From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Wed Feb 05 2003 - 09:15:49 PST
----- Original Message -----
From: cunews_at_cornell.edu
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 6:17 PM
To: CUNEWS-SOCIAL_SCIENCE-L_at_cornell.edu; CUNEWS-SCIENCE-L_at_cornell.edu
Subject: Cornell News: Students citing scholarly material vs. the Web
When professors set standards, students rely less on dubious Web
sites and use scholarly sources for research, library study finds
FOR RELEASE: Feb. 3, 2003
Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.
Office: 607-255-3290
E-mail: bpf2_at_cornell.edu
ITHACA, N.Y. -- In this world of instant Internet information, the
use of scholarly documents in writing term papers at U.S. colleges
and universities has plummeted and the use of undependable Web
resources has soared.
Despite this grab-the-information-and-go attitude, there is good news
from the stacks. A Cornell University library sciences study shows
that when instructors set minimal bibliographic guidelines for doing
research, the number of citations of scholarly materials used returns
to levels of the pre-Internet world. Online scholarly resources can
range from the Congressional Record to academic research reports.
The findings are the final update in a longitudinal study, conducted
between 1996 and 2001, of the research habits of undergraduate
students in a Cornell microeconomics class taught by John Abowd,
professor of economics. An article by Philip Davis, a librarian at
Cornell's Albert R. Mann Library, describing the study, "Effect of
the Web on Undergraduate Citation Behavior: Guiding Student
Scholarship in a Networked Age," appears in the latest issue of
Portal, (Vol. 3, No. 1), a peer-reviewed library-sciences journal
published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
As colleges and universities in the United States have become wired
to the Internet, research that was once the exclusive province of the
campus library now can be done in computer labs or dormitory rooms.
In a previous part of their longitudinal study, Davis and Suzanne A.
Cohen of Cornell's Martin P. Catherwood Library, found that many Web
addresses, known as uniform resource locators, or URLs, cited in
student term-paper bibliographies often were incorrect or referred to
documents on the Internet that no longer existed.
In 2001 Abowd established minimum standards in his microeconomics
class for term-paper citations, and he began deducting points when
the citations had incorrect Web addresses. As a result, the URLs
cited that were still valid after six months increased to 82 percent
in 2001 from 55 percent in 1999. And because of the new standards,
the total number of Web citations sank to 13 percent in 2001 from 22
percent in 2000, the peak year.One result of changing standards is
that more students now obtain references directly from original
sources, such as government papers and legal documents, albeit
online. However, book usage has not recovered to pre-Internet levels.
Davis points out that students now are citing more government
documents and legal cases in their research, which have always been
difficult to find in print but are more easily found online.
"Setting minimum guidelines in assignments ensures that students will
identify relevant scholarly literature," says Davis. "This helps
students develop skills necessary to distinguish scholarly resources
from popular ones and gives students the ability to choose from a
multitude of resources without having the professor being unduly
prescriptive."
The solution to obtaining credible sources, he says, is not to ban
Web-based citations but to provide the students with acceptable
parameters for using the Web. Says Davis, "The results of this study
clearly indicate that students will meet the expectations of the
professor when those expectations are clearly articulated and
enforced."
-30-
The web version of this release may be found at
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Feb03/WebCiteDavis.bpf.html
Cornell University News Service
Surge 3
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
607-255-4206
cunews_at_cornell.edu
http://www.news.cornell.edu
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