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This report presents findings about how a sample of U.S. college students gathers information and engages with news in the digital age. Included are results from an online survey of 5,844 respondents and telephone interviews with 37 participants from 11 U.S. colleges and universities selected for their regional, demographic, and red/blue state diversity. A computational analysis was conducted of Twitter data associated with the survey respondents and a larger Twitter panel of more than 135,000 college-age persons. Findings indicated two-thirds of the survey respondents received news from at least five pathways to news during a given week with peers, social media, professors, and online newspapers most commonly used. News was overwhelming for two-thirds of the respondents (68%), so they were selective about what they read or viewed, following topics meeting their immediate needs, i.e., weather and traffic reports, news about national politics, or political memes that appealed to their appreciation of satire. Some 58% shared news on social media during the past week, often to pass on information they thought friends and followers should know. Most students defined news content broadly and no longer see news as a cohesive, authoritative report as prior generations may have defined it. Many invested time and critical thinking to assemble, compare, and interpret news across sources. Social media and the open Web make traditional standards of evaluation increasingly problematic. While most believed in the core principles of journalism, and considered news necessary in a democracy (82%), many students were dissatisfied with the quality of news available today when media and political polarization were particularly acute. Distrust of news stemmed, in part, from the rise of "fast news" -- oversimplified and fragmented news snippets released throughout a day -- and the "fake news" phenomenon; only 14% felt very confident they could tell "fake news" from "real news." Six recommendations are included for educators, journalists, and librarians working to make students effective news consumers. To explore the implications of this study's findings, concise commentaries from leading thinkers in education, libraries, media research, and journalism are included. [For the executive summary, see ED591129.]

This paper identifies approaches, challenges, and best practices related to planning and designing today's academic library learning spaces. As part of the Project Information Literacy (PIL) Practitioner Series, qualitative data is presented from 49 interviews conducted with a sample of academic librarians, architects, and library consultants. These participants were at the forefront of the same 22 recent library learning space projects on college and university campuses in the US and Canada between 2011 and 2016. Most library projects had allocated space for supporting at least one of these four types of academic learning activities: collaborative, individual study, tutoring by campus learning partners, or occasional classes taught by campus instructors. Successful collaboration between the architect and the librarian was fostered by their shared commitment to meeting users' needs, though few stakeholders systematically collected input from users beyond standard usage statistics and gate counts. Most interviewees reported facing some common challenges during their project planning and implementations. One challenge was translating design goals into tangible designs while trying to resolve issues of noise mitigation, shared space allocations, and providing enough electrical power for IT devices. Another challenge was ensuring effective communication practices with planning teams as well as campus-wide constituents throughout projects. Additional challenges included building consensus, compensating for project interruption and inadequate knowledge about both architecture and library IT issues, and having too few a priori evaluation metrics for linking learning outcomes to goals of the library space projects. Taken together, the success of library learning space projects depends upon shared knowledge and understanding of the sweeping learning, pedagogical, and research changes facing the academy. Librarians and architects need to work together to apply that knowledge and understanding to the unique environment and learning and teaching needs of their specific institution. Contains a list of further readings. [Funding from a Strategic Research Grant from the University of Washington Information School helped to make this report possible.]

This executive summary provides a snapshot of the larger report, "How Students Engage with News: Five Takeaways for Educators, Journalists, and Librarians" (ED591128). The report represents perhaps the largest and most comprehensive research effort exploring how U.S. college-age students are accessing, consuming, and engaging with news in the digital era. It seeks to understand how students see the role of news in their lives, in their learning and social communities, and in a democracy at a time when personal beliefs may carry more weight than objective facts, information platforms fuel endless debates, and the authority of traditional media is falling away. Findings are drawn from an online survey administered at a diverse mix of 11 colleges and universities from across the country, yielding a sample of 5,844 students. Follow-up interviews with 37 survey respondents complemented the survey. A computational analysis of Twitter data from survey respondents (N = 731) and a larger Twitter panel of more than 135,000 college-age persons provided observational and external comparative data to help frame the survey results. The findings suggest young adults believe news is valuable to their lives and to society on the whole, and many see themselves as active participants in its dissemination. Yet, the new digital environment and current political reality has made successful navigation extremely difficult. Educational and media institutions need to do far more to help this emerging generation succeed in operating in this confusing, overwhelming, and often misleading online environment. Ultimately, they must educate young adults to understand how to find and engage with credible information and give them the knowledge necessary to fulfill both their personal needs and civic roles. This summary concludes with the five research takeaways presented in the larger report.

A report of findings from 2,318 respondents to a survey carried out among college students on six campuses distributed across the U.S. in the spring of 2009, as part of Project Information Literacy. Respondents, while curious in the beginning stages of research, employed a consistent and predictable research strategy for finding information, whether they were conducting course-related or everyday life research. Almost all of the respondents turned to the same set of tried and true information resources in the initial stages of research, regardless of their information goals. Almost all students used course readings and Google first for course-related research and Google and Wikipedia for everyday life research. Most students used library resources, especially scholarly databases for course-related research and far fewer, in comparison, used library services that required interacting with librarians. The findings suggest that students conceptualize research, especially tasks associated with seeking information, as a competency learned by rote, rather than as an opportunity to learn, develop, or expand upon an information-gathering strategy which leverages the wide range of resources available to them in the digital age. Research Methods and Sampling are appended. (Contains 15 figures and 30 footnotes.) [Funding for this paper was provided by ProQuest.]