Higher Learning: Internet Search Skills for the College-Bound

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Dr. Kathleen W. Craver -- School Library Journal, 11/01/1998

A chorus of groans went up around the room. I had just announced to my class that we would be searching the Internet. "You don't get stuff from it," one young woman complained, while another chimed in: "It's such a mess." Many of the students in my College Connections seminar had already done some Web searching but with little success. Some had been only "mouse potatoes," clicking on link after link but never really finding what they wanted.

The students had signed up for this seminar to get a head start on learning to do research at the college level. When I first started planning a course on searching the Internet, a member of the school's technology committee told me that many parents at our all-girls school worried their daughters didn't have the computer skills to succeed at the nation's most competitive institutions. (All of last year's 70 seniors were college bound, with two-thirds of them going to Ivy League schools.)

When I heard that, I knew I had the hook for my course. I sent out flyers to seniors announcing a four-part seminar on how to search the online catalogs and databases of the college libraries they would soon be using. This second-semester course wasn't mandatory, but the incentive of learning a few survival skills for their freshmen year proved to be strong enough to overcome any bouts of spring fever and senioritis.

With college-bound students taking a full load of advanced placement courses, it can be hard to get them into the library for lengthy instruction. I knew this would be my last chance to upgrade their skills and give them a feeling of confidence as they went off to college. I wanted this seminar to cover all the bases in as little time as possible, so I designed four, hour-long lessons to address four critical areas: search strategies, college online catalogs, database selection, and evaluating websites.

Session 1: Comfortable Connections
My first step was to make students comfortable negotiating their way around the Internet. Acknowledging their apprehension, I modeled a simple search. I picked a search engine and keyed in the words "shark attack" and "California." (This wasn't exactly tagged to anything they were studying, but I wanted to be sure I held their attention.) Next, I demonstrated how to search specifically for audio clips or images, bringing up colorful graphics of the Hope Diamond and a scarlet macaw to make my point.

I also talked about Boolean operators and the syntax strategies that different search engines use. Even the groaners were now intensely interested in learning how to search more precisely. They were simply amazed that placing an asterisk after the root word "jewel" in AltaVista allowed them to retrieve information about jewels, jewelry, and even people whose last name was Jewell. At last, they were beginning to see the Internet as a tool and not a torture.

The first time I gave this seminar, I required students to master the idiosyncrasies of three different search engines. Last year I reduced that number to two. Search engines are becoming much more powerful, so learning to use them to their fullest capacity is an even bigger task. I knew that if students could master the protocols for favorites like HotBot and AltaVista, they would have little trouble finding what they needed.

To let them practice on their own, I passed out an online treasure hunt. I wanted to keep their comfort level up at first, so the assignment was designed to elicit success: as long as they followed the steps I had shown them, they would find what they needed. They used Lycos to locate images of a Siamese cat, the Great Pyramids, a global view of Mars, and a portrait of Jane Austen. Switching to AltaVista, they conducted phrase searches for "hazardous waste," "child labor sweatshops," and even "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog." After some searches using truncation, they were ready to try more advanced tasks. I asked them to find information about anorexia nervosa and teenagers, which required them to come up with synonyms and related words such as "eating disorders," "adolescents," and "dieting." This exercise gave them practice using Boolean operators.

While they worked, I reinforced a few basic rules of searching:

Move from the specific to the general in subject searching.
Try to use three keywords to describe the subject. You'll get more specific responses.
Check spelling.
Be persistent.

This year I'll kick off this first lesson by having students search Internet subject directories such as Yahoo! and the WWW Virtual Library before moving on to freestyle Internet searching.

Session 2: Keys to the Catalog
Students today who have grown up using computers are not always aware of their limitations. When we began to talk about the online catalogs they would be using, I warned them that catalogs aren't always complete. Even some of the most prestigious institutions can't afford to convert their entire collection to electronic form, and older items may not be included. I stressed the importance of locating the call number for their topic and browsing the shelves in that area for other, older titles.

We also talked about the evolution of online catalogs and what students can expect from the one their college uses. I noted that they might have an enhanced online catalog that would not only lead them to items in the collection but also would refer them to Internet sites and suggest databases and subject terms to search.

Now for the hands-on work. I had the students find their college's home page from Christina DeMello's List of Colleges and Universities, a comprehensive college information website, and then locate the college library. Once there, they had to conduct author, title, call number, keyword, and subject searches for specific titles using the college's online catalog. (I used commonly held titles such as Pulitzer Prize winners for this activity and performed pre-searches of 100 colleges to guarantee that students would be able to do the assignment successfully.)

As students searched, I encouraged them to note the different services available at their college or university library. Later, I told them about about the range of services many college libraries offer. I urged them to consult with reference librarians about the best resources to use and to always take advantage of services such as orientation tours and term paper counseling. We even talked about how to phrase reference questions intelligently and how not to be annoyed if the librarian begins quizzing them for more information.

Session 3: Heavy-Duty Databases
In nearly all cases, searching a college library's electronic databases from off campus is impossible unless you're a registered student. Although I would prefer to have students perform actual database searches, I think the vital concept is to teach them how to choose the most appropriate ones. Since the schools these students will attend may have up to 100 free or fee-based databases to choose from, figuring out where to start can be daunting.

I began by telling students there are five important elements they need to consider when selecting a database:

title and contents
type (e.g., bibliographic, numeric, graphic, abstract, multimedia, full-text, etc.)
content level (e.g., undergraduate or graduate)
coverage (e.g., dates of indexed articles)
availability (through database itself, interlibrary loan, or in library collection).

Several academic libraries list all of their databases, along with brief content descriptions. I bookmarked several sites, and students used the information there to complete a database selection worksheet.

I gave them simulated research assignments of varying length and asked them to decide which databases they would search. They had to consider the length of the assignment as carefully as the topic. After all, I told them, there's no reason to search a several databases for a three- or four-page paper.

The first "assignment" was a three-page report on the current status of global warming. After they had made their database selections, I upped the page count to 20 pages, requiring them to consider more specialized and detailed databases. Next, to give them a look at some humanities titles, I asked them where they would research a 10-page analysis of the brooding Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights.

Session 4: Evaluating Electronic Information
One of the problems many college students face is interpreting electronic bibliographic records. I saw this firsthand when I was doing some research at a local college library. A long line of confused students snaked up to the reference desk. They were all clutching computer printouts of resources they had found in the catalog. But they didn't know what they had. Were these citations for books or videotapes or something else? And where in the library could they be found?

That experience led me to design this fourth session. I began by showing transparencies of citations for a book, a chapter, a reference book, a website, a magazine, a book review, a videotape, and a government document. I pointed out the information that indicated the format of each resource. Next I handed out a mix-and-match exercise to let students practice what they had just learned. Like their college counterparts, this gave them the most difficulty. Even when the word "videocassette" was part of the citation, students had trouble zeroing in on that information. They tended to see almost everything as a book.

Although they had considerable trouble with this assignment, they began to understand how many different kinds of materials are available at a typical research library. It also drove home the point that they would soon be moving up to a higher level of information overload.

During the last half of the session, we looked at evaluating a different kind of electronic information -- the Internet. It can be hard to get students to think critically about what they're seeing. I began by talking about the difference between print and Web publishing, about the vetting and review processes that print resources go through versus the easy launch of a new website. Using various Internet sites as examples, I guided them through an evaluation that used three important criteria: relevance, validity, and objectivity.

Relevance. Students asked themselves whether the site supported their research topic. Did it provide needed background? Was this new material or a new approach to the topic? Was this the full text or did they have to find that somewhere else?

Another aspect of relevance is depth of information. I told students that if they were more than two or three mouse clicks into a site and were finding more glitz than substance, then it was time to move on. Smart Web designers know not to waste your time, so they make the meat of any site quickly and easily accessible.

Validity. Here, students had to determine the author's subject expertise, the source of the data, the date of publication, and how the information was presented. We even examined the domain address of each URL to make a preliminary guess about the site's validity. I encouraged them to be skeptical about anything they found online. On the Web, it can be much harder to distinguish propaganda or sloppy fact-finding from reliable research.

Objectivity. This criterion required students to examine a source for possible bias, the author's purpose, and factual support for his or her conclusions. They had to ask whether the author's language encouraged readers to respond emotionally or logically to the information.

Planning for the Future
All constituencies reported that the course was a success. Parents told the technology committee they were pleased with the hands-on, practical experience their daughters received, and my headmistress called to thank me for responding to our parents' concerns so quickly.

The students wrote up the class in the school newspaper, and since then they've been helping get the word out about college websites. While virtually none of the girls in my seminar had ever visited the home pages of the colleges they had applied to, that's already a thing of the past among younger students. One of my students spoke to a group of juniors attending college night and showed them how to get information on prospective schools, applications, financial aid, courses of study, extracurricular activities, and housing.

I'll definitely be teaching this course again this year, but we're also taking another approach to helping students keep on top of technology. We're starting Internet instruction with the seventh graders this year in an effort to make the most of the tools we have and to start building those research skills early. Perhaps by the time these girls are ready to graduate, they won't need any extra preparation for college. I'm not sure what senior-level course I'll offer then, but it's likely to be something completely new. The online world is changing so quickly that it's almost impossible to know what challenges we'll face in five years.

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