From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Web Surfers Competition Offers Scholarships (Chron of Hig
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 09:04:26 -0600
A Competition for Web Surfers Offers Full Scholarships to Winners
By KELLY McCOLLUM
Can the hours you spend ferreting out obscure facts from far-flung Web
sites get you anywhere in life?
They can in a competition, created by Florida State University and
Lexis-Nexis, that awards its winners full-tuition college scholarships.
The contest was started last year as a way of both attracting students
to the university and drawing users to the data-base service. It rewards
one or two high-school students each year -- not only for their academic
merits but also for their ability to use computers and computer networks
to find information. It's a skill that most high-school students these
days already seem to pick up as a matter of course. The contest's
organizers think it's also a skill the students need for college.
Says Fran Conaway, a spokeswoman for the university, "The ability to
access information on line is tremendously important and becoming more
important every day, not just in the academic world, but in the business
world." She adds: "If you get out of school and you can't do this, then
you're at a significant disadvantage."
The contest works like this: High-school juniors and seniors from around
the United States compete in the first rounds of the challenge from
their homes or schools. Participants are given one hour to answer 10
multiple-choice questions using a Web-based version of the Lexis-Nexis
data base. Students can compete individually or in pairs.
The five teams that win in the qualifying rounds travel to Tallahassee,
Fla., for the championship match, held at the university's School of
Information Studies.
Last year's questions resembled those from any trivia game, although
most concerned facts so obscure that students were certain to need help
from the data base: What was the unemployment rate in France at the end
of 1994? (It was 12.6 per cent.) How many pounds of bananas does the
average American eat in a year? (Twenty-five.) Who was the actress who
asked "Where's the beef?" (Clara Peller -- and, incidentally, that
commercial for Wendy's aired in 1984, when most of last year's
high-school seniors were 4 years old.)
According to Carol Johnson, a marketing manager for Lexis-Nexis'
academic services, this year's questions will be tougher. "What we want
the questions to do is show that the students not only have research
skills, but that they also have analytical skills," she says. Students
may not be able to turn up the exact answer to the questions using the
data base, but they will be able to find enough information to help them
figure out the answer, according to Ms. Johnson.
The questions are composed by researchers at Lexis-Nexis with help from
Florida State's College of Education and its School of Information
Studies. "We have people who are very well-versed in the Lexis-Nexis
service who will be creating the questions," says Ms. Johnson. She says
the university will offer guidance about what types of questions should
be asked and what subjects should be involved. What those topics will
be, she won't say, lest some competitors get an unfair advantage.
Last year, Lexis-Nexis released a Web-based version of its service,
called "Academic Universe," intended for college students. The on-line
challenge, says Ms. Johnson, lets the company introduce its service to
college-bound high-school students "so that when they go to college they
will know to ask for it by name."
Ms. Conaway says the contest lets Florida State reach students who are
"tuned in to the latest technology and are very serious about their
studies and serious about their future." One of last year's two winners
accepted the scholarship. Winners must meet the university's admissions
requirements in order to attend.
Registration for the contest is open through April 15 to any high-school
junior or senior enrolled in the United States, and the competition will
begin in May. The finals will be held on June 4.