A little bit broken, a little bit perfect

Another column about the information literacy movement and how it doesn’t work in the current academic environment. From the column:



Certainly, it is too simplistic to argue that all students need is Google and an Internet connection to complete a research project that passes academic muster. However, are offline critical thinking skills so very different from online critical thinking skills? Students will always need to be able to identify the presence of misinformation or to identify the characteristics of ‘reputable’ or ‘reliable’ documents and to isolate and understand bias. This is called “understanding,” and it’s not something that one course can teach or one test can measure.

February 1, 2005 by Uncategorized 2

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2 Responses

  1. kmhess says:
    February 2, 2005 at 8:29 am

    Speaking of which…
    I find it humorous that this was in Tech Central Station; when I think of ‘presence of misinformation’ TCS comes to mind. Yet I found this article to be ‘reputable’ or ‘reliable’. Perhaps my information literacy is not as high as I thought!

    Reply
  2. opaqueentity says:
    February 2, 2005 at 9:34 pm

    Google is great but…
    It’s amazing how many young, savvy students and scientists let alone the more crusty ones just don’t know how to formulate a query, or look beyond major keywords, or they only ever look at the first page of hits.

    They might be able to assess the works validity no problem but they have to find it first.

    These skills are in those, like us, who have been trained or who have learned through experience but seem to be lacking in many people today.
    I don’t mind, it’s great being able to dazzle people and know how to find things better than anyone else.

    Reply

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