There is no doubt that the access to information has changed tremendously over the past decade. While it was impossible to come up with answers to questions without consulting a book or scribbling down own thoughts in the past, search engines such as Google are the preferred go-to places in the era of smartphones. Like no other generation, today’s teenagers and students appreciate the convenience of knowledge at their fingertips asking Google to provide information on any kind of question. But does Google actually support the learning process or does the overload of information distract the brain in the long run?

Looking for Answers

Despite the dominance of technology on our everyday life, there is a lack of academic literature studying how the use of search engines affects our memory and the way we learn new concepts.

Some researchers use examples from the past to argue that the easy access to information supports our brain and gives us the chance to concentrate on other skills such as creativity. Steve Pinker, a Harvard psychology professor, once argued that the Internet and technological advancement are the only solutions to keep human beings smart. His article in the New York Times focused on the positive effects of newspapers and television which were also highly criticised for increasing human stupidity during the time of their emergence.

Copyright: Syda Productions

Search Engines- Confidence Boosters or Distractors?

It may even be possible that the usage of search engines boosts students’ confidence in their understanding of new concepts. At Yale University, Matthew Fisher divided participants of his study into two groups. He asked the first group of students to give their answers to a set of questions, before using Google to confirm the answers. The second group of students did not have access to the Internet and had to answer the questions after thinking about them for a moment. At some trials, Fisher manipulated the search engine’s function resulting in a limitation of possible answers. Surprisingly, students who had access to the search engine had an increased level of confidence on the topic in comparison to those students who had to answer the questions directly.

However, some observational studies doubt that the instant availability of information though search engines has a positive effect on students’ learning process. In 2011, the Science Magazine published a research study that had focused on college students and their ability to remember information. The results showed that students who knew that they would be able to access the information easily online in the future, could recall the process and place where to find it more easily. Yet in return, these students also remembered less of the information itself.

Copyright: l i g h t p o e t

This behaviour is also very familiar within other contexts. Many Facebook user do not remember their friend’s birthday because they know it is always accessible on the Facebook website. Researchers conclude that we learn to rely on Google rather than on our own memory when it comes to storing long-term knowledge. Other researchers assume that the fact to be able to access the information wherever we like has a negative impact on our motivation to memorize the information.

The Problem of Information Overload

Google statistics show that the number of search requests increased enormously over the past twenty years. While Google’s search engine answered roughly 1000 queries a day in 1998, the company receives more than 3.5 billion search requests per year by now.

This exceptional increase leads to another potential issue: there is way too much information out there. This means that students have to deal with an overload of information when they try to find answers to their questions online. The combination of this information overload and long-term memory loss increase the risk that Google and Co. have a negative impact on the brain.  Research commissioned by the British Library found that the access to too much information has a major effect on students’ evaluations of content. The study showed that even though all participants reviewed online data in a short amount of time, most of them lacked the skill to evaluate the information for accuracy.

Copyright: Maria Uspenskaya

Instead of searching the answer for every possible question online without questioning the content, students need to re-develop the skill of critical thinking. As a result, some teachers in the US came up with the idea to cultivate critical-thinking in the minds of their students by integrating search engines more cleverly in class. By allowing students to use Google to answer questions that cannot be answered easily in a few words, they try to help students to develop their own set of skills. This activity could also make students more aware of all the consequences Google has on their brains.

What do you think about the role of search engines in the learning process? How often do you use them? Could you manage without them? Share your thoughts in the comments bellow.

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Web-based open courses are leading a change in disseminating the knowledge and transforming society at large. The SocialEDU is a new education initiative led by EdX and Facebook that aims to provide students in Rwanda with free access to a collaborative online learning experience.

There has never been a better time to get an education. Years ago, looking at the American college options from a war-torn Serbia, it was difficult to access any learning materials online. Courses reviewing the GRE, GMAT and TOEFL tests were not available even in traditional classrooms in Belgrade. For many, the doors of the world class universities remained forever closed.

With the development of online technologies, quality education is getting more available to a global audience. From various test preparation courses to poetry, finance and entrepreneurship classes, it seems the whole world now is going online to get an education.

These days, I am at the Yale Broadcast & Media Center filming an online lecture series in The  Moral Foundations  of Politics for Coursera with legendary political theorist, Dr. Ian Shapiro. It will produce a wonderful opportunity for students around the world with nothing but a wifi connection to get a sense of what it’s like to be in a Yale classroom. Exposure to the ideas and teaching methods of the most influential thinkers will be a mind opening experience Online learning is driving educational mobility to a global level.

Open Education: Democratization via Coursera and EdX

The world of educational technology continues to develop rapidly. Web-based open courses are leading an innovative change in disseminating knowledge around the world. Over the past few years, several Ivy League universities have started with Open courses. Yale, Stanford and MIT have all used technology to produce video recordings of their most prominent faculty members lectures. A step in a new direction was a creation of unified online learning platforms such as Coursera and EdX.

Coursera was founded by two Stanford University professors, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng who united around a shared vision for utilizing technology to expand educational opportunities worldwide. The other online learning platform, EdX was founded by Harvard and MIT. Recently, EdX partnered with Facebook to create the SocialEDU that aims to provide students in Rwanda with free access to a collaborative online education experiences. Facebook and EdX want to use the power of online social tools to help students reach their educational goals. This has all served to illustrate how new technologies and educational initiatives can potentially tackle inequalities and transform societies.

Low cost access to knowledge

While the costs of traditional education are increasing, the expansion of online learning is simultaneously taking place. Online education provides opportunities to people who may not otherwise have access to a university-level education to enhance their skills. For example, Open Learning Initiative offers online courses to anyone who wants to learn and teach. One of their goals is to provide tangible credit bearing opportunities to students in order to reduce the burden of college debt and make it more feasible for people to complete their degrees or go back to school.

Whether one seeks to go deeper into a particular subject or learn something entirely new, technology allows for an immediate access to knowledge at any place and time. I am talking to Sean Lip, one of the developers of Oppia-a newly released tool for creating interactive online activities that enable students to learn by doing- about how the whole platform came to be.

“From previous teaching experience, I’ve found that students learn better when they have opportunities to demonstrate their understanding. However, when I tried to create some interactive learning material online some time ago, I could not find a tool that made it easy for me to do this. This is how Oppia came about: it’s an open-source project that allows people to create interactive educational activities that allow others to learn by doing. I think one of the ways technology can help most in education is by making it possible for students to access educational experiences which otherwise wouldn’t be available to them. The oppia.org  exists to make it easy for people to construct interactive educational activities and share them with the world, and to allow these activities to be collaboratively improved so that they can become increasingly useful for learners over time,” says Sean Lip.

Look into the Future: is Technology the Answer?

New developments in online learning, interactive textbooks, and open educational resources have significant strategic implications for educational enterprise. The question many are raising is whether or not online learning can replace face-to-face campus experience. However, the purpose of technologies is not to replace the traditional education but to enhance it. Communications tools such as e-mail and online discussion forums, allow students to post their reading responses. Synchronous technologies such as webcasting, interactive video content, and chat rooms help approximate face-to-face learning experiences while allowing students to learn at their own pace.

Through experimentation and measurement of educational online platforms, better ways of teaching could be developed over time. As technology develops, we can expect to see a growing trend in the translation of online lectures into more and more world languages.

Ours is the digital age. We date online, read online, shop online, and make friends online. Why then would innovation in teaching, learning and research be an exception to that? Meet me in the worldwide classroom.

Photos (CC)

1. NYC #3  by Thomas Leuthard
2. ï £ ¿/  by Thomas Leuthard
3. Clever Girl  by liquene

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