Organization of the regional olympiad for high school students in information culture (analysis of the experience of the Republic of Buryatia)
Authors:   East-Siberian State Institute of Culture, Kuchmurukova Ekaterina A. , Shanginova Galina A. ,   East-Siberian State Institute of Culture
Published: February 2023

The Department of Library and information resources of the East Siberian state Institute of culture (VSGIK), since 2011, holds an annual Republican olympiad among high school students in information culture. Over the entire period, more than ten thousand three hundred high school students from various municipal educational institutions in Ulan-Ude and the Republic of Buryatia took part in the Olympiad. According to the “regulations on the national contest in information culture”, the winners at the threshold of unified state examination on the subjects “Literature”, “Russian language”, “Social Studies” guaranteed credited in FGBOU VO VSGIK on a budgetary place in the direction of training 51.03.06 “Library information activities” bachelor profile “Information-analytical activity”. The main results of previous years' Olympiads in terms of content criteria are revealed. Starting in 2016, the Olympiads were held in conjunction with the Buryat Republican Institute of educational policy, which allowed more schools in Buryatia to participate. One of the last Olympiads for the first time was included in the number of National Olympiads in the subjects of the ethno-cultural component. It included 3 stages: school, municipal and Republican. For a more accurate assessment of different types of questions, six assessment scales were developed that take into account the correctness of the answers to the proposed questions and a detailed algorithm for its implementation. The analysis of high school students ' responses to blocks of Olympiad tasks is presented, typical errors that occurred among participants are considered, and problems of preparation for the Republican Olympiad are identified. The characteristics of the answers allow us to state that the majority of students - participants of the Olympiad: 1. they do not have the skill to formulate a query or define keywords when working in Internet search engines; 2. they do not know how to analyze the results of search engines and choose the correct reliable source from the found ones; 3. they are not able to analyze the content of a particular site, to search for information in its sections; 4. not trained to work in electronic catalogs, do not know their search capabilities; 5. they have an insufficient level of use of reference literature, use wikipedia as the main source, replacing it with Internet versions of classic reference publications; 6. they demonstrate a lack of skills in analytical and synthetic processing of information, do not know how to make annotations, plan an abstract on a given topic; 7. they do not know how to make lists of literature on given topics, do not understand what sources to choose for this purpose, how to form them and design them. Analyzing the results of the Olympiad and the level of readiness of participants to work with Internet resources, you can make the following recommendations. To better prepare students in general education institutions, a joint program on information culture of students should be developed. The working committee should include school librarians (teachers-librarians) and teachers of computer science, Russian language and literature, etc., as well as include the subject “Information culture” in the curricula of secondary educational institutions.