The Internet is the richest source of information on the planet. Just about anything you could ever want to know is available online. Search engines make it possible for scholars and students to find and download this information. Because researchers in most fields are using the Web to communicate about research in progress, students can find out not only what has been done in the past, but also study the latest findings of the top researchers in the field. Students can even search the ongoing conversations that current researchers are holding via newsgroups.
Some skill is required in using Internet search engines, however.
Unless the student knows how to use the Advanced Search Syntax effectively, frustration will set in as tens of thousands of irrelevant documents get found in response to a naively constructed search. All faculty should become role models in the use of the Internet search engines and show students how to make the most effective use of the Web in their discipline. Text, graphics, audio, and video are being used in virtually all subjects to provide an online multimedia resource for teaching, learning, and scholarship. The faculty should help students learn how to download this information and manipulate it for use in classroom presentations and the writing of multimedia term papers. Every student at the University of Delaware now has a Web site, where multimedia term papers can be mounted on the Internet.