Another Unimpressive Performance by US 8th Graders

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The latest results from the 2018 International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) Web Report were published recently. Among the takeaways:

Two competency domains were tested:

• CIL - Computer and Information Literacy 
• CT - Computational Thinking

The results of CIL have a direct bearing on Information Fluency, the ability to find digital information efficiently, evaluate it effectively and use it ethically. Here's an excerpt from the results overview:

In the United States, female 8th-grade students outperformed their male peers in CIL, but male 8th-grade students outperformed female students in CT. Also, U.S. 8th-grade students with 2 or more computers at home performed better in both CIL and CT than their U.S. peers with fewer computers. Among U.S. 8th-grade students, 72 percent reported using the Internet to do research every school day or at least once a week, and 65 percent reported teaching themselves how to find information on the Internet.  source

It's the last finding that is noteworthy from an Information Fluency perspective. Two out of three students teach themselves how to search. That being said, it's remarkable the US average is above the world average, the US ranking #5, following Denmark, Moscow, Republic of Korea and Finland.

From our studies, the process of learning how to search for the majority of US students involves trial and error: entering keywords in a search engine (usually Google) and seeing if the results match expectations. While some search engines are getting better at interpreting whole language sentences or phrases used as queries, that remains a common practice. In fact, the better the machines become, the less apparent it becomes that full sentences isn't an effective way to find relevant information. It must be kept in mind that many sophisticated search engines still do business the old way: literal keywords. What works in Google doesn't work in all search engines, especially specialized ones. Therefore, constant exposure to Google and other semantic search engines, reduces trial and error learning. The results are just there.

And because relevant results seem to show up, they must be good, right? If 65% of US students teach themselves to search, one can only wonder what the percentage of students who teach themselves to evaluate information might be.