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

[Todd Harper]

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