I have a brilliant student in my school. You will be hearing from him someday. A very fine mind – one that is constantly working, turning information upside down and sideways to understand it completely, constantly asking questions. Fascinating to watch him in action.
I am always after my students to “question their sources”. Why is it a good source? What makes the author an expert? What make the organization reliable? So….. today this student comes to me with a web source. GLOBAL ISSUES. He says, “I used this web site in my term paper. It is written by only 1 guy – but he seems to really know what he is talking about. Is the source reliable enough to put in my paper?”
He is right. It certainly looks like a great website. The author runs it by himself, and he apparently has devoted much time and attention to the site for the past 10 years. He lists “awards” from other websites – but those websites also seem to be run by single authors. His “about” section really does not give me much evidence of personal expertise. But – is it absolutely necessary for an author to have a degree in the topic in order to write a good opinion or news piece? The author writes:
My background is a degree in computer science—not exactly a degree in global issues! The point is that you don’t need to have qualifications to be concerned and want to do something, although you do need the time to sift through a lot of information to understand what is happening!
My aim here is to raise awareness and provide links to more information for people wanting to look deeper into these issues. Most of the links on a given page are to external web sites that provide more detail to the points I raise. There are some 7,000 external links to news articles, research papers and so on, from charity and non-government organizations like Oxfam, Amnesty International, etc. to multinational bodies like the United Nations. Furthermore, as I read more and more books, I am sourcing those as well.
I have looked over the specific article my student used. It does appear to be quite well sourced. I did a Google link search to find out who links to the site. Many of those sites are blogs and other personal websites.
Bottom line… My student does have 4 or 5 other sources that easily meet the traditional reliability test. So, I told him that I would consider it acceptable as one of many sources, as long as he was not using it for more than a small percentage of his paper.
Still – I don’t feel that I have a really good answer for evaluating sites such as this.
Blogs…wikis….forums….bulletin boards…. The information landscape has become much more complex. I understand the concept of the “age of the amateur” and the “wisdom of crowds”. But I am not working in a theoretical world. I am living right here in high school – where the rubber meets the road. How do I guide students? Do I perpetuate the “old guard” – insisting that no one is an expert unless they have a degree in the topic – or at least have been hired by a reputable organization? Do I let them use any blog out there that matches the thesis they are attempting to prove? Where is the happy medium?
Help me out here folks!!
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I agree with you completely regarding the real vs. theoretical worlds, the overall quality of the Global Issues website (and many like it), and your decision on the issue.
What does constitute an authority on a topic? You suggest someone with a degree on the topic. In my opinion, this would leave out many very knowledgeable sources. Further, I know of many ‘experts’ with degrees in their field whose extreme bias clouds the objectivity and accuracy of information they present. Is an author writing one article on a topic for a news magazine more of an expert than a blogger who immerses him or herself into a topic over the course of years?
I think the best solution is the one that you chose, suggesting a variety and quantity of sources. I believe that this is what scholarship throughout the decades has been built upon. Often, experts become so, through personal immersion into a subject or field and through public acceptance of their expertise based upon their writing or speaking.
The difficulty, here, where the rubber meets the road as you describe it, is that many of our students do not have the ability or desire to research and summarize multiple sources. Many assignments (teachers) require a very low minimum of sources – and students tend to do the bare minimum. We fail as educators when we do not demand summarization of multiple sources, blindly accepting student work that simply quotes a couple sources, regardless of the potential quality of those sources.
Certainly, we should not open the floodgates to accept every blogger as an expert, but as you point out, some have very strong credentials. By requiring confirmation of facts from multiple sources and teaching the art of research and research thinking and writing skills along with the art of website evaluation we could better prepare our students for the future, where the vast majority of their information will come via the internet and media sources.
I just discovered your blog through the Boces library webpage. I haven’t read any deeper than this posting but I have already added you to my reader. I like your thoughts! I am not an expert. Still have a few months to go in library school. Certainly have lots to learn, and may be way off base with my opinion, but your post, about a website I have viewed before, motivated me. If my thoughts are misconstrued or discomforting to anyone, please read that I want to give students the best that we can possible give them.
Thank you so much for taking the time to post on my blog. This is a topic I constantly struggle with – but am finding few people seem to be writing about. At least – I am not finding much to grab on to.
Today I was gathering resources from a couple of search engines for an upcoming class on the Hamilton – Jefferson debates about Federalism. I was shocked to discover that many of the results were from free essay “cheating sites”. This is adding to my worry about the web’s potential to MIS-inform.
Still – I agree that many experts operate with a bias that can easily cloud their judgment, and limiting research to only “accepted authorities” would be too limiting.
Should you want to subject yourself to more on this general topic – you will see a few previous posts collected here:
http://wanderings.edublogs.org/category/evaluating-sources/
You will see some references to comments that are not there. That is because I had to migrate my old blog to this site and never figured out how to migrate the comments along with it.
I will add your blog to my reader right now! Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.