The Impatience of the Google Generation

profBill writes "As a fifty-something professor who teaches introductory computer science, I am very aware that the twenty-somethings in my class are much more at ease with computers than any other generation. However, does that mean they are more adept at using those computers? Apparently not, according to the researchers at University College London. Their research indicates that while more adept at conducting searches, younger users also show 'impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs'. Moreover, these traits 'are now becoming the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils and undergraduates through to professors'. The panel makes two conclusions: That libraries (and I wonder what a library will become in the future, anyway) will have to adapt, and that the information processing skills of todays young people are lacking. Why are those skills lacking and, if they are, what can be done about it?"

In Finland: Not dull.

[Max Romantschuk]

Finnish libraries are not dull. You can find a little bit of everything. Books, videos, music, etc. in mostly every category. Including not-so-agreeable stuff like sexology, weird-artsy works and so on. There are also computers for browsing the net and doing other work. Usage stats a pretty decent: "[Finland] has high usage of public libraries: 20,3 loans and 11.98 library visits per inhabitant in 2005" (http://kirjastoseura.kaapeli.fi/etusivu/apua/english [kaapeli.fi]). I can get any work sent to my local library for 0.5 €, all trough the net: http://www.helmet.fi/ [helmet.fi]. With a system like this I don't mind paying for it with taxes.

"The future is now"

[vic-traill]

Dame Lynne Brindley DBE, Chief Executive of the British Library, said of the report findings: "Libraries have to accept that the future is now. At the British Library we have adopted the digital mindset ... Turning the Pages 2.0 and the mass digitisation project to digitise 25 million of pages of 19th century English literature are only two examples of the pioneering work we are doing.

In other news, the CEO of the British Library was found drifting in a tear in the time/space continuum, disoriented and incapable of understanding that digitising shit in 2008 does not make one a pioneer.

Seriously, who writes this stuff? From the headline (Pioneering research shows 'Google Generation' is a myth) to the sponsor's announcement of the study (adopted the digital mindset), the study is so wrapped in hyperbole that I just can't take it seriously.

And reading it is bad enough - I'd rather poke my eye out with a sharpened stick than click on the audio link to the 'Launch Event'.

Re:Theyre kids of the new generation - deal with i

[TheRaven64]

"Doing your PhD" is still school, which is an artificially protected environment for the student in some ways. In school, the problems you are asked to solve in your classes are almost always problems someone else has solved, and you can -research- the solution.

No. In order to be awarded a PhD, you must make 'an original contribution to the field.' If you can find a solution in someone else's work then you have not made an original contribution and thus will not be awarded a PhD.

In US universities, a PhD is typically a hybrid degree, where the first two years involve taking classes, but after this and in non-US institutions (which often don't include the taught part) the candidate is expected to write a thesis documenting their own research. The first chapter of two of this might be a literature review documenting other people's contributions to the area but all of the rest is expected to be their own solutions to whatever problem they are tackling.

Re:Theyre kids of the new generation - deal with i

[dkf]

Cheap shot at the parent's PhD: if all your research can be done on Google in a few minutes, what value are you adding?

If all your research can be done just by reading other people's articles and books, you're not adding very much either, are you?

The cool thing about Google Scholar is that it lets me find citations fast (for me, it's especially useful when I know part of the info needed for the citation but need enough for a full bib entry) and in some very obscure journals indeed. I can then either use those to find the article or, often, click on a link that lets me read a digitized copy of the journal article directly from my local academic library's collection. It doesn't mean that it's doing your research for you at all; often it's just pointing out the articles that you'd want to read anyway.

And if you're doing this at the start of your research (as opposed to when writing up) then it sure beats waiting a month for an inter-library loan just to find out that the requested book isn't relevant anyway.

old vs. new

[cashman73]

My education seems to have spanned this transition from the old, paper-based format to the newer, digital-based format; graduated high school in 1991, B.S. in 1995, Ph.D. in 2003. So I've been able to see how things worked before compared to now. Let's just say, the old says sucked. I can remember learning the Dewey Decimal System in grade school, and the card catalog, and it just wasn't as productive as when I got to college and started searching for everything in the library on the automated terminals. And I still can't figure out why they taught us the Dewey system, when most university libraries use the Library of Congress system, which is several orders of magnitude better. By the time PubMed [nih.gov] and Google Scholar [google.com] came out, finding things just got so much easier! Who could think about going back to use the card catalog these days?

Digitization of actual content came later. When I started graduate school in 1998, I can still remember going to the old, crusty "bowels" of the health sciences library and looking up academic journals by hand -- it was really a royal PITA because the amount of journal articles you'd have to look up was quite astronomical, and you'd have to take several trips between your table/desk in the library and the shelf, to work on a given problem. But we found the information we needed.

By the time I graduated however, it got much better! The ACS put their entire archives since the 1800s online [acs.org], and several other publishers got into that game as well. So now, you could search online and find the info you needed as well. The problem (that still remains, unfortunately), is that publishers are still clinging to their old, archaic copyright policies, and if your institution doesn't have access, you get a page asking you to pay. And the fees, for single articles, are astronomically effing ridiculous -- $50 or so for a single article!!!! Who in the h*ll is going to pay for that?!?! I understand that publishers do need to make a certain amount of money, within reason. Although I don't buy their justification of publishing costs -- these days, the typesetting is all done in desktop word processing, by the authors! And authors are asked more and more to do actual editorial tasks. Peer review doesn't even cost as much, since the experts don't get paid to do it. So the journals asking for $50 or so for a single article are just extorting people for far too much than they should actually be charging! Fortunately, it looks like the academic publishing market is slowly moving more in the direction of open access.

The Net Generation

[Don Philip]

Essentially what you're talking about here is what is being called the Net Generation or N-Gen (Tapscott, 1998). Tapscott gives this as a population of approximately 90 million young people who have grown up with digital media, or, to paraphrase Bruce Sterling (2002), those who have grown up marinated in a hot rising tide of networked silicon chips.

While Tapscott is essentially, correct a more recent study From ECAR (Salaway et al., 2006) shows that this is not quite nuanced enough. At present, only about a third of the current crop of students are full-blown N-Genners. About a third or more are more moderate technology users and a third or less is technologically disadvantaged. However, for your purposes, most of the true N-Genners tend to be male and in engineering or business, so you pretty much are dealing with full-blown N-Genners in your classes.

Tapscott gives the following set of eight shifts educators have identified in regard to the N-Gen students. Their learning should move: 1. From linear to hypermedia learning; 2. From instruction to construction and discovery; 3. From teacher-centred to learner-centred education; 4. From absorbing material to learning how to navigate and how to learn; 5. From schooling to lifelong learning; 6. From one-size-fits-all to customized learning; 7. From learning as torture to learning as fun; and 8. From the teacher as transmitter to the teacher as facilitator.

As to libraries, Eastbrook (2007) found: "Those who do turn to libraries have success, and they appreciate all the resources available at libraries, especially access to computers and the internet. And those in Generation Y (age 18-30) were the most likely to turn to libraries for problem-solving information." (p. v, original emphasis). Further:

• 65% of those who went to libraries went to get access to computers and the internet.
• 58% used reference books.
• 42% went for journals, magazines, or newspapers.

The N-Gen are among the largest users of libraries, but libraries are now resources providing information in many forms, not just books.

In sum, the Net Generation is not 'lacking skills' so much as their brains are wired differently than those of previous generations, and while this is not yet wholly homogeneous among the population, it will increasingly be so. Education has to change to accommodate this. I've got a webcast about this available at: http://breeze.uliveandlearn.com/p11443785/ [uliveandlearn.com]

References:

Philip, D. N. (2007). The Knowledge Building Paradigm: A Model of Learning for Net Generation Students [Webcast]. Cyberspace: Innovate Live.
Salaway, G., Katz, R. N., Caruso, J. B., Kvavik, R. B., & Nelson, M. R. (2006). The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2006: Educause Center for Applied Research.
Sterling, B. (2002). Tomorrow Now. Envisioning the next fifty years. New York: Random House.
Tapscott, D. (1998). Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill.