Evaluating Internet Resources

There was a time, only a few years ago, when all you had to say was, "I got this information from the Internet," and it was considered gospel. At that time, the only people who could publish on this growing network were research centers and Universities, and the information was largely scholarly in nature.

Today, just about anyone can publish on the Internet. People can bypass the editors, who provided a level of filtering, and make their information almost instantly available to a global audience -- and it costs almost nothing.

This presents many problems for those of us who use digital information.  But it is important to note that these problems are neither unique nor brand new. Critical evaluation of information has been necessary since humankind first learned to communicate and it has been part of most curricula for years. Yet never before has it become so easy for so many to communicate so effectively and so broadly. This presents a special challenge to schools and other similarly information intensive institutions.  How do you tell if it's the true and valuable.

The Problems

There are three major considerations in evaluating Internet resources:

1.       Reliability

2.       Credibility

3.       Perspective & Purpose

Reliability

Reliability of information on the Internet refers most often to the correctness of information found on the Internet.  However, the issue is complicated by time factors and other constraints that can render information undependable.  We must go beyond asking if the information is accurate, and explore under what conditions will it remain accurate. Will it remain up to date for the duration of the information product you or your students are producing? If information is time sensitive, then the author should include a date published and/or a date last revised. If this information is not provided and the information is worthy of further investigation, you can look for contact information on the author and use e-mail to seek these dates directly from the author.

Credibility

Credibility refers more to the origins of the information. Does the author and/or the publishing organization have the authority to produce the information and to present it the way that they have. There should be information about the author or links to a web page that presents his or her credentials. Along with these credentials should be links to other documents that the author has published.

Perspective & Purpose

Perspective & Purpose refers to bias. What does the author or publishing organization have to gain by publishing this information? Is there a reason why they would want to present it in a particular way or from a certain angle. Are they selling a product? Are they supporting a specific political agenda? Do they have an axe to grind?

 

There are several questions to ask about the information you have found:

1.   Is it accurate?

2.   Under what conditions will it stop being accurate?

3.   On what basis was the information generated?

      a.     Well designed research

      b.     Experience or education

      c.     Intuition

      d.     Opinion

4.   Why was the information published and as a service to whom?

5.   What does the publishing organization have to gain by publishing this information and in this way?

 

Collecting Information about Authors & Publishing Organizations

Let's say that we are using the Internet to research evaluation of Internet-based information, and we find an article written by David Warlick and published by the Media Awareness Network of Canada.

http://www.media-awareness.ca/eng/med/class/teamed2/warlick.htm

 The only thing that we have right away is the name of the author and his e-mail address, the name of the organization, and the URL of the article.  Following are some techniques that we can use to learn more about the author and the publishing organization.


Evaluative Investigation Techniques

E-mail the Author

We can send an e-mail message to the author asking him where he got the ideas for his article.  Ask about any research that he conducted or examined or any related information that is available on the Internet or in print.  When someone publishes information, he or she should be willing to support it.

Research the Author

Simply use the Internet to research the author or publishing organization.  Using a search engine to research the author not only reveals other writings and services by the author, but also what other people are saying about his work.

Who's Backing the Author?

Since the domain of the author's e-mail address is unique (not @aol.com or @hotmail.com, we might try accessing a web page with the domain.  We would try to access: http://www.landmark-project.com.  If we find that the organization that is providing Mr. Warlick with an e-mail address sells a product that he is promoting, then we have an indication of possible bias. We can continue to investigate the site if appropriate, looking for mission statements, products (not just for sale) that related to the article, and references to the author.

Who's Standing Behind the Curtain?

We can also check the owner of the Landmarks for Schools website by going to a service on the Internet that will tell you who owns the domain.    We go to:

http://www.internic.com

Here we type the domain, landmark-project.com into the form and click the Search button.  After a moment we receive a report on who owns and maintains the domain name for the web server.

 

 

Backtracking the URL

We can find more information about the publishing organization by examining the article's URL.  Backtracking a URL involves removing elements of it one by one.  Each element is separated by a forward slash (/).  So we start removing element to the right until we get another web page:

http://www.media-awareness.ca/eng/med/class/teamed2/warlick.htm

This page appears to be a resource page for teachers.  We backup again until we receive another web page.

http://www.media-awareness.ca/eng/med/class/teamed2/warlick.htm

Here we get the English version of the Media Awareness Network home page.  We can explore this page and connected pages for information that would be helpful in determining any bias in their choosing to publish Mr. Warlick's work.

 

Goals-Based Evaluation of Internet Resources

The following is excerpts of an article that was first published in the North Carolina State University Meridian online journal in April, 1998.  It explores various issue related to evaluating Internet resources, and the nature of assignments that we give to students.

Meridian can be found at: 

http://www.ncsu.edu/meridian/

Evaluating Internet-based Information:
A Goals-based Approach

David F. Warlick
david@landmark-project.com

 

Introduction

A high school junior is asked to write a report about the Holocaust, a topic that her class has not yet discussed. At home our student uses her computer with access to the Internet to research the topic and word processing software to construct her report. She spends an hour searching the Internet and examining a variety of websites about the subject and selects three that are particularly compelling because of the quality of the graphics and layout of the pages -- indicating to her, authority.

Our young woman copies text from the pages, carefully paraphrases some, quotes others, downloads images and pastes them into the appropriate spots on her file, prints a professional looking report, and proudly turns it into the teacher two days later. She has used the Internet to explore, discover and information processing technology to craft and report information about this historic event.

As can easily happen today, each of the web sites that our student used were published by neo-nazi and white-supremacist organizations portraying a biased point of view -- and our youngster's report becomes a reflection of this divisive perspective without the student even knowing it.

This kind of scenario has many educators concerned about using of the Internet as a reliable resource for academic information. In response to this concern and the scenario above, I believe that the presence of inaccurate and biased information on the Internet is not our only problem, and it may not even by the primary problem. Our information and points of view have not really changed, it is the tools that have changed. Today, our students use professional and sophisticated information tools and global electronic networks to complete their assignments while most of us, in our day, used pencil and paper and the information resources that existed in our school library. While we did our work with what could be compared to a $12 box of Lincoln Logs, students today have at their disposal professional tools and virtually limitless materials, as if they have an entire Builder's Supply warehouse to work from. While we assembled our reports with children's building blocks, today's students can craft their information products with word processors, enrich them with multimedia mined from the Internet, and empower them with hypertext. Their work can be compelling and it can be published to a global community.

 The real problem with the scenario above is the assignment. The problem is that we are still, by and large, giving Lincoln Log assignments -- "Write a report about the Holocaust." These advanced and powerful capabilities that are increasingly available to our students beg for a different kinds of tasks. Writing a report about something has as its goal the demonstration of gained knowledge. Yet gaining knowledge becomes only a small part of what students should be learning to prepare them for a world where knowledge changes and information grows at dizzying speeds. In fact, in the information world, their jobs will be to help in growing knowledge by becoming information builders.

From the perspective of the builder, our students have aisles of information processing tools to choose from and an Internet warehouse from which to select building materials. The difference is that the builder, in the middle of Builder's Supply, has a task or project in mind, something that he or she plans to build for the enjoyment and convenience of others. Our builder has a goal behind his or her selections of tools, lumber, and nails.

Likewise, as students browse through the Internet, looking for information raw materials, they too should have goals for their work. The difference between "Lincoln Log" assignments and what students should be doing today, is that our young high school junior should have had a goal for her report beyond that of just earning a grade. Because she can produce such impressive work and it can potentially be published for others to see and use, her goal should be behavioral. Students should be building their information products to affect impressions, decisions, beliefs, support or defeat positions, or create new knowledge.

Goals-based projects have a variety of benefits:

  • Goals-based projects provide a context for the student's work that is authentic. They are collecting, synthesizing, processing, assembling and expressing information for a reason that is real and beyond the pursuit of just a grade.

  • Students are less likely to simply copy and paste large chunks of text as they would if they were writing about something. They will find and copy smaller chunks of information and then carefully assemble them to produce information products that are designed to accomplish something. They will also provide mortar between these building blocks to hold them together and lend them relevance to the expressed goal.

  • Goals-based assignments also lend themselves especially well to the use of  students produced rubrics. The student's goals can become part of the rubric's goals, with teacher or student defined benchmarks.

 


Goals-based Evaluation

What do goals-based assignments have to do with evaluating Internet resources? Let's return to the builder's analogy. One of the many things that my father taught me is that when you are building something in the workshop, the number one key to success is using the appropriate tools and materials. Walk into any "Builder's Supply," and you have a virtual Internet of tools and building materials available to you. As you examine them individually, they are not judged as good or bad, but simply appropriate or inappropriate for specific building projects. Our task, as the shopper, is to select the tools and materials that are appropriate to our goals.

Traditionally, Internet resources have been evaluated from the perspective of the information itself and it's source. This usually involves some type of checklist that puts all Internet information through the same sieve, evaluating each based on the same criteria.

As students' information products should be based on teacher or student established goals, evaluating the material that they consider using in their products should also be goals-oriented. Rather than judging the material based solely on itself via a standard examination instrument, it should be judged from the perspective of what the student wants to accomplish.

From this standpoint, we would not ask, "Is the author qualified?", but, "What aspects of the author's background help me accomplish my goal?" Under certain circumstances, a web page published by a neo-nazi organization might actually be appropriate for an assignment, while other resources, produced by people with credential would not. It depends on what the student wants to accomplish.

This approach actually serves three interesting purposes.

1.       The evaluation process focuses on drawing supporting or appropriate information into the project rather than just filtering "bad" information out.

2.       The student gathers information about the information.

3.       As students approach information with their goals to accomplish, they are less likely to be influenced by the goals of those who generated and published the information, which has interesting implications for media literacy.

 

Information about the Information

The second benefit is of particular interest as Internet-based information meets with increasing suspicion. In the print-based world, it is only necessary to mention the author's name and a vague reference to the source. "John Robinson said in his book, Acres of Sound, that…". This plus a standard citation placed at the bottom of the page or in the bibliography alone is sufficient to render the information fact.

This will not be enough justification for information gathered from the wild Internet. Other rationale will be needed which might read like this:

John Robinson, in his twelve-month research at the University of Hawaii on the influences of motor sounds on the navigation of sea mammals, states in his website (http://…) that…

This more elaborate explanation of the information's source lends it credibility when a mere URL would not. Therefore, part of the evaluation process should be to identify and collect this sort of supporting information about the information, as justification.  The form that is described in the next section will help in collecting information about the information.


A Goals-based Internet Evaluation Form

The form below has been created to help students evaluate Internet resources based on the goal(s) of their work. It begins with a statement of the student's goals, and then follows through with the collection of specific information with explanations of how the information supports the resource in terms of the student's goals.

Another assumption provides an additional basis for this form. As students are researching the Internet, we might safely assume that they are using a computer. Therefore, they should also be using a computer-based form for their evaluation and collection of information. This form is designed for this purpose. The student will come to the computer with a disk, and will complete the form(s) by typing their information into the appropriate spaces or by copying and pasting the information with the Edit menu.

The form on the next page is available on the Internet as a compressed file (.zip).  The file will expand into three different versions of the form:

1.       Microsoft Word97 for Windows, (importable into Word97 for Win95 and Word98 for Mac OS)

2.       Rich Text Format (RTF-- importable into most any other word processing program)

3.       Text or ASCII file for computers with limited memory where only NotePad or SimpleText can be run along with the browser.


Internet Information Evaluation & Collection Form

  

There is also a web form version at:

http://landmark-project.com/evaluation/evalform.html

 


Description of the Form Sections

Project Name:

The project name labels the evaluated resource assigning it to a specific project. Asking students to assign a project name can also help them to think through their goals and to apply an identity to the project based on those goals.

What is the goal of your project?

Here the students will enter the goal(s) of their project in words that make it easy to associate other information resources to the goal(s) at hand. Again, the goals should be behavioral. For instance, how do you want to effect:

á        what the readers believe,

á        their impressions,

á        how they makes decisions,

á        their knowledge, etc.

 

Resource Name:

This is the name of the web site, ftp file, picture, graph, or map file.

Resource URL:

Enter the URL or electronic address of the Internet resource being evaluated and retrieved so that it can be revisited at a later date.

Author's Name:

Find the name of the person who authored or compiled the information. This is not always the webmaster of the page, and it may be necessary from time to time to ask for the author's name from the webmaster via e-mail. Another piece of information that might be valuable here is the author's home page URL. In many instances it is also good to have the name and e-mail address of the site's web master. He or she is usually the first contact point for the information being published.

Publishing Organization:

This is the organization that maintains the web or ftp site, or who sponsored the publishing of the information. In many cases the publishing organization and the author are the same. Again, the URL for the organization's home page might also be included in this space.

What aspect(s) of the author's or publishing organization's background helps you accomplish your goal?

This will be information about the author and the publishing organization that relates to the generation and publishing of the Information and that relates to the student's goals. This might also include special research in which the author is engaged or previous projects. Another example might be the mission statement of the publishing organization. It could also involve the research that lead to the information and other studies being conducted by the author. Students should examine this information and pull out aspects that are relevant to the topic and that lend credence to the information and its relationship to the student's information product goals.

Date of Publishing:

Enter the date that the information was originally published. If it was published separately in print and this information is available on the web site, include this date as well.

Date of Last revision:

This information is not always available. In some cases information web resources are not updated, just published. This information will, however, be important for time sensitive data.

How does the date of the information's publishing or latest revision help you accomplish your goal?

In many cases the most recent the information is, the more valuable it is. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes, depending on the goals of the information product, information generated in 1942 or 1066 may lend it more valuable to the goal(s). In this section fill in any information about the date of generation, publishing, or revision that enhances the information product in relation to its goal(s).

Information Format (text, columnar, picture, movie):

Enter the format of the information here.

How does the format of the information help you accomplish your goal?

Information format is of greater importance than most people believe. In information rich environments, it is essential that information communicate itself as effectively as possible -- and this involves format. Some types of information deliver themselves into the understanding of readers by being displayed in columns and rows of text or numbers. Others communicate better as graphs, and others as paragraphs of text. Another consideration in this section is the transfer of information from the Internet from one format to another. The information may come as tabular data, but you need to convert it to graph to more effectively communicate the information. All of these notes should be entered in this section of the evaluation form.

 

 

Paste the information here.

One of the advantages of retrieving digital information from the Internet is the fact that it can conceivably be accessed, manipulated, included in the information product, and published without ever being printed to paper. Data can easily be copied from a web page or other Internet tool and then pasted into this section. If you are using MSWord or other more sophisticated word processor (especially if you are using a Macintosh), even pictures can be copied from the web and pasted into the evaluation.

How does the content of the Information help you accomplish your goal?

Why is this information important to accomplishing your goals? This is perhaps the most important part of your evaluation and should apply directly to the goals of the student's information product. Consider that this may be included in the product itself as supporting information about the information.

MLA-Style Citation Template:

You want to get all of the information about your resource that you can at one time, so that you don't have to return to locate specifics for your citation or for other reasons. This section provides a template for a standard MLA-style citation. Simply highlight each element (last name, first name, title of the article, date published, etc) and then replace it with the appropriate information from the web page. When you are assembling your information product, all you have to do is copy this citation from your evaluation form and paste it into your product.