|
What are the universities and colleges seeing our students do ...
and what do they say our students need to know how to do?
The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations' online survey
of 2,000 professors and university librarians (of the province's 15,000) found that
first-year students' research and internet-seeking behaviours are going downhill rapidly;
What do they do to make this impression?
- avoid databases in favour of Google as the only search tool of value
- use Wikipedia as a citable academic source
- don't know to find a book or even how to ask for help
- have poorer skills now than three years ago
What might be the causes of this decline? Article suggests:
- a sense of entitlement, also called attitude issues
- underresourcing in the public secondary school system
- overvaluing of leisure values and declining work ethic
Are we graduating students who lack critical thinking skills and the ability to work independently?
What, we asked, are the ten things our graduates need to know if they are to succeed with the demands of academe?
Interestingly, UBC and SFU draft response documents indicate secondary students need to know:
- how to find a book
- how to find books by author or by topic
- how to select and use databases
- what a journal is and how it differs from a book
- how to paraphrase
- how to evaluate sources critically
- why to write the citation for the quotation being incorporated into a paper
- what plagiarism is
- how to write a research question and a thesis statement
- how and who to ask for help
|
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.