Searching for better researchers

Today's (Sept. 29) Inside Higher Ed had this article, "Searching for better research habits," describing a couple of presentations at the recent Ithaka Sustainable Scholarship Conference.  I couldn't agree more with those interviewed that we need to be teaching students concepts of research, not just how to use the tools. Google's Daniel M. Russell, a senior research scientist for search quality, said, "One of the things we have to do is not teach the little twiddlybits about search...Technical knowledge of... search interface ... becomes obsolete, because the interfaces are constantly changing. So I don’t want to teach them algorithms...I don’t want to teach them what’s in the index and all that stuff...I do want to teach them what’s possible.” In other words: If students do not know what is out there to find, they cannot search for it effectively.