Do you trust google? Thacker argues in “Are College Students Techno Idiots,” that students do not naturally acquire the ability to use, find, and analyze information. I must agree. As a college student, I have discovered that many of my peers rely on google and yahoo to find information. What happen to the use of scholarly articles or databases? In fact, many undergraduates are not familiar with journals or databases such as MLA or JSTOR…how sad? At FSU we are privileged to have a Research course in the English graduate department. This course teaches students how to narrow Internet searches and how to evaluate web sites.
I must admit, as an undergraduate I did not obtain the proper skills to find information. This is because of the classes I took. Often, my instructors informed us to only use the search results on the first page of google or another search engine, because they thought that anything after the first page would be too broad and inaccurate. Sounds silly right? This is what happens to undergrads. Because freshmen and sophomores are vulnerable, lazy, and in many cases naive, they actually believe this! I’m curious to know if any of the individuals evaluated in this study were graduate students….if so, then I guess undergrads aren’t the only individuals with the problem!
