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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.
Clearly this is posted by one of the studies subjects :-)
This goes well with my theory that over 50% of human beings are idiots.
*Most* people are terrible at critical reading. Just terrible.
For that matter, most people don't really like to read at all.
What's this article about ?
It's critical thinking skills.
This is nothing new. Decades of teaching to standardized tests and ignoring the thought process in favor of fact regurgitation has led to this.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Real conversation
Me: What program did you use to download all that pr0n?
Fellow Student: Windows 98
Me: Could you be a little more specific?
Student: Oh, Windows 98 SE
This stuff happens to me seemingly everyday. Don't even get me started on the argument I had with a CIS student over whether USB 2.0 is better than USB 1.1
Are College Students Techno Idiots?
If, by "college students," we mean "most college students," just like we mean "most people" when we ask, "are people techno idiots?"
Honestly, answers to a question like that, in this venue, are going to be so distorted by the abnormal slashdot nerd density as to be meaningless when talking about a wider demographic. My personal experience with most college students is that they are just as much in the "it's just magic, and it works" (as well as the "my computer is so slow! it won't even run the new free stuff I download any more!") camp as the average non-college-student person.
The "technical" stuff with which they're comfortable (as in, feel mastery thereof) are the dedicated-purpose devices that don't really let you hose them up (phones, cameras, simple MP3 players, etc). But they don't know how or why any of it works any more than they know how or why their car, their democracy, their adrenal glands, or the free WiFi at Panera works. And I'm not just talking about the liberal arts majors.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
As a result we developed an information literacy class that is a required component for taking a Distance Learning class, and it is of course contained within our (home grown) Distance Learning platform. If you have not passed IL, you can't get to any of your other classes.
Because we've got a home grown app, we were able to put in alot of specific things (how to submit an assignment, how to send an email to a specific address, how to upload a file, how to download a file and then find it again). It's the way of things. You can't blame the users if they are incompetent. You either have to ensure they are competent, or block them from using the system, and give them an opportunity to learn and demonstrate their competancy
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
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.
1. Isn't everything on see on the Internet true?
2. Google figures out everything you need to know anyway.
3. U mean thy use txt speech insted of reg typng on tsts?
---
In all seriousness, I'm not surprised by anything these days. I work for a two year college and there are programs that offer money to "college ready" high school students (no remedial work necessary) and there was a HS principal (this week) that when told about the program said, "none of our students would qualify, don't even bother to bring it up."
Why should these studies even worry about topics like this when students aren't even placing into 100/1000 level courses when they "graduate" high school?
This stuff happens to me seemingly everyday. Don't even get me started on the argument I had with a CIS student over whether USB 2.0 is better than USB 1.1
Which was better?
That's about right. I always see these news stories about the digital generation and generation myspace, etc, etc. They'll show some kid downloading music, chatting on AIM, going on myspace, and playing some game in flash on a website. The parents go on how great he can multitask and how great he is on the computer, blah, blah, blah.
The truth is, many kids just find a few things they really like and latch onto them. They don't really understand any sort of computing fundamentals. They understand how to go on AIM and myspace all day. When faced with a computer intensive task that relies on critical thinking and not just keystroke habits, they fall flat on their face.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Most people are great at critical reading, like me.
Firewire
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
I went to a school that ranks in the top five on Wired's Most Wired Campuses list. I work for a company that builds advanced computer systems with capabilities far beyond the average joe's imagination. Since my youngest days I have been surrounded by computers and technologically astute people. All of these intelligent people with vast amounts knowledge and experience yet, when it comes to things like emails, I get nothing but urban legends and forwards, even after I debunk thier tripe with snopes.com. If they need to find something on the internet, they ask me for help.
I think the problem lies not in comprehension ability but in the ability to ask the right question to get what you want. The way people are taught to solve problems in school affects how they solve problems in life. It doesn't help any that so few students actually grasp the idea behind problem solving and even less are any good at actually doing it. Most people see a problem that has a solution or a question that has an answer. If they don't get the right solution, they immediatly think that there is something wrong with that question or problem or how they worked it out. They waste time and energy trying to find thier mistake. In reality, the first thing that should be taught is if you are asking a question and not getting the answer you expected, maybe you are not asking the right question.
To illustrate the point, working in IT, I, like many others, have had an opportunity at one point to have the luxury of operating a help desk hotline. What fun! The most tedious part is getting the clueless user on the other end to get you the information you need to solve thier problem and send them on thier blissfully merry way. I cannot count the number of times I asked a question that seemed entirely sane to me only to recieve the most insane answer from the user that I never expected. At first I would be frustrated and blame the user and bring in to question thier level of intelligence. Eventually I learned that it might not be the user...or anybody for that matter. There is a communication break down because of different realms of knowledge relating to both parties involved. For me to get the answers I needed, I had to find creative ways to rephrase the question. I asked numerous users the same questions 9 different ways from Sunday and very few actually figured out that I asked the same question over and over again, just in a way to shift the focus of the question to get the right detail I needed in an answer.
Search engines work much the same way. If you didn't get the results you wanted, rephrase the search terms or change the priority of the terms in the search string. The same principle can be applied to questioning the validity of a website. Unfortunatly, this way of dealing with a problem is not taught at school. It is also unfortunate that it would be difficult to do so without real world application. The fact that so few actually eventually pick it up later in life is a testament to the idea that there something fundamentally wrong with how we teach and develop problem solving skills at an earlier age than college. These kids should be entering higher education with the foundations of these skills already laid. If they were, there wouldn't be these cognitive problem solving issues.
Yes, that's really what they call the benchmark tests, though it stands for "Standards Of Learning". They are terrific at determining how much "trivia" (for lack of a better term) can be memorized by children, and regurgitated on a test. It's gotten so bad that SOL preparation takes up a substantial portion of the learning year. I have a colleague who moved here from NY around the middle of last year, and his kids nearly flunked several of their subjects. The reason was SOL based teaching - much of it is Virginia-history specific, apparently, and having spent 4-6 years in New York schools (which, apparently, are not part of the Great State of Virginia) did not know the minutiae taught here in order to pass the standard learning tests. This year they're doing great, having had the opportunity to memorize the appropriate facts from day one. This is not the kind of learning that will benefit these kids when they enter the real world.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
So, for Computer Science/IT/MIS majors, I'd recommend the following -
Everyone who listens to techno is an idiot.
Oh wait, you meant the OTHER techno
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
USB 1.1 obviously, since it's "full speed" and usb 2.0 is "hi speed". USB 2.0 may be hi speed so its better than USB 1.0, but full speed is the best because you can't go any faster than full speed.
Well DUH!!!
When you "persuade" someone, "irrelevant points" are useful if they can be used to emotionally "persuade" someone.
You see this all the time in political discussions.
The problems with "testing" people is that the people who write the tests have their own biases and opinions about what is "better" or "bad". And since they write the tests, their opinions are naturally considered to be more "correct" than the people they're testing.
I'll point us back to a couple of /. posts.
1 7/0342224
First, Nature found that people judge websites in a few milliseconds:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/
Then Harvard and Cal find that phishing works because people judge too much on the visual presentation:
http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/03/30/1556226.shtml
Now we see that people are poor judges of content. Quite close to A + B = C.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
..of Warcraft. This is not anything surprising, and is not limited to those tubes on the internets. As people are constantly bombarded with spin or outright falsification, it becomes increasingly difficult to actually discern what is legitimate, objective information from what is not. Mass media constantly and actively subverts peoples' critical reasoning skills in order to convince them to buy an item or believe a statement based on limited or dubious claims. They purposely subvert and abuse data in order to create pseudo-scientific claims of validity. Corporations and political parties are especially guilty of this. But it extends much deeper when fundamental research is compromised in an effort to build data for a claim. Think tanks, R&D labs, and even research units at universities are often funded by organizations with an inherent conflicting interest in the objective conclusions of the research conducted. With so many competing and conflicting claims of validity, the decision to be an idiot is a rational statement on utility. When actually getting to the bottom of some claim, weighing evidence on multiple sides, and making judgements on their validity becomes excessively time-consuming or difficult, it is much easier and better to just go along for the ride. Everyone does this, to a certain degree. You have to find some source of information that is trusted, since it is impossible to independently verify every claim you see. But outside of incredibly boring peer-reviewed scientific journals that often bear little impact on peoples' daily lives, almost every other source of information from CNN to Fox News can have significant questions of trustworthiness, bias, or objectivity raised against it. It's almost miraculous when people can work out ingenious ways to actually wade through all of the crap with any degree of success at all, such as Google searches or Wikipedia. Make no mistake, civilization and progress are intimately connected to the ability for mankind to learn. Truth is under a relentless unresting attack by organized interests. - Reality has a well-known liberal bias. Stephen Colbert
Are you sure? I've heard that this 1394 thing is better.
Your comment got me thinking about something. I, too -- as well as most others here on Slashdot, I'd expect -- just "figured out" the internet, and most things about computers and technology in general.
However, I think that we had some motivation to. At least I did -- I was curious about the internet, and what information (insert porn joke here) I could find on it. So I figured out how to use it.
I suspect that a lot of people out there, have never really had any burning desire to use the internet to accomplish some task that wasn't trivial. Thus, they've never bothered to figure it out. I doubt they're completely incompetent, if they wanted to do it; they just don't care.
It reminds me of a (much) younger brother of mine, who was never much into computers. At about the same age that I started getting interested in technology, he found other hobbies. He knew where the power switch was on his iMac, but that was about it. When he wanted to look something up on the Internet, he'd usually just ask or call me, and I'd research it and send him back some results. When I started working and moved further away, it wasn't practical to do this anymore. The last time I went back and spent some time with him, he was significantly better at doing internet research. Not only that, but he had figured out how to install software, access technical forums and ask the right questions when it didn't work, and generally troubleshoot. He'd even bought and installed a new hard drive and RAM, and set up a WLAN and shared printer (by finding and following the right HOWTO-type articles). While it might seem trivial to the Slashdot crowd, this isn't bad for a casual computer user.
This was somebody who I had basically written off as so incompetent at anything electronic or mechanical, that he'd be a hazard to himself. (And in truth, later I found out that he had hosed his system more than once in the learning process.) But when there wasn't someone there to ask questions of, or do research for him, he had a reason to figure it out. And he did.
Sometimes you have to let people fail and learn on their own, if they're ever going to succeed at all.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This is not anything surprising, and is not limited to those tubes on the internets. As people are constantly bombarded with spin or outright falsification, it becomes increasingly difficult to actually discern what is legitimate, objective information from what is not.
Mass media constantly and actively subverts peoples' critical reasoning skills in order to convince them to buy an item or believe a statement based on limited or dubious claims. They purposely subvert and abuse data in order to create pseudo-scientific claims of validity. Corporations and political parties are especially guilty of this.
But it extends much deeper when fundamental research is compromised in an effort to build data for a claim. Think tanks, R&D labs, and even research units at universities are often funded by organizations with an inherent conflicting interest in the objective conclusions of the research conducted.
With so many competing and conflicting claims of validity, the decision to be an idiot is a rational statement on utility. When actually getting to the bottom of some claim, weighing evidence on multiple sides, and making judgements on their validity becomes excessively time-consuming or difficult, it is much easier and better to just go along for the ride.
Everyone does this, to a certain degree. You have to find some source of information that is trusted, since it is impossible to independently verify every claim you see. But outside of incredibly boring peer-reviewed scientific journals that often bear little impact on peoples' daily lives, almost every other source of information from CNN to Fox News can have significant questions of trustworthiness, bias, or objectivity raised against it.
It's almost miraculous when people can work out ingenious ways to actually wade through all of the crap with any degree of success at all, such as Google searches or Wikipedia. Make no mistake, civilization and progress are intimately connected to the ability for mankind to learn. Truth is under a relentless unresting attack by organized interests.
- Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
Stephen Colbert
The link says the test's reliability is .88. At least they give a definition: that's the correlation between results on multiple administrations of the test. So a critical reader will ask what in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster that has to do with anything normal people call "reliability".
Then you have to ask, if college students can't judge the objectivity and authority of a web site, how can the test administrators do it?
For that matter, I could have some recursive fun with the parent post. If realmolo will promise to take it as a joke and not an attack:
o How is "terrible" defined? Is it a relative or absolute measurement and how is it assessed?
o How many is "most"? "Most" out of what sample? How were their numbers counted or estimated?
o What's the chain of transmission between measurements of critical reading and the parent post? Did the parent refer to primary sources?
And that's what you can do to a statement that your own experience confirms (mine sure does).
Reading everything critically can leave you feeling like you were dropped on this planet by mistake and don't belong here.
"Ours is a high and lonely destiny".
I taught technology at a middle school for a year, unfortunately... I remember spending a few days trying to teach them how to really use a search engine. The general idea was that you should:
We also went over how search engines work, and I taught them to think of words that would appear on a page that held the answer they were looking for. For instance, if the question is, "How much does the moon weigh?" then you might search for the word "tons" -- even though it's not in the actual question, it would certainly be in the answer.
I thought they had it, so I made up a list of questions and let them loose on Google. And what did they do, after all that? They typed the entire question, verbatim, into the search engine box.
Most of them were also unable to distinguish ads from actual content; they would click on them indiscriminately. The fake error box ads got them every time. And it wasn't for lack of experience; some of them spent just as much time on the Internet as I did, but still they had no mental filters.
On the other hand, they were extremely good at finding all kinds of inappropriate content. We used to have races - they would look at as many dirty-joke-skateboarding-crash-video-rap-artist-bi o-flash-game-and-other-Internet-crapware sites as they could, and I would monitor the router logs and block sites as fast as I could manage. It kept me pretty busy, but by the end of the year I had a great blacklist.
I would expect this kind of competency from middle schoolers, but by college you should know better. If you can write an English paper, you should be able to think critically enough about a topic to Google it effectively.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
to users the UI is the system.
or more broadly, what they can see is the system.
For her intentions, the most probabaly correct answer is yes.
Technically correct? no. Is it correct for practical purposes? yes.
At least she grasped it was something outside her computer.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I find that they're favoring Emo and Rap these days. Techno is so twentieth century.
It doesn't compare to i.Link, though. I hear that beats both of those.
I'm 13, and most kids I have spoken to think that Microsoft Windows is the only operating system that exists. Its sad really, how they think that they are computer experts. Replying to what someone said before, I agree that kids don't know much about the computer and the Internet. If they knew about effective Web design, they wouldn't use Myspace anymore.
I think the problem lies with the schools. In my school, students don't learn about the computer, they just learn about how to use programs. The students don't learn about how a computer works, or the computer's parts. If you ask them basic computer/Internet questions (and I have), they won't know the answers. Many of them don't even know how to protect their PCs from computer virii, malware, worms, and the likes, let alone know about the parts of a computer.