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Are College Students Techno Idiots?
ict_geek writes "Are college students techno idiots? Despite the inflammatory headline, Inside Higher Ed asks an interesting question. The article refers to a recent study by ETS, which analyzed results from 6,300 students who took its ICT Literacy Assessment. The findings show that students don't know how to judge the authoritativeness or objectivity of web sites, can't narrow down an overly broad search, and can't tailor a message to a particular audience. Yikes. According to the article: 'when asked to select a research statement for a class assignment, only 44 percent identified a statement that captured the assignment's demands. And when asked to evaluate several Web sites, 52 percent correctly assessed the objectivity of the sites, 65 percent correctly judged for authority, and 72 percent for timeliness. Overall, 49 percent correctly identified the site that satisfied all three criteria.'" If they are, they're not the only ones.
Parent.modpoints++;
Most people I know here (Suburban NY) refuse to read any work aside from 'executive' summaries & Cliff notes. I write techincal papers for a living; I would say a good 90% read the first page (the afore mentioned 'executive' summary) and proceed to fire off questions about what is covered in the other 99% of the document. We intentionally write in 'lay man''s' terms to avoid talking over many people, yet they refuse to read anything more than the first 1 - 2 pages. We have purposfully tested this idea with writing the first five pages in english, then filing in the rest with either technobable from a Markov Generator or pages from lipsum. Although this was an unimportant document, only one person actually asked what the rest of the document ment. Ouch. It's a good thing that I don't have to stay if layed off by a decent program (since that could easily generate a two page summary for these idiots).