Information Literacy--AGAIN!

The Chronicle of Higher Education, in its October 27, 2006 issue, published an article entitled "Students Fall Short on 'Information Literacy,' Educational Testing Service's Study Finds."

ETS has developed a test called " ICT Literacy Assessment Core Level. "ICT" stands for "information and communication technology."" It was administered to approximately 4000 students, 3000 already in college and 800 high school seniors. Some of their finding are as follows:
-- "According to the preliminary report, only 13 percent of the test takers were information literate."
--"...Students at four-year colleges fared best on the test..."
--"...male and female students performed at the same level on the test. And while students at four-year colleges outperformed community-college students on information literacy in three subjects — business, education, and health services — the two groups fared the same on computer and information-science skills..."
--"...generally recognized that Web sites whose addresses ended in ".edu" or ".gov" were less likely to contain biased material than those with addresses ending in .com..."
--"...Students typically favored printed material over Web sites for authoritative information..."
--"When searching a database of journal articles for a research project, 63 percent of students identified reasonably relevant materials."
--'Some students were all too willing to believe printed materials, failing to distinguish authoritative from mass-market sources.
Students were generally poor at identifying biased Web content.
When searching a database, only half of students played down irrelevant results."