Hi @Jose, I think that there should be an optimal balance between teaching and self-learning. I agree that today many people start self-learning in younger age.

I remember when I was a student, both in school and in my first university (math and physics). I was lucky to have good teachers. If a lecture is good and if you can take good notes, it is more valuable than a text book. Some books were excessively long or too complex. But many people were reading printed books that time.

I agree with @Ian, that for self-work of students they should learn how to search using google. But I think that the basic share of knowledge should not rely on such random outcome.

Just an example. Suppose we are studying Shakespeare, and need a particular adapted version. I am sure that google search will give the mostly adapted as the 1st result (because students are lazy, and more tend to read this, which will give little about old English language), while the one that teacher means, probably will come as #10, while the original may come as #1,000 in the list, and nobody would find them.

The motivation for this question did not come from my teaching experience. But I have realized its importance for teaching process.

We need to know how the (google) search works. I usually give an exact reference, if I want some person to read a particular book or even to watch a particular version of a song on youtube. But some (perhaps lazy) people give me 1-2 words and tell: search. It often happens that I never arrive to the exact source what they mean, but find something else instead. The trick is that artificial intelligence gives today a personal result in search list, depending on my past activity. Even if I use the same key words on different devices, like laptop and mobile phone.

Hi Yuri,

It depends on avaliable time, the grade of your students and the purpose of the tasks. What is for sure is that nothing is better understood than what you discover by yourself. As Ramsden said: teaching is simple... we should just let it happens. If the context is good, I´d go for google, but even better if they use academic browsers (google scholar, for example). Regards.

Here is today's best practice. Include the full url (https://www. ...) at the bottom of every image, equation, quotation, paraphrase or slide. Even these can become obsolete quickly.

However, if you want the students to each do their own projects, then some keyphrases are appropriate.

Hi @Jose, I think that there should be an optimal balance between teaching and self-learning. I agree that today many people start self-learning in younger age.

I remember when I was a student, both in school and in my first university (math and physics). I was lucky to have good teachers. If a lecture is good and if you can take good notes, it is more valuable than a text book. Some books were excessively long or too complex. But many people were reading printed books that time.

I agree with @Ian, that for self-work of students they should learn how to search using google. But I think that the basic share of knowledge should not rely on such random outcome.

Just an example. Suppose we are studying Shakespeare, and need a particular adapted version. I am sure that google search will give the mostly adapted as the 1st result (because students are lazy, and more tend to read this, which will give little about old English language), while the one that teacher means, probably will come as #10, while the original may come as #1,000 in the list, and nobody would find them.

I usually give them the perfect ice ball, then I ask them to roll via the internet resources.

I think that a teacher should give a fair reference list to his students, and ask them to make google search for more references.

I think that a teacher should give a fair reference list to his students, and ask them to make google search for more references.

I think that a teacher should give a fair reference list to his students, and ask them to make google search for more references.

Hi again Yuri,

Sure, but I´m afraid that the balance, depending on the age (course, etc.) should be changing until is, mainly, on the student´s side. In other words, the aim of a teacher is to be redundant (as much as it could be, at least). When I teach freshmen I usually guide them very much, but when I talk to postgraduates I try to kindle them giving them hints, semi-hidden ideas or just open questions. Learning is kinda a snail stairs process where cognitive processes are more complex as far as we go (see SOLO taxonomy attached). Regards

This is an entirely relevant question, important for teachers. In addition to what has already been observed, there is a bit more to add.

It is obvious that Google is a favorite search engine among both students and faculty. Google searches yield a broad brush view of the situation relative to particular questions.

However, for more intensive searches for research trends, papers and theses, there are search engines that are superior to Google. Here are two examples:

arXiv: For open source, downloadable papers and theses on physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical and engineering systems and economics, try

https://arxiv.org/

MathSci Net: For a diverse, wide-range search for authors and titles as well as reviews of books, journals and proceedings, see the attached image and try

https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/

Many of the responses you've received already touched on a few of the things I'll mention below.

You should consider your students' grade level, the content area, and their general ability. You also need to think about how much time is available to them, and to you for instruction.

There is a great opportunity for scaffolding with this kind of project. That is, you can make a version of the assignment where you supply the students with relevant URLs, one where you give them some URLs (say, 3) and then ask them to find x (e.g., 2) additional ones, and a final option where they are responsible for finding all the URLs themselves. You can either assign them to one of the three options or let them self-select. It's also a good opportunity to allow students to work collaboratively in groups.

One other thing I would suggest is that, if you are allowing them to find their own, you spend some time reviewing with them how to evaluate the quality of websites and how to properly cite them. Even some adult students will have trouble providing the actual website URL. For example, they might give you the Google search result URL instead of the specific website they used. This is something to show them ahead of time, and also be prepared to work with them on correcting after they do the assignment.

Only if it is a classical reference list (or a specific text) should it be given. For every other case, Google or any other specialised search engine should be used. The reason is, the search engines have made much progress, and are going to supersede keyword lists, PACS numbers, indexes etc. The students have a foot in the future, they have to be taught accordingly, and in the future there won't probably be ready made lists.

I want to thank everybody for the contributions to our discussion. There is another question that might be also of interest for you: https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_does_google_search_shape_public_knowledge .

If you read it, you may better understand the importance of this issue for teachers today.

I agree with @James that special search engines might be better for researchers. I agree with @Alexander that his 3rd way may be a good tool to educate talents.

But I want to attract your attention to a simple teacher, who might have no knowledge of what we discuss or to be lazy to think about that. The one type that teaches the majority today (more than 50% of all students). If he will not start from giving classical references, asking people to read physical books, then this generation will never become smart users of google (like most of scientists). And they will be the victims of randomness of the path selected by the system. They will never learn how to find more truthful information, and will always select one that is mostly advertised. This will self-reinforce the google system to evolve away from the principle: more quality - higher ranking.

Dear Yuri,

This question is important. In my case, when it comes to specific legislation (accounting area), I refer the specific references. When it comes to topics such as professional ethics and society, for example, I link the sites and videos related to the topic and motivate them to look elsewhere. Greetings!

It depends what you want your students to do / what the point of the exercise is/ the desired learning outcome. If you want them to read / critique some specific papers then obviously you need to give them the precise references. If you want them to search for material on a topic by themselves, to learn database searching skills, and to evaluate the quality of the evidence, then you would not give them a reference list. I don't think its really about google v specific references - those are not the only options and are not mutually exclusive (e.g. I may find a specific paper, from a reference list, on google scholar - or indeed here on research gate, if I'm lucky - this may be quicker than going via an online journal database and sometimes I might not be able to get the paper via a journal database because my library does not subscribe to that journal for example). I think the important skills in this area are methodical searching, creative searching, being able to evaluate and synthesise different sources of evidence and report it in a clear and transparent way?

The above mentioned comments are very useful

I agree with Dr. James F Peters

Dear @Mike, obviously you need to teach students both: a) classical sources of literature (that have been taught for many decades and represented the core knowledge in the end of the 20th century, before emergence of search engines), b) how to search in internet.

I am sure that the first skill should be taught before the 2nd. In the other case the knowledge of the next generation will be much different from ours (including one of the best scientists of today).

To teach the first skill teachers should be not lazy either to give book references (like in the literature list in science), or to give EXACT link of internet (where for example, this book has been scanned by somebody); better both (because not always free scans are legal and can disappear in future). Classical sources will lose internet competition to more recent and better advertised, but not necessarily (and in most cases surely not) the best.

My concern is that the majority of world teachers do not understand: a) the danger of free search before reading classical sources, b) how search works and on what the list of results does depend (even I do not understand this fully, except that the classics rarely appears among the first 10 results, only for a very smart string of keywords, that only some professional scientists can design).

Thus, we should probably write some recommendations how to prepare those teachers (I mean also in schools of the poor countries, where just an access to internet is already an achievement, and nobody cares about its dark sides).

Any material developed for teaching, learning and assessment, a teacher should acknowdge the source and write full reference list. Similarly, learners should be taught how to cite and reference, from their tender age.

Thanks, Linda! It is good to hear that some teachers know how to cite. But there is another problem. The culture of pupils comes not only from teachers. Even if we assume that all teachers at the globe are prepared to give exact references (although I doubt that), they are not the only source of information for pupils. And their friends and even parents often say "just google one word", and the result will differ depending on the individual history of search. Those who are inexperienced to find right links will stay even more inexperienced. This is the problem of coming generation: How to keep all knowledge of the previous (that was in books, now is often with lower accessibility via internet) and to keep access to new information, being able to distinguish between true and false. Today this is extremely difficult even for professionals.

Just an example. Perhaps more than 90% of important results in mathematics have been obtained before the era of internet. Many of important articles are not even scanned. I would say that some of them are even not translated. For example, one of my articles published in English in 2007 was a chapter in a volume in Russian published in 1990. The pattern of knowledge in math is also changing. Young professionals on RG are often surprised when I talk about exact solutions of differential equations. Many of them have been taught only numerical solutions, and do not understand the advantage of analytical solution.

I think that exact reference is also important even in clips on YouTube. Why? Because the sequence of images (mini-video) may mean and influence not less that sound sequence. There is substantial difference in number of views for different clips of the same song. If we want to inform somebody not only about the sounds of a song, but also about these images (that impressed us), exact reference becomes important.

I also have a new question about the reasons of popularity of songs and clips: https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_optimal_complexity_level_of_a_song_to_become_popular_today

Self learning is an absolute must, particularly in professional courses where autonomy of learning is very important.

Good comments

Regards