[Air-L] acceptable sources for undergraduate research in new media fields

[Tery G]

Hi Todd,

I used to get Wikipedia a lot, but I've explained to them that encyclopedias
in general are not college-level sources. I do tell them Wikipedia can be a
good place to start, to see what it links to; sometimes they can find good
sources that way.

And I go through a writing exercise where they look up a topic on google
that I know will turn up bad results near the top. I explain that Tim
Berners-Lee's blog, for instance, would be an acceptable source if their
topic was the world wide web. I also show them Google Scholar and the
library databases, though I know they've seen the databases before. Many of
my colleagues object to spending even that much class time on locating good
sources, believing the students should already know that or should be taught
it outside of a class that concentrates on other subject matter (their comp
classes, I suppose).

Still, come the end of the semester, their final projects are full of web
pages that were convenient (ie. on the first page of search results, or, at
most, the second), or worse -- that agreed with their initial take on the
subject without getting them to really think about it. They can tell me what
makes an acceptable web source, but when it comes to actually getting the
work done, too many use whatever they can find.

Tery





On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 11:34 AM, Todd Harper <laevantine at gmail.com> wrote:

> While I understand where you're coming from in not wanting freshmen to
> simply rattle off the top 5 google hits for their topic, I'm not sure that
> banning internet sources is going to accomplish the goal you're setting out
> to do. As you say, the more recent your topic, the more publication delay
> and other factors bite into your available sources on it.
>
> My suggestion (and one that has worked reasonably well for me) is to spend
> some time with them identifying what the difference between a
> credible/acceptable source and a non-credible source is, at least in terms
> of what you consider those things to be. The usual offender here for me is
> Wikipedia; while there is a time and a place for citing a Wikipedia
> article,
> for example, I've had students use it as the end-all-be-all of knowledge on
> any given subject. This usually leads to me walking them through a
> recently-vandalized Wikipedia page's history (my favorite was a page for
> the
> *Transformers* animated shows that replaced all the image captions with rap
> lyrics) and explaining the ups and downs of wikis as information sources.
>
> I think if you make it clear that "JOE BOB'S SUPER AWESOME GLEE BLOG!" is
> not a credible source, but the actual show website from Fox is, they'll get
> the drift. I just feel like, in banning Google as a research tool, you are
> inadvertently keeping good, useful sources out of the hands of your
> students
> in an attempt to get them not to use it poorly. If you spend the time to
> walk them through how to determine is information is reliable, credible,
> and
> substantiated instead, I think you will reap greater rewards in the long
> run.
>
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 10:57 AM, Tery G <teryg93 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I teach a freshman level class called Digital Media Literacy. It's an
> > introduction to concepts and tools related to digital media. Each student
> > does a final project, which, of course, requires them to do research. I
> > spend a lot of time with them -- read articles, give examples, do some
> > hands-on work, etc. -- covering why Google in particular and websites in
> > general are not the sources they should be using (or trusting). They know
> > how to use the library databases, but the topics they're examining are so
> > new that anything in peer-reviewed journals about those topics is dated.
> >
> > Does anyone have suggestions about what might be acceptable resources in
> > this situation? I let them use articles from *The New York Times* and
> > the *Journal
> > of Computer-Mediated Communication*, but I have difficulty justifying
> their
> > not using some other sources I really would prefer they not use when they
> > can't find new enough information in the peer-reviewed journals.
> >
> > TIA,
> > Tery Griffin
> >
> > Associate Professor of Media Arts
> > Wesley College
> > Dover DE 19901
> > _______________________________________________
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>
>
> --
> Todd Harper
> Postdoctoral Researcher, Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab --
> http://gambit.mit.edu
> laevantine at gmail.com
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