When doing homework, many students turn to the same websites as they do when they're surfing the web under other circumstances.
Four of the top ten most-cited websites on Easybib, a site used to create more than 500 million citations, are user-generated sites like Wikipedia and YouTube.
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Meanwhile, Google is filling the niche research databases once dominated. A recent ethnographic study found that students referred to Google more than any other database when discussing their research habits.
When they did use the search engine, they had trouble finding appropriate sources within the results.
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"Students are often ill-equipped to sufficiently evaluate or refine the results that are returned,” Andrew Asher, an anthropologist at Bucknell University and one of the project leads, told Mashable in August. “…I don’t think this is a problem limited to students.”
On Thursday, Easybib is launching a campaign to promote digital literacy, which includes a promise to donate 5% of its institutional sales through August to the American Library Association.
The startup has compiled research on information literacy in the infographic below. Let us know what you make of it in the comments. Is the Internet dumbing students down?
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Squaredpixels
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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