informational and unstructured contents that are not part of the official vetted literature in a domain field.

Not in the Official Record

The items of a fugitive literature involve meeting notes, drafts, unpublished photos, unpublished drafts, policy statements, research data sets, research journals, and reports. What to use of these contents really depends on the faculty member(s) and the subject matter expert(s). They are the ones to formally uphold professional standards in the inclusion of relevant information in the learning.

Authentication for the Learners

Learners, though, do need proper representations of the origins of the information. They will need to know the provenance of the data. If different research methods were applied, how valid were the methodologies? How strong and significant were the results? If there are uncertainties to the information, it may help to qualify the data. It would help to include the proper metadata to that digital object—for proper indexing and searchability. (This assumes that the organizing formal ontologies used are broad enough to accommodate the relevant informal information.)

Learners may also want to know how that information relates to other established information in the field. How does the data stand up to cross-referencing and triangulation? If research was conducted, what standards were applied, and were those standards sufficient to support the standards drawn?

Highly Influential

If the gray literature is unduly influencing—by being inflammatory or unsupported or affective—then it’s important to contextualize this information even further, to cushion its effects. (This is assuming that the faculty is sure he or she wants to include this type of information.)

The varied nature of this “gray” literature suggests the importance of strong sifting work…to ensure that what is used is as solid as possible and as accurately described as possible, for all learners. The descriptions here would include expert annotations to show the relevance of this unstructured contents. And ideally, what is unofficial may become official with a little more work by the SMEs to get the unstructured data into the literature.