shoe writes “
This story thanks to AP via Yahoo!:
Online Research Worries Many Educators… as well it should. Read on, LISNewsters…
…Bruckman and other educators grapple daily with the challenge of ensuring their students have good skills for discerning the truth. Professors and librarians say many come to college without any such skills, and quite a few leave without having acquired them.
My favorite quote:
Excuse me, where would I get a book?
“
So, why not require a variety of resources?
I can’t believe I’m old enough to start making “back in my day…” comments, but–
When I was in jr high (sixth, seventh, and eighth grade) we were commonly assigned papers that requied us to use a variety of resources: “Write a paper on X, using at least two periodical references, one book reference, and no more than one encyclopedia reference” (in the pre-google days when the encyclopedia still held the crown as the ultimate cop-out.)
The point of the papers we wrote in middle school was not just to learn about the subject of the paper, but also to learn about using a variety of resourcesWhenever I hear complaints about students “just googling for” all their paper research, I wonder why more schools/teachers/professors don’t use this simple solution.
This doesn’t solve the problem of critical analysis of resources, but being familiar with a variety of information sources and having to use them is the first step. Then you can see when they disagree, and ask yourself why.