After our series of training and consultation events with college students, I am now working on the footage and data collection from the raw materials. One initial and common response from students, when we asked them how they used technology for college work, was to “research with tools such as Google and Wikipedia”. While this is understandable and most of us do that to quickly retrieve information, is it good enough for more serious academic pursuit?
A student from Ireland conducted an “experiment” by putting a faked quota onto Wikipedia (News article can be found here) and tested whether the public would be able to identify it. A number of media organisations, including Guardians (Their response can be found here), failed to verify the validity of the information. While this incident shows the worrying practices of media or the public as a whole, we also need to ask the question on whether our students are aware of the issues of information validity and reliability on the internet.
When we discussed about the needs of ICT guidance and support with our students, they often associated the knowledge and skills with application and usage of hardwares and softwares. Transferrable skills such as criticial thinking do not seem to come across their minds as something related to the technological world. Some of them also believed that the “digital literacy” we referred to was more or less like “common sense” and was taught many times during schools. Bearing this kind of students’ feedback in mind, what do we need to do to raise the awareness, as well as equip our students with the necessary skills which they wrongly believe they master well?
This experiment done by the Irish student is a timely call for a reflection on what and how we should support our students in the technological era!
Posted by wingyinchan 
