ICT changed research in three places: finding sources, managing them, and analysing data. A researcher who searches well finds the right literature in an hour; a researcher who searches badly reads for a week and still misses the key paper.
Worked example: searching for studies on "online learning" returns thousands of results. Adding AND "school students" narrows the set to studies about both ideas. Adding OR "secondary pupils" widens it again to include synonyms. Two small operators, AND to narrow and OR to widen, turn an unusable flood into a readable list.