library+instruction+technology

I now have an answer (kind of…sort of) to one of the questions I posed back in April when talking about Second Life.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has released a study on home broadband adoption in the US. Pew reports that 47% of US adults have broadband at home. We still don't know if these are fat tubes or skinny tubes running into houses around the country. That would be interesting data that may exist. I haven't really looked for it.

There are certain demographic categories for households with broadband and it shouldn't come as a surprise. "In particular, broadband penetration remains high among Americans ages 18-49, those with annual household incomes over $75,000 and college graduates." These people tend to also live in urban (52%) or suburban (49%) areas.  (p.4)

Hat tip to Stephen Abram. 

The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a new research report today on Wikipedia's popularity (complete PDF).

You are more likely to use Wikipedia if you are male (39%), 18-29 (44%), a college graduate (50%), or make more than $75,000 a year (42%). Wikipedia has 24% share of traffic of the top 20 educational web sites. Google Scholar comes in at number 6, Google Book Search at number 7, and the National Library of Medicine (I guess PubMed) at number 9.

I don't think we're doing a good job promoting the electronic library resources available at the state level, like the Ohio Web Library. Anyone in Ohio with a public library card can get instant access to a bunch of EBSCO databases, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a lot more.

As easy as that is to say, we all know what the real issue is though. The reason Wikipedia gets so much use is due to the fact that it is dead simple to discover via search. The Pew report points out that Wikipedia articles have a high number of in bound links. Therefore, they display near the top of Google results thanks to the PageRank algorithm. 

The latest edition of the Horizon Report is now available for your browsing/reading pleasure. This is a joint publication from The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. The technologies forecasted along with their time to adoption include:

• user created content (1 year or less),
• social networking (1 year or less),
• mobile phones (2 to 3 years),
• virtual worlds (2 to 3 years),
• new scholarship and emerging forms of publication (4 to 5 years), and
• massively multiplayer educational gaming (4 to 5 years)

The executive summary identifies several trends and challenges impacting higher education. "Information literacy increasingly should not be considered a given." [page 4] I agree with this statement, but would like to know who really considers information literacy a given in the first place? We try our best to teach students how to use our resources, but we know we don't reach everyone and even the ones we do reach are not always receptive to learning because it's all free on the web anyway.

The authors continue, "Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the information literacy skills of new students are not improving as the post-1993 Internet boomlet enters college." [page 4] Yep. The continual challenge we face is helping our students straddle the digital and analog worlds during information research. We are also challenged to help faculty understand that their students do not approach research the same way that they did 10-20 years ago when they were in college.

I enjoy reading/browsing this report. However, I am always concerned about how I can really apply any of these technologies locally.

The 2006 ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology is available for your browsing/reading pleasure. Almost all (94%) students surveyed use the library's online resources/web site and most use these resources monthly. (page 44) Students studying in the social sciences and the humanities have the strongest skills using online library resources. (page 51) Almost three quarters (73.9%) of students think that the use of information technology in their courses improves their ability to do research. (page 77) 

Additional factoids on student skill level when using online library resources (page 49-50):

• 1 in 10 students (9.4%) never use or rarely use online library resources
• 46.9% of students use only basic features
• 43.7% of students use advanced features and these students are probably Seniors and studying in the social sciences
• 43.9% of Seniors use the basic features of online library resources compared to 52.8% of Freshmen
• 50% of Seniors use the advanced features of online library resources compared to 36.9% of Freshman

The most revealing, not surprising, and disturbing thing I noticed while browsing the report is the undergraduate student quote appearing directly under the title of Chapter 6, Information Technology and the Student Academic Experience. "I no longer have to go to the library for research and carry books home. Now, I have the world of knowledge at my fingertips."

It's true that academic libraries are spending huge amounts of money to provide access to as much electronic content as possible for student and faculty use. Librarians are all too aware of the real cost of providing this access. Librarians also are quite aware that our students, faculty, administration, and state legislators don't fully grok the costs involved with delivering content to the desktop/laptop.

The more troubling part of the quote is the implied concept of having access to everything at the desktop/laptop. The student does not realize how little content he or she can access. The student will never realize this because he or she has no need to go to the library and interact with a librarian. It's all right there "at my fingertips."

I realize this is conjecture, but based on observation and conversation I'm confident that my speculations are valid. I also suspect that most administrators (outside the library) believe that the "world of knowledge" is readily available on the desktop/laptop and that library budgets are more than adequate to provide access to that "world of knowledge."

Okay, I'm done preaching to the choir. The report contains a lot more information on student usage of technology. So, make sure to take a look at it if you have a chance.

A post over on Search Engine Land comments on a recent eye tracking study of MSN Search conducted by Edward Cutrell of Microsoft and Zhiwei Guan of University of Washington. The survey sample was very small (18 people) but draws some interesting conclusions.

On a post survey questionnaire the participants highly agreed to the statement, “I expect the information I'm looking for to be in the top five results." ( page 8 ) This isn't surprising to anyone working in an academic library. However, it does support the challenge we have in helping our students understand the difference in how a search engine executes a search and presents results compared to a library research database. If this report had a larger sample size and showed the same result, it would definitely support the current discussion and practice of Googlizing research databases.

Cutrell and Guan also conclude that "users trust the search engine more for informational search or invest less scrutiny in judging the results with higher rankings." ( page 8 ) I know that students do not critically evaluate content. I have observed students selecting one of the first five results on numerous occasions. I am still not sure how to convince students to break this bad habit. Once again, this is nothing new but it does support observations and current discussions on the need for students to develop better critical thinking and evaluation skills.

Steven Bell wrote about the National Freshman Attitudes Report on The Kept Up Academic Librarian. The report is based on an attitudinal survey administered in the fall to 97,626 first years as they arrived on campus by Noel-Levitz. Questions asked about intellectual interest show that:

• 57% feel that books have helped them grow intellectually or creatively
• 47% derive a lot of satisfaction from reading
• 40% don't like to read scholarly materials and only do so when required
• 40% do not take any pleasure in reading books 
• Students at 4 year private IHEs had slightly better attitudes than students at 4 year public IHEs
• Female students had better attitudes than male students 

The Pew Research Center for People and the Press has released a new report on Millennials attitudes, A Portrait of "Generation Next": How Young People View Their Lives, Futures and Politics. They are defining Generation Next to be those born between 1981 and 1988. The data comes from a survey conducted in September 2006 and from data collected in earlier polling.  The report includes comparisons with polling of previous generations to show how attitudes are shifting over time.

The uniqueness of this report is the compilation of technology and social software usage data with their views on their lifestyle, politics, religion, and social issues. Some of the findings include:

• 80% talk to their parents daily and 75% see their parents weekly
• 50% have modified their body with a tattoo or piercing
• 20% have little or nothing to do with religion
• 33% pay attention to politics "most of the time"
• 48% identify as Democratic Party and 35% as Republicans
• 40% feel that as a citizen they have a "duty" to vote
• 23% read the newspaper
• 67% feel that immigration is good for the country
• 74% support privatizing Social Security [They obviously didn't loose their 401K when the Internet bubble burst a few years back...]
• 47% support gay marriage