Developing research skills in the web age
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Lindsay Warwick
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Developing research skills in the web age
- 1. Developing research skills in the web age LINDSAY WARWICK http://www.macmillanskillful.com http://tinyurl.com/ogzqvaf
- 2. What is it? Where does it live? Why is it endangered? How big is it? How does it survive in a forest environment?
- 4. Information literacy “Information literacy is knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner.” Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
- 5. Why is information literacy important? Epipheo.tv “What the Internet is doing to our brains” (YouTube)
- 8. Site comparison: Analyse top three results Ease of use Quality of results Timeliness of results
- 9. To wiki or not to wiki?
- 10. You want to know... ...where the aye aye lives. ...in which direction water drains in the northern and southern hemisphere? ...the positive and negative effects of slum tourism. ...how education can overcome overpopulation and overconsumption. ...ways to treat a migraine.
- 13. Evaluating online sources Be critical!
- 16. Truth or myth? Water drains in a different direction in the northern and southern hemisphere. The Great Wall of China is the only man-made object to be seen from space. Body heat disappears mostly through the head. Eating carrots helps your eyesight. Women say 13,000 more words a day than men.
- 17. What the Internet says “...draining water swirls clockwise in the north and anti-clockwise in the south.” uk.answers.yahoo.com “It is based on a scientific principle known as the Coriolis Effect.” livescience.com
- 18. Bookmarking
- 21. Skillful Reading & Writing 4, Boyle & Warwick, Macmillan 2014
- 22. funlexia.com
- 23. Is it ethical? • A student includes a quote with no source. • A student copies a diagram and sources it. • A student uses part of a previously written essay to form a new essay for a new course. • A student includes a well-known fact without a source. • A student sources an idea but puts it into her own words. • A student asks a friend to write part of an essay for them.
- 25. Skillful Reading & Writing 4, Boyle & Warwick, Macmillan 2014
- 26. Cartoon by Google blogscoped
- 27. Useful resources http://tinyurl.com/ogzqvaf http://www.macmillanskillful.com Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) Cardiff University Information Literacy Resource Bank (ILRB) Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP)
Editor's Notes
- Talk about my teaching context. Mention link to slides. Being a good researcher in the digital age is a minefield. Let’s start with an activity to highlight this.
- In pairs, look at this little known and rarely photographed creature, and answer the questions.
- Now read part of a website about this animal and find the answers.Feedback: Most of you probably realised that this animal isn’t real and this website is a hoax. It was created in 1998 and has since been used in lessons that help teach the importance of research skills. In 2011, one class of 13 year olds believed all of the information and recommended the site (all but one) to another class. In fact, what we’re talking about here is...
- ...Information literacy.This is defined as ... and is one discipline among others under the umbrella term Digital Literacy. Digital literacy covers information literacy, technological literacy, media literacy, and within those, critical thinking skills and digital citizenship. Digital literacy is now being pushed as something which is as important as reading and writing in the UK and the government are emphasizing its importance.
- So, why is it important? Well, without good researching skills we can become a dribbling mess like the guy in the cartoon. Hours and hours of looking at information that isn’t really very useful. In today’s digital world, information can be overwhelming. Students don’t always know how to find correct, appropriate information and then when they do, they don’t always present it in the most ethical way. Information is power, and we need to empower our students to be able to access accurate, reliable and relevant information so they can function successfully in our modern world, whether that’s in the workplace or at home.And when it comes to information, then...2011 research in the UK. A quarter of 12-15 year-olds make no checks when visiting a website. Less than ten per cent ask who made it and why. One third believe the info must be true if found via a search engine. They don’t recognise bias.http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Truth_-_web.pdfIn my experience, students are confident with technology but not usually competent. They pick things up quickly and they’re good with social networking but they don’t know the kinds of tools that they will need to use in the big, wide world after education.
- So, this is what we’re trying to avoid. Let’s take a look at how to source information, then how to evaluate those sources, how to evaluate the information within those sources and finally how to present your information ethically.
- Where to search: search engines – most students have a favourite, probably Google. But have they ever tried any others? Which bring up the best results? Do a comparison.Infomine is an index built by librarians.
- Let’s listen to the views of some people on the reliability of Wikipedia. What do you think? Discuss in pairs. Give my viewpoint – you may not want students to reference wikipedia but it’s a starting point and can give useful sources to follow up on. But students need to verify the information.Several studies have been done to assess the reliability of Wikipedia. An early study in the journal Nature said that in 2005, Wikipedia scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors".[2] The study by Nature was disputed byEncyclopædia Britannica,[3] and later Nature replied to this refutation with both a formal response and a point-by-point rebuttal of Britannica's main objections.[4] Between 2008 and 2012, articles in medical and scientific fields such as pathology,[5] toxicology,[6] oncology,[7] pharmaceuticals,[8] andpsychiatry[9] comparing Wikipedia to professional and peer-reviewed sources found that Wikipedia's depth and coverage were of a high standard. Wikipedia is open to anonymous and collaborative editing, so assessments of its reliability usually include examination of how quickly false or misleading information is removed. An early study conducted by IBM researchers in 2003—two years following Wikipedia's establishment—found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly—so quickly that most users will never see its effects"
- So, students have looked at difference search engines and have a favourite one or two. But how do they search effectively?Imagine you have to find this information. What would you type into the search box?
- This is what I might do and of course there isn’t one right answer. But students are prone to just typing in keywords or a complete question when this might not be the most effective way of doing it. By getting students to complete a task like this, we can help them think about this more carefully and learn tools and tips for searching.Go through each one and bring up Boolean logic (AND, OR, AND NOT, +, -); synonyms, truncations and *, advanced searches.
- Example of advanced search. Mention how search engines pick out key words and get students to think about what they expect to appear in the title and topic sentences.
- So, Ss can source information better. But how should we get our students to evaluate their online sources effectively so they don’t end up writing about a tree octopus, dog island or how water drains differently in different hemispheres? Tell The Onion story. So, what should you look for?
- Take a look at this site and evaluate it. Why is it so convincing? What could students do to thoroughly check a source?The text and tone (scientific), the photos, the design, the links, the news, the mention of the author, tab content (FAQs), quotes, links to science pages. What you can do: check author info, verify the information using other websites, look at the domain name (is it linked to a university), does is have .org or .edu for example at the end? Timeliness, cite sources? Check links, who the site is intended for and the tone.
- Are these truth or myth? Discuss them in pairs/3s. Then put hands up as to which are true. Go through answers backwards and end with the first.
- This is what the internet said. A range of information from a range of sources. Explain the truth. Explain how this task – and the tree octopus one - can help start a dialogue about how myths and incorrect information on the net can be reinforced until it becomes believed. This has always been true, but now we need to be more critical than ever with the amount of info we have at our fingertips. I’ll come back later to how students can check this info:Robert Ehrlich is a physicist at George Mason University.Dr Paul Doherty, senior scientist at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.If you read further on the Livescience.com website, it explains it’s unlikely to refer to toilets etc.Yahoo answers is any old Joe Bloggs.Luka Clarke, a misinformed Joe Bloggs, but on the Guardian website so it’s misleading.
- So, Ss have sourced great websites. Now they want to keep a record of them so they don’t lose them. They could be looking at hundreds. They need to bookmark them. Of course they can do that via their browser but there are fantastic sites that can help. Citeulike extracts the citation details and you can share it with others, as you can with scrible etc.
- Currency: is the research up-to-date or has more recent info negated it?Reliability: were the results repeated? Carried about by reliable company? Independent company?Validity: Large sample audience? Could results have been caused by something else?Relevance: Does it support the argument? Or the conclusions being drawn?Make a chart with questions on the right.
- You’re writing a paper on whether it’s men or women who take more risks. Does this research have currency, reliability, validity and relevance?
- A lot of academics are worried about a perceived lack of ethics in academia these days. Students seem to feel that printing out a piece of text from the internet somehow gives them ownership of this, and with the growing amount of sharing of materials that’s done, it’s easy to see why. Of course it’s easier for us to spot plagiarism when we’re marking work done in a second language because the level of English is suddenly vasting better but of course that would depend on your students. My favourite story is ... I also like the story of the teacher who sold some essays to a term paper mill site in the US while at college and then a few years later as a teacher, he received one of them from a student as if it was their own work. What are the chances?!So, we need to talk about plagiarism with our students but also train them to have better skills. I’ve heard of a teacher who took one students’ text and wrote another students’ name on it when reading it out, to find out how it made that person feel. That could work well. Of course a lot of plagiarism is done intentionally, with students knowing they’re copying without doing the work e.g. Term paper mill sites. Fave story: teacher who sold essays to one of those sites while at university, received one back from a student a few years later. Or not Americanising the spelling or vice versa.
- Grade them 1-5 (5=very unethical, 1=perfectly okay).For me, there is no grey area but students often think there is. 2 and 5 are fine, the others are not.
- There are some quizzes and materials online to raise students’ awareness of this. Here’s an example – we can do the first couple together.
- Another important factor in avoiding plagiarism is paraphrasing. Take a look at the original and students’ work – did the student plagiarise or not?Plagiarised – no source, only one or two words changed. They must have good reading skills, paraphrasing into their own words as they go. A good website for this is at the end of the presentation (OWL). We need to get students improving this and writing a better summary here.
- So, this is what we’re trying to avoid. We want our students to NOT believe everything they read but to be able to develop their research skills so they can find information more easily and they don’t have to rely on quoting the first source they find because it’s all just so overwhelming.
- Here are some useful links to information and resources. OWL has a paraphrasing task. Any questions?Don’t forget link to slides.