Twenty-sixth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

Even with today’s amazing graphics and multimedia capabilities, computers cannot be fully useful to a student conducting research without the correct words entered into them. As a result, undergraduates in first-year composition and general education courses treat academic research on databases like searching for information on Internet search engines. Asking questions of databases, the preferred online research strategy, provides little of the way in useful answers and leaves students frustrated. As a result, they often return to non-academic searches with which they feel familiar and with non-academic results. Students need not feel frustration, however, as undergraduate research in first- and second-year courses most often does not require sophisticated jargon or complex constructions. In practice, students often have the appropriate level of language acquisition to conduct research at this level, despite other individual differences in academic and/or information literacy. This paper outlines methods that instructors and students can respond to the challenges of the computer and the internet through pedagogical practice. Specifically, the paper provides strategies for student research that draw upon students’ acquired language skills to increase information literacy, strategies that apply not only to the above-mentioned courses but across subject areas. With this pairing of information literacy and language acquisition, instructors can help shorten the digital divide in high-impact courses and beyond in students’ academic careers.