Incoming College Freshmen "Tech Illiterate"

That isn’t too surprising. However, I don’t think it’s fair to suddenly expect students to be able to critically appraise information unless you’ve had to do it as part of your curriculum previously. If all your assignments have only been focused on finding and regurgitation of fact and copy and paste jobs have got you through it (this seems to be common in highschool nowadays), then of course you’re not going to have great research skills. I remember when I first started we had tutorials about searching through databases and being able to find relevant journal articles, followed by sessions on how to evaluate the statistics and wording of published medical articles.

It shouldn’t just be limited to online “technology” either, although the problem is probably more apparent now because of it. I don’t know if any of you are young enough to remember a time when the internet wasn’t the primary research tool, but the same thing applies to being able to appraise sources like books and (the often sensationalist) print media too. Still, you were less likely to get such a wild variety of opinions in books.

Jam it back in, in the dark.