Internet research: the order of the process and the intelligence of the students

In addition to bubbling with activity, the Internet is an archive that would have been barely conceivable in 1950.

In the face of this wealth and potential, search engines have evolved and are still evolving. As evidence of this, Google switched to semantic search in mid-March 2009 and its performance, for combinations of words, has improved dramatically.

Sites like "Internet Archive" are constantly growing: to the basic archive (if you want to see what Thot or Cursus in 1998) has gradually been joined by books, then films, recordings, software, and now the courses, lectures, and educational resources.

Everything in the public domain goes there.

Wikipedia is catching on, and most of the new websites offer memory for your activities of one kind or another.

This is all well and good, but in the face of the prodigious accumulation of information, some cry saturation, including in the educational community.

Saturation no, indexing and validation yes

Talking about memory saturation is as ridiculous as talking about saturating your own memory.

You remember what you ate this morning and also what you ate when you were six. The only difference is in the sharpness and usefulness of the memories. How you "index" them and find them again has a lot to do with it.

In any case with a little effort it is also possible to remember what you ate on a certain morning when you were six. That's not the point.

The art of searching, a learning skill

Currently, the basic skills of students are increasingly being added to those of searching: how to search library catalogues is now relegated to second place, behind "knowing how to search the Internet" and other available electronic resources.

Methods and the use of various tools are taught.

The art of qualifying

At the same time, it is hoped to develop students' judgement, in other words the skill of qualifying the data obtained from a search.

"Is the information reliable?" and "Does the information suit my needs?"

The very principle of Google's success is qualification, qualification by the number and quality of links in its case. Beyond, the ultimate qualification is that of individuals and uses.

These skills are indeed essential to any student.

Qualification criteria: meaning

In the process, students often feel that they are being taken for idiots by teaching them the obvious, and professors sometimes feel that these same students are idiots so absent are the obvious.

Students are not idiots, but in the absence of meaning for them or importance in the face of what is asked of them, qualification becomes external: "Will the professor like it?", "Is the work long enough?", "Does it meet the evaluation criteria?" with the consequence of a superficial, mechanical, and automatic evaluation of the research results.

In fact, the first step in a research is to know what one is looking for and why. From there, it becomes possible to estimate where and how one is most likely to find what one is looking for and then to define the evaluation criteria to be applied.

This leads directly to the meaning of the work required of students: to whom the lack of rigor of students is reproached, one can answer for sure the lack of communication of the interest of the subject. Which is normally the role of the teacher.

So, the first role of the teacher in research is to communicate the interest of the subject and the meaning of the research; the rest will then go much more smoothly if the interest is there. If there is resistance at the beginning, there will be stupid research results. Might as well fix the problem at the source.

Some suggestions:

• What to advise a student about using the Web
• Google's search help
• Internet Archive
  

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