Jakob Nielsen, widely recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on website usability, usually addresses content and interface design issues in his Alertbox columns. In a recent column however, he provided some rather different advice for educators. Too often, he claimed, students are taught how to use specific versions of software. That’s certainly important for enabling students to use software to complete course assignments. The problem, pointed out Nielsen, is that instructors need to spend more time on deeper conceptual skills about computing both for when they enter the workforce and 10 to 15 years beyond that. He said:

Teaching life-long computer skills in our schools offers further benefit in that it gives students insights that they’re unlikely to pick up on their own. In contrast, as software gets steadily easier to use, anyone will be able to figure out how to draw a pie chart. People will learn how to use features on their own, when they need them — and thus have the motivation to hunt for them. It’s the conceptual things that get endlessly deferred without the impetus of formal education.

Where this column gets even more interesting is when he discusses search engines and information retrieval. If we can agree that search is going to change significantly in the next 10 years, then the value of teaching students how to formulate good search strategies, how to judge search results relevancy, and how to be adept at using multiple search engines that offer different technical features is going to be critical knowledge for today’s students. For students, these skills transcend knowing which search engine offers a certain feature or how to manipulate the search buttons. Temple University librarians are experts in understanding how electronic research systems, both the many commercial subscription databases provided by the library and free internet search engines, function and their underlying mechanics. They are knowledgeable about the appropriate conceptual skills needed to obtain high quality research results with these resources. We encourage faculty to seek out our subject expert librarians for assistance in developing assignments that will help students to build the critical conceptual research skills that will take them through their college years and well into their time in the workplace. –Steven Bell

Many New York Times readers were disappointed when the Times took away free access to editorials and commentaries and converted this content into the subscription-only TimesSelect. Well those of us who attend and work at higher education institutions are getting a break from the Times. They recently announced that as of March 13 students and faculty with an “edu” email address would be eligible to get free access to TimesSelect. From the press release:

Beginning on March 13, subscriptions to TimesSelect will be available for free to all registered college students and faculty with a .edu in their e-mail addresses. TimesSelect is NYTimes.com’s paid offering that provides exclusive access to 22 columnists of The Times and the International Herald Tribune as well as an array of other services, including access to The Times’s archives, advance previews of various sections and tools for tracking and storing news and information. Current student subscribers will receive pro-rated refunds for their previously paid subscriptions. College students interested in registering for free TimesSelect subscriptions should go towww.nytimes.com/university for more information.

Since the registration form provides options for only students or faculty, this does leave some questions for the rest of us. Are computer services, library, writing center, and other institutional personnel eligible for the complimentary access to TimesSelect? What about alumni who may have an institutional email address from the .edu domain? So far there is no word from the Times on these matters, so for now it may be best to review the registration information when deciding how to proceed.

While having access to the current editorials and commentaries is a tremendous benefit to faculty and students, we recommend that when you need to search the archives of the New York Times you use the library’s version of the archive rather than the Times’ own version (now also being made freely available to faculty and students). The ProQuest Historical Newspaper database offers the full-text of the New York Times from 1851 through 2003. Not only is the search system more robust and functional than the Times’ own interface, but the ProQuest version offers more text, such as classified advertisements. In addition, the Times has placed limits on the number of documents that can be retrieved from the archive. There are no limits for Temple faculty and students when using the Library’s ProQuest Historical Newspaper database.

–Steven Bell

Successful online information searches result from a combination of factors: matching the right online resource to the search topic; the searcher’s previous experience; knowledge of the subject; getting good advice from a librarian. Add to these the importance of choosing the appropriate search terms. The challenge, especially for students, is that it’s difficult to know the full range of terms used to describe any single topic. Choose the wrong term or exclude an important one from the search, and the results can be a vast misrepresentation of actual content on the topic.

In a recent column, web content consultant Gerry McGovern provided some interesting information from communications expert Frank Luntz. Luntz points out that as we modernize as a culture, some of our terms go out of fashion. Using the older terms can result in missing important, timelier information. For example, consider these words that have been replaced by newer ones:

WAS: Used car — IS NOW: Pre-owned vehicle
WAS: Secretary — IS NOW: Administrative assistant
WAS: Housewife — IS NOW: Stay-at-home-mom
WAS: Stewardess — IS NOW: Flight attendant
WAS: Waiter/Waitress — IS NOW: Server

McGovern adds some interesting data to make a point about how we choose our search terms. He writes:

According to Overture, in December 2006, 730,958 people searched for “used car,” while only 949 searched for “pre-owned vehicle.” Nearly 73,000 people searched for “housewife” (122,000 searched for “desperate housewife”), while only 43 searched for stay-at-home-mom. Over 30,000 searched for “gay marriage” while 19,000 searched for “same-sex marriage” (and what about “civil union”).

From the librarian’s perspective, this would reinforce that effective search results, whether you are using an Internet search engine or a library database requires broad conceptualizing about the variant terms that may be used to describe any single search subject. Using an outdated term or missing an obvious synonymous term can have a huge impact on the outcome of one’s search results. So how can we help students to think about this when they do their online searching? Faculty could do any or all of the following:

+ Demonstrate searches in class that illustrate creative thinking about developing search strategies.
+ Invite a librarian to your class to hold a mini-workshop on creating effective search strategies.
+ Integrate a search strategy development activity into an assignment so that students have an opportunity to share their search terms before they start researching an assignment.
+ Show students how to review their search results in a way that points out how alternate or synonymous terms can be found right in articles they are retrieving.

The Temple University Libraries’ librarians are full of great ideas about how students can be helped to become more effective researchers, and they are equally effective at helping both faculty and their students to develop the right techniques and tools to ensure that important learning outcomes are being achieved.

Steven J. Bell, Associate University Librarian for Research and Instructional Services

Getting mentioned in Time magazine counts for something. Time garnered lots of attention with its “Person of the Year” issue that celebrated the year of Web 2.0. But for those who follow developments in education, the more significant issue could be the one that appeared on December 10, 2006. Its cover story focused on the need for revolutionary change in education. As academic librarians we were please to see this article because it acknowledges that for 21st century learners it’s not about finding information, but evaluating information to determine its value:

Becoming smarter about new sources of information. In an age of overflowing information and proliferating media, kids need to rapidly process what’s coming at them and distinguish between what’s reliable and what isn’t.

As educators, we can’t anticipate or expect that tech-savvy students will be able to critically evaluate the content they find as a result of their search engine research. It may only be that by integrating the teaching of research skills into the curriculum that improvements will be made.

Even Time noted the value of information literacy classes in the article:

Classes like this, which teach key aspects of information literacy, remain rare in public education, but more and more universities and employers say they are needed as the world grows ever more deluged with information of variable quality. Last year, in response to demand from colleges, the Educational Testing Service unveiled a new, computer-based exam designed to measure information-and-communication-technology literacy. A pilot study of the test with 6,200 high school seniors and college freshmen found that only half could correctly judge the objectivity of a website.

One mention in a mainstream media publication is nice, but information literacy is still far from being a mainstream educational practice. For educators and students, information literacy is far from a common phrase. At Temple University, we’re working to change that.

Steven J. Bell, Associate University Librarian for Research and Instructional Services

I’ve been reading about the future of the university lately. Detractors think it costs too much, is inefficient, is too politicized, doesn’t properly train the workforce of the future, and is generally out of step with the great demographic changes of the past 25 years. It’s not flexible enough (what is?), researchers don’t teach well and teachers don’t research well. Supporters point out that universities are among the few institutions that have survived from the fifteenth century, that good education is just plain expensive, that education is about more than just posting “content” online somewhere, that Socrates got it right, and that businesses are out to privatize lots of publicly-funded infrastructure as was done with the healthcare industry (there is even talk about Educational Maintenance Organizations, EMO’s). Both supporters and detractors seem agreed that there’s a lot of change ahead for the university.

Of course the development of the Internet plays a huge role in the debates surrounding the future of higher education. Techno-utopians see the Internet as bringing more democracy, more education, more knowledge, more love, new life forms… More practical sorts see the reduced costs of information delivery on the Internet as a great business opportunity, so you see for-profit educational organizations popping up. More traditional sorts see the Internet as improving but not overturning current educational practices.

What interests me the most is the way the Internet (and high-tech in general) produces what can only be described as religious passions in many people. Cyberspace becomes a heavenly realm where information and emotions are transmitted friction-free and conflict melts away. You saw this in the millennial binge of the late 1990’s dot.coms, where profits were suddenly deemed unimportant and market share was everything. The fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of the Internet, and Y2K (remember that?) made everyone a bit crazy for a time.

Below are some of the sources I’ve been looking at and thinking about:

Digital Diploma Mills–short book, well written and closely argued, author very much against distance education, makes interesting comparisons to the “correspondence movement” in the early twentieth century

Digital Revolution and the Coming of the Postmodern University–seems a bit too focused on the technology and not enough on the institutions that create the context for the technology

After the New Economy–includes interesting analysis of 1990’s business bubble

Post-Capitalist Society–by Peter Drucker (aka “the management guru”), Drucker began talking about the “knowledge worker” decades ago, thinks the university won’t last

Startup.com–this documentary unwittingly highlights the excesses of the 1990’s dot.com boom

Shaping Communication Networks: Telegraph, Telephone, Computer–puts Internet in historical perspective

Death of the University–written in 1987, interesting but makes a lot of sweeping generalizations

The Future of Work

Higher Education in the Digital Age

The University in Transformation

Technology and the Rise of the For-Profit University— authored by Donald Norman, an educational entrepreneur (UNext), says scholars should create content and instructional specialists should deliver it

Undisciplined–by Louis Menand, interesting, about the breakdown of disciplinary boundaries in the university

Linkages Between Work and Education?

Dearing Report–influential UK report on higher education

Distance Education and the Emerging Learning Environment–short, interesting article

The Rise and Rise of the Corporate University–good article, part of an entire issue of the Journal of European Industrial Training devoted to corporate education

Surviving the Change: The Economic Paradigm of Higher Education in Transformation–interesting article by a guy with economic training

Educating the Net Generation–from Educause, about learning styles, likes and dislikes of the net generation

—Fred Rowland