Mistaken Goal: Where Higher Education & Technology Meet

The Washington Post published a story yesterday describing some research that says that college students today study less than college students in the past.   The story is largely based on a tiny bit of NSSE data that we first published several months ago describing self-reported time spent studying as it differs across majors.  At the moment, I’m less interested in the data and more interested in how it’s being reported and described.

First, I’m a bit amused that this is suddenly a hot topic given that the information was released 6 months ago.  In fact, it was covered very prominently in November by little-known websites like the New York Times, USA Today, and Chronicle of Higher Education.  I don’t know why the Post decided to write a story about this now (I suspect it has to do with an upcoming conference of higher education researchers, a conference heavily attended by my NSSE colleagues and one at which we frequently present new research).  But it’s amusing and informative that one story written by the Washington Post has set off a flood of blog posts and “news stories” about something that is old news.  Yes, I know that it’s still interesting and pertinent information but this seems to reinforce the sad fact that many blogs and “news sites” are very dependent on traditional media for content, even when that content has been available for months.

Second, I’m amused and saddened by the headlines that people are using to describe this research.  I know that many of the websites listed below are second- or third-rate and use headlines like these just to get attention (which drives up traffic and ad revenue – and which makes me a bit ashamed to be adding to their traffic and ad revenue!) but it still makes me sad.  Some example:

1. “Is college too easy? As study time falls, debate rises.“  This is the original Washington Post article.  It has a fairly well balanced headline.  It’s not over-the-top and it even notes that the issue is not settled as people debate it.
2. “Is College Hard? Students Are Studying Less, Says Survey“  The Huffington Post’s headline isn’t too far from the one used by the Washington Post.  Although I loathe the Huffington Post and how the vast majority of its content is blatantly derivative and unoriginal, this is a decent little summary of the Washington Post article and an alright headline.
3. “Laid-Back Higher Ed” This is how The Innovation Files describes the Washington Post article and the research it describes.  Not horrible but not very good either.  At least it’s not as bad as…
4. “Fun Time Is Replacing Study Time in College” I don’t know anything about FlaglerLive.com but based on this ridiculous and inaccurate headline and blog post I won’t be spending any time there.  I’m particularly impressed by the figure that they copied directly out of the NSSE 2011 Annual Results that they claim is “© FlaglerLive.”  Classy.

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I’ve tried very hard to be nice but I can’t bite my tongue any longer: Please, stop it with the infographics.  Most of them are bad.  If I were still a bratty 15-year old, I would dryly say that “I feel dumber for having read that” after seeing most infographics.  But I’ll be more professional and offer some specific criticisms.

Most infographics:

1. Obliterate nuance and ignore subtleties and differences by carelessly aggregating many different sources of information.  By no means am I opposed to integrating knowledge and synthesizing data from multiple sources!  But it must be done carefully because it’s rare that different studies or sources of data align well.  When it’s done carelessly we can draw false conclusions.  These problems compound as more sources are thoughtlessly tossed together until we’re saying things that we simply don’t know are true.
2. Don’t tell us where the data come from.  Sure, many infographics have a list of sources at the bottom.  But most of the time that’s all we get: An unordered list that doesn’t tell us which bits of information came from which sources.  I guess that kind of list is better than nothing, but not by much.  This is quite puzzling and frustrating because it seems like such an easy thing to fix.  Infographics designers, please look up “footnotes” and “endnotes” because this is a problem we solved a long time ago.
3. Don’t need to exist in the first place because the “graphics” add nothing to the “information” being conveyed.  I know that infographics are the hip, new thing (I know they’re neither hop nor new – play along because many people still believe that!) but if your message can be better communicated through a different medium then you’re hurting yourself and impeding your message by forcing it into an unhelpful series of “graphics.”

Of course, I’m not the first one to whine about the infographic plague.  For example, Megan McArdle is spot on when she notes that most infographics are created by hacks who haven’t done any research or produced anything useful but want to convince you that they’re experts so you’ll hire them or buy something from them.  I’m also sure that someone has eviscerated the banal characteristics of the infographic genre (e.g. color palette lifted straight from the early-mid 2000s Web 2.0 explosion, percentage values liberally scattered about in large fonts).

A great (?) example of a terrible infographic is this one recently published by Mashable.  It meets all three of the criteria listed above.  Sadly, most infographics I’ve seen meet at least two if not all three of those criteria.

But not all infographics are terrible.  It’s very simple but this one recently published by Bloomberg is effective and informative.   The infographic that is displayed when you click on the “Cost to students & school” button on the left is ok.  But the bar graphs displayed when you click on the “Conference comparison” button are very informative and useful.

Before you make your next infographic or start passing around a link to an infographic, please consider whether the infographic avoids the three pitfalls listed above.  If it doesn’t, please step away from the infographic!

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