5.2.1.3: A Decade of PIL Research

In college, students practice habits of inquiry as they are asked to find and evaluate information sources in the campus library and online. And yet, a critical review of previous PIL studies from 2009 to 2018 suggests that students’ approaches to research — and the challenges they face — have not changed significantly, and neither have the kinds of research-based learning opportunities faculty provide.⁴⁵ PIL’s 2010 “Assigning Inquiry”⁴⁶ study found that most assignment instructions emphasized what the finished product should look like, and allowed only a narrow range of source materials, mostly peer-reviewed articles. Likewise, scholars have argued that academic paper-writing places “technical proficiency over intellectual depth.”⁴⁷

Unsurprisingly, we found in PIL’s 2010 “Truth Be Told” study⁴⁸ that students found it perplexing to figure out the nature and scope of the intellectual work instructors required of them. When left to their own devices, many took a familiar path, relying on the same sequence of steps to find “safe” sources regardless of topic, such as using Google and Wikipedia to get started on research assignments before tapping library databases for acceptable sources. The same applied in everyday life for solving information problems, such as keeping up with news, making buying decisions, or checking out health and wellness information.⁴⁹

If the purpose of college research assignments is to prepare students to think critically and inquire deeply as they encounter new ideas, then assignments like these that encourage students to engage with information in such a limited way may miss the mark. Moreover, the information practices students develop to manage college assignments, according to our research, do little to equip them for an information environment that increasingly relies on manipulating large data sets to select and shape what they see. This is particularly true when it comes to learning how to evaluate information.

Students learn strategies for evaluating academic information to satisfy assignment requirements, but these may not transfer effectively to personal information seeking. While faculty help students gain the intellectual capacity to understand complex arguments made in scholarly books and journals through training in close reading and interpretation, this may come at the expense of equally important lessons.⁵⁰ Two PIL studies illustrate this worrisome disconnect between the critical information practices learned in college and the information skills students need in their daily lives and after graduation.⁵¹ In 2012, PIL interviewed 23 U.S. employers who reported their new hires were inclined to rely on search engines for quick and superficial answers, had trouble seeing patterns and connections, and were reluctant to take a deep dive into a variety of information sources (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: PIL findings on students’ research habits, 2009-2018

In PIL’s 2016 lifelong learning study, about three-quarters of college graduates believed that school had prepared them well to search for and analyze information. But only 27% agreed that college had helped them develop the ability to formulate questions of their own. Intellectual work for college assignments largely draws from and mimics the style of academic publications, which is profoundly dissimilar from the kind of open-ended and varied tasks they face after graduation. As one graduate said, “The faculty, the textbook author, they can carve the question any way they want, whereas in the real world it’s not black and white, there’s a lot of gray area and unknowns.”⁵² Both PIL studies point to areas where graduates’ research habits may make them more vulnerable to getting incomplete information as the top search results may reflect the priorities of algorithmic filters rather than the best information available.

References

45. Research writing instruction appears to have taught students this approach to inquiry since at least 1961. See James E. Ford and Dennis R. Perry (1982), “Research paper instruction in the undergraduate writing program,” College English 44(8), 825-831, DOI: doi. org/10.2307/377339. It is striking that the percentage of assignments that conform to a generic “research paper” was over 80 percent in surveys conducted in 1961, 1982, and in PIL’s 2010 study of research assignment handouts.
46. Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg (13 July 2010), Assigning inquiry: How handouts for research assignments guide today’s college students, Project Information Literacy, https://www.projectinfolit.org/uploa...vjuly_2010.pdf
47. Karen Manarin, Miriam Carey, Melanie Rathburn, and Glen Ryland, Critical reading in higher education: Academic goals and social engagement. Indiana University Press, 2015.
48. Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg (2010), Truth be told: How college students evaluate and use information in the digital age. Project Information Literacy, https://www.projectinfolit.org/uploa...ullreport1.pdf
49. Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg (4 April 2011), “How college students use the web to conduct everyday life research,” First Monday 16(4), https://firstmonday.org/article/view/3484/2857 50 A study conducted by the Stanford History Education Group found historians who relied on close reading of primary texts fared poorly when evaluating digital disinformation. Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew (6 October 2017), “Lateral reading: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information,” Stanford History Education Group Work Paper No. 2017-A1, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3048994
50. A study conducted by the Stanford History Education Group found historians who relied on close reading of primary texts fared poorly when evaluating digital disinformation. Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew (6 October 2017), “Lateral reading: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information,” Stanford History Education Group Work Paper No. 2017-A1, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3048994
51. See pp. 12-14 of Alison J. Head (16 October 2012), Learning curve: How college graduates solve information problems once they join the workplace, Project Information Literacy, www.projectinfolit. org/uploads/2/7/5/4/27541717/pil_fall2012_workplacestudy_ fullreport_revised.pdf
52. Alison J. Head (5 January 2016), Staying smart: How today’s graduates continue to learn once they complete college, Project Information Literacy, https://www.projectinfolit.org/ uploads/2/7/5/4/27541717/staying_smart_pil_1_5_2016b_fullreport.pdf

Contributors and Attributions

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