Most College Students Unable to Properly Use Search Engines

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16 points·jtbigwoo··7 comments

I really love the phrase "not that good at the Internet." I use terms like that in jest. Sometimes I wonder if we're creating a Warhammer 40,000 like world where high priests use incantations passed down for generations on machines so fantastically complex the knowledge of their construction has been lost for a thousand years.

Then i realize editors are lazy, and move on.

Warhammer 40,000? Surely you meant to reference Isaac Asimov's Foundation? ;)

"most college students".... as defined by the outcome of a 30 student sample at one university.

I'm uncomfortable with the notion that there is a "proper" way to use a search engine. It seems like we should design search engines based upon our audience's behavior.

There may not be a "proper" way to use a search engine, but there are certainly effective and ineffective ways of using a search engine, with "effective" being defined as finding a relevant, factual answer to the question you were trying to answer.

And search engines are already designed based on these people's behavior: since many people tend to click on the first link, search engines put sponsored links at the top. Note, however, that this design is meant to optimize the revenue of the search engine company, not to help the users (who are not paying customers).

The website of the project generating these results: http://www.erialproject.org/

The main takeaway should be "students have a hard time finding good sources because researchers hide their articles behind layers of unintuitive interfaces that finally bring you to a broken link."

Ah, here it is: http://www.erialproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/ACRL-...

Ish. PP presentation with no data.

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