Open educational resources (OER) reduce the textbook cost burden for students, but we must examine whether students using OER are learning the necessary skills to succeed in their academic work. This study used rubrics to examine student essays and evaluate whether students using OER and those using commercial textbooks varied in how they…

The rapid advancement of technology has presented marginalized communities in libraries with numerous privacy and security challenges. Many researchers have emphasized the importance of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs), suggesting that these technical solutions can effectively assist users in safeguarding their personally identifiable…

Marijuana use among U.S. college students is the highest since the mid-1980s. Because knowledge about marijuana and confidence in the knowledge are related to changing marijuana laws and marijuana-related messages ubiquitous in college students' information environment, we examined their relationships with use. The Structural Equation Modeling…

What 'sources' of knowledge do higher education students draw on, to prepare for exams? And has the pandemic made any difference? The study presented in this paper addresses these questions, in the belief that gaining awareness of the sources through which students learn is important for the instructional design of the courses and the evaluation…

Based on the information system success and situational strength theories, this study explores the moderating effect of learner quality and instructor quality on the relationship between information quality and student satisfaction with e-learning. Survey data were collected from 333 college students, and the proposed relationships were assessed…

When reading scientific information on the Internet laypersons frequently encounter conflicting claims. However, they usually lack the ability to resolve these scientific conflicts based on their own prior knowledge. This study aims to investigate how differences in the trustworthiness and/or expertise of the sources putting forward the…

Satirical news shows such as "The Daily Show" are popular with students, but are they appropriate for classroom use? In this two-group, pretest-posttest study, I examine differences in engagement, political knowledge, and political attitudes between two American Government classes: one assigned to watch "The Daily Show" and the…

Purpose: The Internet is a key resource for college students seeking health information, but it is unclear how well students are trained to evaluate the quality of information accessed. This pilot study sought to determine the sources and critical appraisal of health information accessed by public health students enrolled in a midwestern…

This paper reports the findings of a survey administered to a large academic university student population, assessing students' self-reported motivations, difficulties, and methods used in finding and using financial information. Results discussed include information types and sources students consult for financial information. The survey also…

Background: Mental health concerns for the collegial population are noted throughout the literature, with a recent focus on assessment, interventions and outreach. Concerns regarding individual resilience, barriers to seeking care and outreach opportunity venues have led careful consideration for further investigation of the rural college student.…

Ensuring the safety of students, faculty, and staff is a multifaceted challenge that requires institutions of higher education (IHEs) to navigate myriad threats, hazards, and risks. Concerns about safety and security at IHE campuses encompass everything from various forms of violence to the safety of pedestrian traffic, to the security of personal…

Information literacy studies have shown that college students use a variety of information sources to perform research and commonly choose Internet sources over traditional library sources. Studies have also shown that students do not appear to understand the information quality issues concerning Internet information sources and may lack the…

Theoretical accounts of risky choice framing effects assume that decision makers interpret framing options as extensionally equivalent, such that if 600 lives are at stake, saving 200 implies that 400 die. However, many scholars have argued that framing effects are caused, instead, by filling in pragmatically implied information. This linguistic…

Higher-education students now have more alternatives for searching for information than previous generations had. The Internet is a vast ocean of information sources, albeit with diverse reliability and quality. In Web 2.0 platforms, any participant can be a content creator. This reality is challenging for both the instructors and the students. We…

We test whether and how well the presence of an embedded librarian improves the quality of student research. Students in introductory-level courses tend to have very low levels of research skills and experience. Though faculty are frustrated by this lack of skills, both students and faculty tend to have only a peripheral knowledge of the role…