Let me Google that For You

Let Me Google That For You passive aggressive way of telling people to do their own research. As this week's readings show, however, search engines have their limits and their faults. 

Summary

“How the Views of Faculty Can Inform Undergraduate Web-Based Research: Implications for Academic Writing” By Rena Helms-Park and Paul Stapleton is a qualitative study of how faculty members evaluate online sources. The researchers surveyed thirty-one faculty members of the humanities department at a university. According to the survey, faculty members found the academic rigor of the site, the reputation of the author or organization sponsoring the website, clear indication of who had written the text, and objectivity and reliability of the site’s context to be most important. Members of academia are more cautious of online sources than they are of print-based sources. The researchers used the results of the survey in order to create a formal heuristic for students to evaluate online sources. The heuristic takes a form of a checklist that prompts students to judge the academic rigor of the site, the organization sponsoring the website, objectivity and reliability of the content, and the site’s honesty or transparency.

“Can I Google That? Research Strategies of Undergraduate Students” by Mary Lourdes Silva is a study on the practices of three students as they attempt to navigate the internet to find sources for a research paper. The internet provides a challenge for college students and instructors due to the lack of information literacy (IL) skills (161). According to past research, many students do not know how to evaluate the validity of online resources. In this chapter, the author researches IL skills with two guiding questions: “what are the navigational and IL strategies and skills students use at the beginning of a research writing course?” and “After students receive training based on a multiliteracies approach, how do navigational an IL strategies and skills change?” (164). The researcher studied three different students using several research methods. All three students were enrolled in a writing course at a large west coast university. The data collected included surveys, interviews, self-reports, drafts of papers, and screen captures of the student’s browsing skills. The students also used think-aloud protocol as they searched the web for sources. In the beginning of the study, students did not have a defined set of criteria in which they could evaluate sources. Students also used different navigational strategies in order to look for sources, which included typing keywords into search engines and then clicking through the sites or opening new tabs. After the second week of research, the students were instructed on how to search for and evaluate online resources. They improved their IL skills considerably and learned new ways to search for methods. One interesting that the author noted was that the students expressed frustration why they couldn’t find a source and that they often looked for sources that covered a wide topic first before trying to find more specific sources.  The author suggests that future instruction teach students how to generate keywords, learn the constraints and limitation of search engines and databases, and learn how to evaluate web sources.

Discussion:

These two studies brought up useful ways to help students evaluate online resources. It would definitely be helpful to give students a checklist and to spend some time talking about what can make a website reliable, and another unacceptable as a source. This could also be attached to a section in a writing course on citation and plagiarism. I think it is important to be explicit with students about how to cite and about what counts as plagiarism, especially in introductory writing courses.

Anytime someone brings up a study of online sources, I always think of the story of the Tree Octopus . According to a news site, a professor of directed students to a website on the endangered species of the Tree Octopus, and then news website said that because students believed the website, that students don’t know how to research ("It Must Be True, I Read It on the Internet: Elusive 'Tree Octopus' Proves How Gullible Web Generation Is").What annoyed was the fact that news websites like The Daily Mail, in typical news fashion, I suppose, took this to be a “gotcha” moment for students. That because students believed a website a professor directed them to, that the students didn’t know how to evaluate a source. It really seems to disparage students without taking into account that perhaps they trusted the ethos of the professor. It is important to teach students how to evaluate online resources, but in this case there was a power dynamic that this news website at least did not take into account.I appreciate the fact that these research articles did not try to say “gotcha” to students. Instead, the researchers in both of the studies accepted that the internet is here to stay and that students need to learn how to use it for research.

The internet is a great resource for academic articles, in fact, there are many journals that are online. When I was an undergraduate, however, I definitely fell into the trap of using websites that were convenient sources instead of looking for academically rigorous sources. Part of the problem is definitely time management; students often do not give themselves enough to find a good resource. Instead they find the one that will give them the extra citation they need to fit a requirement. Students may often find that they cannot find a source that summarizes the scholarship on their topic. Sometimes, those sources do not exist and they need to know how to synthesize information from a variety of smaller sources. Synthesizing information into a thesis requires a lot of critical thinking skill, which can take a long time to teach.

Works Cited

Helms-Park, Rena, and Paul Stapleton. "“How the Views of Faculty Can Inform Undergraduate Web-Based Research: Implications for Academic Writing”." Computers and Composition 23 (2006): 444-61.ScienceDirect. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.

"It Must Be True, I Read It on the Internet: Elusive 'Tree Octopus' Proves How Gullible Web Generation Is." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 3 Feb. 2011. Web. 16 Sept. 2014. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1352929/Endangered-tree-octopus-proves-students-believe-read-Internet.html>.

Silva, Mary L. "Can I Google That? Research Strategies of Undergraduate Students." The New Digital Scholar: Exploring and Enriching the Research and Writing Practices of NextGen Students. Ed. Randall McClure and James P. Purdy. Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2013. 161-87. Print.

I found this chapter an interesting way of looking at the relationship between education and the economy. Because mass education is supposed to prepare students to be members of society, education is definitely influenced by cultural and economic changes.

This week I chose realtime at random. It is fairly easy and intuitive to learn. Navigating through the space can take some getting used to. There is the ability to upload images and videos. With an extension for Google Chrome, you can drag and drop files onto the realtime board.

Realtime board is flexible in how you want to present information. For this chapter, I chose to simply summarize in three blocks. There is also the ability to create a presentation and to play it like a slideshow. Like Prezi, it allows you to make interesting presentations. I am not sure if you can change the transitions, however. I might use Realtime for future presentations, as it is very flexible and easy to use. The setbacks include no spellchecking software, no ability to change font color, and a limitation in what fonts you can use.

Heather Brain Rules 3:  

This chapter on brain rules seems really interesting! I know sleep is extremely important, especially since I have made some sleepy commutes through HRBT and that has not been pleasant. Again, I really like how storify allows users to embed media. Heather's presentation made me laugh, and I think I remember information better when I associate it with an emotion or an action like laughter. If only we could set up our own schedules, right? 

Kevin New Learning 3: Kevin using Twine to take notes on this chapter is a very good idea, especially since this chapter in NL3 is very modular and mostly information based. This chapter tries to sum up three big relationships between education and work in a relatively short amount of space, and I think twine is a good way of further breaking down the relationships and making it memorable for students. It is possible for Twines to be shared through an HTML link. I think it would have been interesting to "play" through this twine to see how the information was presented in the game created! 

These note taking challenges have really allowed think about how to present information. I also think it's interesting that, in my experience, we make up audiences for our notes. For me, I always try to think about my fellow classmates because they are the ones who have to comment on my work. Others, in their reflections, seem to be thinking about how they would present this to students if the taught this information.