This article, published eight years ago, addresses an issue that is still very much with us today. The study attempts to establish the evaluation criteria for that instructors and students have at their disposal when evaluating web sources, something that is more crucial now than ever before. The study found that faculty valued the same top three criteria for web sources that they did for print sources, with the addition of ensuring the credibility of who wrote it, which is perceived to be less of a problem in print (449). 

I thought it was interesting that the study says that "faculty continue to be wary of the Web's unregulated nature and its irregularities" (450), which doesn't surprise me really. I find myself in that camp sometimes too, although not with any intention to regulate the Web, which would be even more dangerous. The "balance" (451) that the study shows as favored by most instructors is good. I know professors who do nothing with web sources, and I know others who have students only work with web sources (which doesn't seem rigorous enough to me), but I think the balance between these two sources combined with an emphasis on meeting the needs of the writing situation (always a rhetorical situation) is where it's at. I find that working with students one on one and in small groups as they're doing research is one of the best ways to get students to think about the research they're doing rhetorically. I also work collaboratively with our librarians to instruct in information literacy, which I've only recently started doing but with great success. Here is a resource that the library put together on Evaluating Web Sources that I work with students through. 

I found the "implications" of this article to be the most useful, particularly with regard to the instructional support needed for information literacy in the twenty first century. I though it was interesting that providing general rubrics weren't seen as very helpful (177) and that vague instructions from faculty are often viewed as one of the main impediments to ineffective instruction in this area. Teaching the strengths and weaknesses of each research databases, the "genre" of each kind of research, is seen to be the most effective way to proceed. 

I liked the idea of "mining sources." I talk about this with students, but I haven't used this terminology before. I think it has a lot of potential, as listed on page 181. I've worked with students to "mine" data and source from LinkedIn before for career-related research, and I found that most students struggle with this, despite being well equipped to use other social networking sites for entertainment purposes. Once again, the gap between being able to "use technology" and being about to use it in a productive way towards the outcomes we're looking to achieve is seen again. 

I also like the "technologies in action" section that provide the practical "to dos" when doing research, something I should work to provide more instruction on in my courses. 

Chapter 3 of NL deals with learning for the work environment and how education for labor markets have changed over the past hundred years, evolving from "Fordism" to "Post-Fordism" to, what we have now, "Productive Diversity." The mass production and hierarchical nature of Fordism represents both the skills that the workforce needed at the time (not much) and the educational system that developed to meet those demands. As the need for a more highly skilled workforce developed, education has evolved to meet that need. The "Post-Fordism" market required a more skilled workforce, more teamwork, and workers who were able to share in a corporate culture (e.g. "welcome to our work family"). The authors regard our 21st century situation as those of a "productive diversity" that relies on a highly skilled and multi-skilled workforce that is adaptable, flexible, and constantly improving its skills. Education is changing to meet these needs. 

I was a little concerned that the authors addressed the income inequality among the owners of the means of production in Fordism and Post-Fordism, but not so much in the "Productive Diversity" model (unless I missed it, which is possible). With the gap between the very rich and 'the rest of us' higher than ever before, a more critical response to where we are, in fact, at with regard to labor and the laborer is crucial to understanding late capitalism. I think the authors are right on when they describe today's worker as "the portfolio worker," which of course has more or less been the tradition in higher education already (evidence by the CV versus a resume, although there is the problem of the compartmentalization of the university, which is another topic altogether). I was glad that the authors made the important gesture to say that education shouldn't be all about producing workers. Their opening sentence alarmed me (ideologically), but they offer a better balance throughout the article. 

Here is the link to my graphical notes on NL3.