Shawne Miksa said:
"Undergraduates---coming in at age 18, having grown up using the Internet and the Web--are hard pressed when it comes to distinguishing a reliable source of information from an unreliable ('free and easy' or not) source. The fact that it comes from the Web seems to be good enough. Of course, there are many variables working here, especially what education they received and where they received it."
There's an interesting recent Educause study that found that undergraduates consider themselves to be skilled when it comes to using the Internet to find reliable information (the study involved roughly 30,000 undergrads). Here's an excerpt:
"In this year’s survey, ECAR once again asked three survey questions about information literacy derived from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) ‘Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education'...Results show that, overall, respondents considered themselves quite savvy Internet users...Eight out of 10 students (80%) were very confident in their ability to search the Internet effectively and efficiently; almost half (45.1%) rated themselves very skilled, and another third (34.9%) rated themselves as experts. Although students’ assessment of their ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of online information and to understand related ethical and legal issues is lower, overall ratings were still high".
Here's some info extracted from Table 4-5 of the report:
* When asked to assess their use of the Internet to effectively and efficiently search for information the students rated themselves at 4.12 on a five point scale.
* When asked to assess their ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of online sources of information the students rated themselves at 3.66 on a five point scale.
(Scale: 1 = not at all skilled; 2 = not very skilled; 3 = fairly skilled; 4 = very skilled; 5 = expert)
So, they see themselves as "very skilled" at locating info on the Internet, and closer to "very skilled" than to "fairly skilled" when it comes to evaluating the reliability and credibility of the info they find.
Bernie Sloan
Received on Mon Oct 26 2009 - 12:04:04 EDT