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Please review the information below then join me in our online synchronous lesson, faciliated through Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional (previously called Macromedia Breeze). Be sure that you have Adobe Flash Player installed on your computer prior to the time of the lesson.

We will meet online once for one hour on January 17, 2008, from 3:00-4:00-PM. Please test the link below prior to this meeting and e-mail me if you have any difficulties connecting.

CONNECT TO BREEZE NOW (note: account has not been activated since this is a test site)

Below is the material we will cover during the lesson. As I said, I encourage you to review this prior to the lesson so that we can discuss any questions or concerns you may have. Following the online lesson, we will not be meeting again synchronously, but will spend two weeks working independently and through discussion on our wikispace.

Part One: Why is this important?

Most of us use the internet on a daily basis; we use it to find all sorts of information. We find out what movies are playing, what restaraunts have lunch specials, what flights are available.

We also use it for research, whether it's for personal interest of for a project in class.

Most of the time, we just assume the information we find is accurate. But what if it isn't? How can we really tell? Let's be honest - nearly anyone can publish information on the internet these days. How many of you have created a website? It's true that you could put whatever you feel like up on the page; there is no "internet police" monitoring what information is out there.

For example, try looking up "Martin Luther King" in one of your favorite search engines and see what you get. Most likely, within the first few entries you will find the website www.martinlutherking.org. The subtitle is "A True Historical Examination." Sounds legitimate, right?

Within a few moments of viewing this page it becomes clear that this is not a reliable resource. The offensive quote on the left might be your first clue. Down at the bottom of the page you will see "hosted by Stormfront," and following the link you are taken to the organization, whose slogan is "white pride world wide." That's right, it's a "White Pride" organization. Clearly not a reliable source of information. This one is relatively obvious, but in most cases it is not so simple to determine whether a website is reliable or not.

Worth noting is that In many cases the information we find might not be accurate, but it's really not a big deal. Let's say you're looking up stories about haunted houses or the latest celebrity gossip; whether or not the information you find is accurate doesn't matter too much.

So there are two things we need to be thinking about in this lesson.

1. How can we determine if an internet resource is reliable?
2. When is it worth the time it takes to evaluate the reliability of a resource?

Part Two: The Checklist

Those of you who have had previous discussions surrounding the evaluation of online resources might be familiar with the checklist approach. Essentially, this involves looking at a website and looking for key elements found in the evaluative checklist. This includes things such as "credibility of the author(s)," "currency," and "bias." The checklist we will look at in this course is displayed below. Review this carefully and if you have any questions about any of the categories please post them to our class discussion. Also be sure to download this checklist as a resource. We will be using it frequently throughout this lesson.

The final score for this Web site is ________________

Now that you have a general idea of criteria that can be used when evaluating online resources, take the time to go through the Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques and Questions tutorial. This is maintained by the University of California at Berkeley, and lists comprehensive techniques to apply and questions to ask when evaluating a website. Next, look over Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools. This site is maintained by Cornell University Library and contains a number of resources for you regarding the evaluation of websites. Please use the online discussion board to talk about what you learned from these tutorials. If you have any questions about the content, criticisms of the methods, or other insights please use the forums to share them with the rest of the class.

Finally, complete the following reading found on our class e-reserves; it is a criticism of the checklist approach and introduces the contextual approach, which we will look at next:

Meola, M. (2004). Chucking the checklist: a contextual approach to teaching undergraduates web-site evaluation. Libraries and the Academy, 4(3), 331-344.

Use the online discussion to ask questions about the Meola reading - do you agree or disagree with his criticism? The contextual approach can take much more time than the checklist approach, so when do you think it is appropriate to use each method?

Parts One & Two should be completed by Monday, 1/21/07. See calendar for details.

Part Three: The Contextual Approach

While the checklist appears to be a quantitative and objective way to evaluate an information resource found on the web, it may not always be effective. In fact, one can argue that it's not effective at all since empirical research does not support it. This is why we are going to take a look at the contextual approach. Rather than judge the websites to gain insight into their reliability, the contextual approach requires you take a deeper look at the information itself. What information are you trying to verify? Proponents of this approach argue that by looking at context and corroborating the information with multiple sources, you can gain a better understanding of whether or not the information is accurate in and of itself.

Unfortunately, it is not as simple as looking up another source to confirm or deny the accuracy of the fact you are interested in. If both sources are basing their information on the very same source (such as a bogus website), this does not help their case. So in order to effectively use this approach, you must find both multiple and independent sources that corroborate the information.

This approach is still relatively new in the literature so I encourage you to discuss this approach and make suggestions about how to go about using it effectively and practically. Really the best way to test it out is by actually looking for information on a topic; when you complete your assignments you will get a much better feel for how this approach works in the real world.

Review

In this lesson we have looked at the checklist approach and the contextual approach for evaluating information resources found on the web. Through completing the tutorials, examining the checklist, and reading the article I hope you will have a firm grasp on a variety of evaluative methods. Now that we have covered this material, it is time for you to start on the assignment. I encourage you not to wait until the last minute on this, because it will take quite some time. I hope you have found this lesson helpful and look forward to participating in our online discussions.

This lesson should be completed by 1/23/08. See calendar for details.

Created by Rebecca Blakiston, University of Arizona Libraries.
Last Updated November 25, 2007.