Thinking About College Teaching |
Volume 3: Information on the InternetThe proliferation of information on the Internet’s World Wide Web presents an exciting challenge for educators. The explosion of Web-based information has become an easy resource for students and instructors alike, but also allows greater access to more poor-quality information than ever before. The Web allows authors a level of anonymity and often irresponsibility, resulting in nameless persons with unknown qualifications writing with seeming authority about complex topics. Most undergraduate students have the misconception that if something is on the Internet it is legitimized because it exists in cyberspace. Following are guidelines for helping students become critical thinkers when using the Web. Know The Source: A Web page should clearly indicate the author or organization responsible for the information. It should have a clear title, and if the work is part of a larger main page, that page should be identified and a link to it provided. The current proposed standards for citing Web pages in both APA and MLA styles require at least an author and complete title, as well as the date and the Internet address. Tate and Alexander (1996) suggest the following additional criteria for identifying a reliable Web page: a clear statement of the author’s institutional affiliation, a posting date of the information, copyright date, a statement of what institution has ultimate responsibility for the page, and clear references to all informational sources used. For additional information on citing sources from the Internet, see http://h-net2.msu.edu/~africa/citation.html and http://www.library.yale.edu/ordcult/oc10.htm Know The Intent: With increased commercialization of the Internet, thousands of sites are no more than on-line ads disguised as information resources. Internet resources are often categorized by the type of group from which they originate. These categories are identified by the suffix in the address string: .edu for educational institution, .gov for governmental body, .org for non-profit organization, and .com for commercial group. Know The Search Engines: http://www.lib.utk.edu/refs/search.html is a site maintained by Martin Courtois, reference librarian at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, which provides descriptions and search tips for many search engines such as WebCrawler, Yahoo, five power search engines, five subject guide search engines, and a list of databases. There are also a dozen links to sites for more information on making searches. Shrode (1977) suggests that when making Internet-based assignments, instructors consider asking students to use search engines to find Web sites on a broad topic, rather than specific Web pages which often appear and disappear without warning. Encourage students to work in pairs or teams, perhaps pairing those more experienced in gathering and evaluating Internet-based information with less experienced students. References
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