THE INFORMATION LITERACY ELEVATOR IS BROKEN: HOW CHILDREN & TEENAGERS SEARCH FOR ONLINE INFORMATION

by Marcel H. Faulkner


INTRODUCTION

This literature review is part of the preparatory process in the development of a workshop to teach grade nine students in Hamilton, Ontario how to find information through the use of their local library’s free online databases (for a list of these databases, see the URL in Hamilton Public Library, 2006, in this document’s reference list). The studies and commentaries reviewed here are discussed in the context of the need for such a workshop.

Children and teenagers today use computers and the World Wide Web with an eagerness and confidence that many adults can only envy. Clifford (2005) uses a linguistic analogy to describe youngsters as digital natives, as compared to those of us who only began using computers as adults and are digital immigrants, or roughly equivalent to “Digital as a Second Language” students with varying degrees of idiomatic competence. Digital natives speak the lingo fluently and unselfconsciously, while digital immigrants never completely lose the lingering vestiges of their non-digital accents. For Canadian kids, computer access is closer than ever to universality: according to Statistics Canada (2004), 93% of Canadian schools use the Internet as a teaching tool. In the U.S., this figure is 99% (Simmons, 2005).

Since kids nowadays use the Internet almost from the womb, it becomes very tempting to assume that they have superb information literacy skills that far surpass those of their parents and other adults. The kids themselves certainly tend to think so (Taylor, 2001; Ishizuka, 2005; Wallace, Kupperman, Krajcik & Soloway, 2000). But this is a grievous misconception that study after study disproves. Teenagers and elementary school students are generally given more credit for information literacy than they actually deserve. To cite only a single example, in one study (Ishizuka) teenagers quickly become bored and frustrated with their online searches, and many simply give up without finding what they were looking for. Teenagers in this study found the desired information 55% of the time, compared to 66% for adults.

It is therefore a fundamental error to assume that computer familiarity is synonymous with, or at least developmentally parallel to, information literacy. Despite having grown up with computers, children and teenagers exhibit few of the standards for information literacy as defined by the American Association of School Librarians and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AASL & AECT) in 2003. These standards include, among other things, the ability to efficiently find desired information, and the judgement to evaluate its accuracy and reliability. In virtually all of the studies cited herein, children and teenagers were conspicuously unskilled at finding and evaluating information. Finding cool websites that their friends tell them about is one thing; finding needed information online is quite another.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Griffiths & Brophy (2005) found that 45% of university students start their academic searches on Google. We should therefore not be surprised that Bilal (2004) noted that 71% of children use the Internet as the primary source, and in many cases the sole source, of their research information for school projects. The maxim that “humans will seek the path of least cognitive resistance” (Marchionini, 1992, p. 156) is undoubtedly true: it is only natural for kids as well as adults to get their work done in the easiest way possible. Who among us would not? But many children rely heavily on basic Google searches of their subject terms because they do not actually know what else to do. According to Bilal, children are enthusiastic and interactive searchers but generally do not comprehend the concept of developing search strategies, and have few of the cognitive skills to accurately evaluate information. Children love to surf and browse, but have trouble finding specific information. Closed searches, such as Bilal’s example where children had to find out how long alligators lived both in captivity and in the wild, provided particular difficulty. Bilal also observes that children have their own culture, information needs and expectations, and are too often treated as little adults: in order to teach them properly, information literacy researchers and teachers must regard children as a user population separate from adults.

Contrary to some popular opinions, online searching seems more likely to unite children than isolate them. Several authors noted that children and teenagers will gladly conduct their searches in pairs or groups if given the chance to do so (Dresang, 2005; Wallace et al, 2000; Clifford, 2005), and will easily use technology, such as instant messaging and chat lines, to work in groups even when they are physically separated (Minkel, 2000). Many authors also note that the actual mechanics of searching are painfully easy for today’s children and teenagers (Nahl & Harada, 2004; Large, 2004; Scott & O’Sullivan, 2005; Schacter, Chung & Dorr, 1998; Taylor, 2001; Kuiper, Volman & Terwel, 2005; Minkel). Search difficulties tend to be conceptual rather than mechanical or procedural. Elementary and high school students display little comprehension of how Boolean operators work, are generally incognizant of ways to generate search terms, and are mostly unaware of how online information is organized (Nahl & Harada). Kids frequently fail to understand the differences between their natural language and the controlled vocabularies of the databases they search, have limited ability to use synonyms, and have all kinds of difficulties with homonyms, such as “Wales” and “whales” (Nahl & Harada). To complicate things even more, students frequently lack the knowledge of their subject matter to devise alternative search terms, and often will not vary the terms that are in the research questions their teachers have given them; they also have difficulty connecting different aspects of a search. Nahl & Harada ultimately conclude that online searching requires some fairly sophisticated analytical, vocabulary, and conceptual skills that kids will never learn unless they are specifically taught.

The World Wide Web has been around long enough that we now have high school students who have been going online since they were preschoolers, but the online searching skills of children and teenagers do not seem to be improving over time. In 1998, Schacter et al found that grade 5 and 6 students had no trouble with the basics, such as logging on, getting to their favourite websites and search engines, or using the Forward and Back buttons, but were fairly clueless about the use of truncation, Boolean operators, or adjacency indicators; in 2005, Kuiper et al observed pretty much the same thing. Schacter et al observed that children readily believed that all of the information they found online was true and accurate; their logic seemed to be that it would not be online if it was not true. In 2005, Kuiper et al found that children were still presuming that all the online information they found was accurate and reliable. Kuiper et al also noted that children did not plan searches in any way, and most of the time just typed in keywords randomly and unsystematically; this again echoed a previous finding by Schacter et al. In both studies, the researchers concur with Nahl & Harada’s 2004 observation that search skills must be specifically taught; otherwise, kids are just spinning their wheels, as they repeat their fruitless searches to the point of frustration.

Wallace et al (2000) studied how grade six students searched science topics on the Web, and found results similar to the other studies discussed here. Even with the benefit of pre-search brainstorming sessions to formulate search queries, these students generally did not use the queries created in advance, and simply went back to the unsystematic browsing that they were comfortable with. For the study, the kids were online thirty-five minutes a day for five consecutive days, but in the end found very little information relevant to their search topics. The students received some assistance from teachers, although Wallace et al suspected that the teachers’ own misunderstanding about online searching may have misled the students as much as it helped them. One of the starkest findings in the study was that kids repeatedly believed they had found the required information when in fact they had not: this was largely due to the kids’ unwillingness or inability to read the content of the documents they unearthed to see if it was indeed relevant to their topics. And like other researchers, Wallace et al found an imbedded credulity in their test subjects, who had no inclination to question the reliability of online information.

The articles discussed above concentrated more on elementary students than on high school students. Scott & O’Sullivan (2005) found that when kids get to high school, little has changed. Many of the high school students in this study claimed to be skilful online searchers, but in fact few actually were: they became easily frustrated and often abandoned their searches without finding any satisfactory results at all. When students searched specific websites, they went to the site’s Search function and typed in keywords; when this failed, they kept doing it anyway. Though older and presumably wiser than elementary school students, these high school kids nonetheless tended to believe that all or most Web content was reliable, without attempting to evaluate it in any way. And even though some of the students had been using the Web for a decade or more, few of them were able to concisely define their information needs: they mostly judged the success of their searches on the quantity of information they found, rather than by its quality.

CONCLUSIONS

In all of the studies and commentaries mentioned above, Taylor (2001) makes perhaps the pithiest observation of all: parents consider the Internet to be primarily educational and essential for their kids’ academic success, but the kids themselves consider it a medium for communication and entertainment. In other words, kids treat the Web like it is a magnificent toy. It is clear that today’s children and teenagers are computer savvy but not information literate. Young people are not intimidated by computers and eagerly adapt to new applications and technologies, but they do not find online information effectively because they lack both the vocabulary skills to revise their searches and the patience to wade through masses of documents they do find (Ishizuka, 2005). They like to type in keywords and browse, but they have little understanding of Boolean operators, adjacency indicators, truncation, or search strategies (Wallace et al, 2000; Scott & O’Sullivan, 2005; Schacter et al, 1998; Nahl & Harada, 2004; Large, 2004). In fact, most kids never progress much beyond the search basics they learn in their very first online sessions (Wallace et al).

When young people find the information they think they need, they are unable to evaluate content. Author after author writes that children and teenagers have an alarming tendency to unquestioningly believe what they read online (Scott & O’Sullivan, 2005; Wallace et al, 2000; Schacter et al, 1998; Kuiper et al, 2005). Even when evaluation criteria are provided, kids tend to ignore them (Minkel 2000). But how surprised should we be? Martorana et al (2001) observe that general research skills are low: young people are unable to evaluate information sources, but this applies as much to print sources as much as it does to what they find online.

The upshot of all this is that Scott & O’Sullivan (2005) are right: high school kids, even experienced digital natives, are not much better than elementary school students at finding specific information online. Regular use of the World Wide Web does not magically transform into information literacy. True information literacy requires a specific set of acutely specialized skills (AASL & AECT, 2003) that kids will not learn naturally or independently. Teaching these skills must therefore become a mandatory part of both elementary and secondary school curricula.

The literature reviewed above reveals, above all else, the abject need for information literacy training. In the context of devising a workshop to teach Hamilton grade nine students how to use the Hamilton Public Library’s online databases, several guiding principles become quite clear. First of all, kids like the social aspect of online searching. They like to work in groups or pairs, often discussing search problems with their friends (Dresang, 2005). If this helps them learn, then it should be encouraged. For example, if the computer lab where the workshop is being given has sixteen computers, then you let thirty-two students take the workshop, making sure that you have enough chairs. This would permit the students to learn in the social manner to which they are accustomed.

It is also essential that we remember what workshops can and cannot do. We must not cherish the delusion that a single workshop will give kids instant information literacy. This is simply unrealistic. The workshop will undoubtedly improve kids’ information literacy by helping them focus their searches, especially if Boolean operators, proximity indicators, and truncation are suitably demonstrated and practiced. But how could a single 30-minute workshop teach kids to evaluate and assess information? It is also important to remember that the World Wide Web is only a part of the information universe, and the HPL databases are only a small part of the World Wide Web. The workshop should by no means be considered the sum total of information literacy instruction but part of an overall program, with other workshops and courses to reinforce the learning. The yet-to-be-devised workshop would not automatically put kids on the top floor of the information literacy building, and the elevator is out of order. But it would at least show them where the stairs are.

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