Websites in Academic Research

It is the height of banality to state that the internet has fundamentally changed how we research; banality often hides truth. When young people get to be college age they usually have had extensive experience using the internet but often lack research skills. Much of our job as university-educators focuses on supplying these skills. One such skill is to use the internet for research or, more particularly, evaluating websites for use in academic research. Below is an example of a video designed to impart these skills:






Context
This video is designed for use in an academic library. In particular, it is aimed at first-years. As such, it is a rather basic introduction to skills students will be required to learn in evaluating websites. The video takes as its foundation a library guide from the University of Otago Library that uses the acronym Bad URL. This acronym is a good mnemonic that encapsulates concepts - Bias, Authority, Date, URL, Relevance, and Links - important for evaluating websites. Although these are common concepts in evaluating information, they are often lost when considering information on the internet. Moreover, the publication and then selection into a library system provides some form of acknowledgement that the information is valuable to the research process; the internet has no such filter so vigilance must be stronger.

Many lecturers advise students against using websites completely. However this is neither a particularly sustainable nor ethical solution to the perennial problem of students mis-citing internet sources. This tutorial is predicated on the belief that it is more responsible to teach students how to evaluate websites so their internet research is much more sound.

This tutorial makes a certain number of assumptions about its target audience:

• They are comfortable finding information on the internet
• They are technically-savvy
• They are not used to evaluating information on the internet

Even though these assumptions may reduce the universality of the tutorial, they still allow the video to be useful in the above context.

Learning Objectives
At the end of the tutorial students will be able to:

• Demonstrate knowledge of the concepts of Bias, Authority, Date, URL, Relevance, and Links as they apply to websites.
• Apply "Bad URL"to evaluate websites for academic research.

 What is This Tutorial?
The tutorial takes the form of a video. The video takes the student through the concepts one at a time and, where applicable, shows illustrations sourced from current websites. The original presentation was created in PowerPoint - so can be presented as an actual slide-show in a face-to-face setting.

Script
The script is available on GoogleDocs. It must be noted, however, that this script was the original published. The script changed during production of the video through an organic process and writing a new script would have been tantamount to transcribing the video and this seemed like a poor use of time.

Self-Assessment
I am fairly happy with the tutorial. I feel that, in general, is satisfies the information need and improves students' information literacy skills. There are a few niggling aspects, however. For example I am not quite happy with the fact that some of the text is cut off. I am not sure what happend when I recorded the video using the screen-cast system and then imported the video into iMovie. However, I could have avoided the top and bottom of the screen more so that even if some of the data was lost this would not matter in the final product.

I also think that the tutorial may be a little...fusty. I can't help thinking it would be more engaging if it were something like Librarian's Do Gaga. Indeed, I think a similar video created to Bad Romance could actually be more engaging - and therefore more useful - to the stated audience. Failing this, I think I could have been more successful with better editing and creation skills. Incidentally, I attempted to create a movie in Adobe Flash Professional and then create a voice over in iMovie. The movie itself worked well but the voice-over didn't really come together.

There was perhaps too much written information in the video. Presenting so much text in a video is kind of anathema to the medium of video. However, it is a very easy format for production. And here there is a problem: the medium that is easiest to create is the hardest for our audience to understand. If I were being true to the medium, I should have worked harder to translate the concepts within the written text into images and uses spoken text to translate this meaning for those who have difficulty reading - such as the visually impaired or those who are dyslexic.

Evaluating the Tutorial
The context provides a great opportunity for evaluating the tutorial's effectiveness. Academics can set assignments that require the skills taught in the tutorial. The results from these assignments may be combined with access statistics for the tutorial to give a general idea of the students who utilised the tutorial. Further, a similar assessment may be delivered to students but this time explicitly directing them to the video. Once again, access figures and improvement of grades can help provide data about the tutorial's effectiveness.

I think the easiest, and best, way to evaluate the tutorial is to ask a certain number of students to watch the video and complete a survey. Providing a survey will restrain the students' responses to make analysis easier and students could be compensated for their time with financial remuneration. Of course, the results will be skewed to those who are more information literate - since the respondents are more likely to be interested in the subject. However, once again the context assists: students could be encouraged to critique the video as part of a class exercise.

As this is a learning opportunity, now is an apposite time to ask: what do you think of the tutorial and how do you think it could be improved?