The problem with this, is that I usually feel quite fine about a Powerpoint lecture. I'm not always certain what people learn if I have them doing hands on activities. I generally feel the latter is probably better, particularly with finding books and articles, but it always leaves me slightly unsettled the first time I teach a class that way, and sometimes it leaves me very unsettled even after I've done it that way a few times.
I'm teaching in the middle of the English College Writing line-up right now, and so I'm thinking about information literacy. I really feel like one of the big issues in information literacy is yes, finding information, but more than that evaluating information. And as Google Books puts books free on the web, government organizations print in .pdf rather than in paper, and Wikipedia publishes a DVD version I think the waters only get more murky.
Are students able to use Wikipedia in elementary school and high school, then why not in college? In some ways, the reasoning is similar to why you might not use Encyclopedia Britannica or World Book as a reference in a college paper, but in other ways it's different.
I have a love/hate affair with Wikipedia.
Mostly, actually, I think I love it. But then, I also know how to use it - what its strengths are and what its weaknesses are. And those are extremely important things to know when using it. I understand when instructors say don't use it. That's no different, honestly, then saying 'only use Peer Reviewed journals'. It's a don't rather than a do, but it's still limiting what types of resources can be used in a paper. But one needs to have a why don't we use it as much as one needs to have a why we use Peer Reviewed journals.
I'm becoming more and more convinced that information literacy in the modern age isn't just about finding information (although that in and of itself is a challenge that should not be underestimated), it's about knowing what information is available, how to recognize quality information, and how to work with information.
Wikipedia has an interesting role in this because it is an excellent example of user generated content, which is everywhere on the internet.
What do people know about Wikipedia?
Do they know that they can edit it? That anyone can? Do they realize that if they come across a comma splice, or a article that needs clean up that they can fix it? Do they know Wikipedia has "Featured Articles" (I actually didn't until just this week) that have been designated such because they do meet the quality standards of Wikipedia (and yes, Wikipedia has quality standards). Do they know how to view the history of changes? How to see what's been changed and when? Do they know that they can use references in a Wikipedia article as a place to begin doing research on a topic just like they can use references in a Subject Encyclopedia article or a book or journal article? That they can look at previous versions of an article side-by-side? (My favourite example of this is on 31 January 2008 someone replaced the entire "Why Wikipedia is not so great" page with "It sucks, end of story". It was, of course, reverted back to the original page.)
Knowing how Wikipedia works, makes it a more powerful resource because it then becomes a captured look at what the world knows (or doesn't know). And I can't help but feel like if I make an edit to something, I make the world just a little bit better.
I think students need to be aware of what it does well and what it doesn't do well, because like it or not, it's not going anywhere (although the data in certain articles might disappear from time to time!), and I don't know that it's a bad thing. It's just a different thing.
So for Monday we're looking at a subject encyclopedia article and a wikipedia article on the students topics as a way of talking about evaluation. This teacher has had me do two sections the past few quarters, and in the second one I've started talking about evaluation of resources. In the past we've looked just at websites, and talked about the different ways of evaluating them, what makes up an expert, and so forth. And mostly I've said two sentences on 'don't use Wikipedia'.
I'm changing it this quarter and I don't know if it'll work. I like the idea of it because I think it will make students aware of the good and the bad of wikipedia while applying guidelines to the web in general. They have to look at Cleanup messages and look for citations and external links. They have to become aware of "featured" and "good" articles, and how to view the edits to the page - the idea that anyone can edit information, which is its greatest strength and potentially its greatest weakness as well.
In becoming aware of this, we hopefully also present the basic ideas of evaluation - authorship, authority, content, and currency, so that students become more aware that they need to look at these things. And honestly, they need to look at them in any source they use.
Because I wasn't aware of this as an Undergraduate. I went to a database, I found articles. I went to the catalog, I found books. Either nobody talked about what constituted an appropriate resource in any of my classes, or I was completely out of class on that day (and considering that I was a good-ish student, I don't think the latter was the case).
What I'm currently worried about, I suppose is how or if the assignment will work.
I'm hoping it's not TOO much work, honestly. They have to find an article in a subject encyclopedia out of class, which will be the hardest part, and then an article on wikipedia - the easy part. And then I'm having them read part of the About Wikipedia page.
In class we're going to discuss what they learned, the level of credibility of the articles they found, and then we're going to talk about why they can't use Wikipedia in this class: i.e. individual articles vary in standard and maturity, we want them to be able to find information in the library, any encyclopedia - including Wikipedia - can only be used as a starting point and will not give you all the information needed for a paper, so it's important for them to be able to find information from other sources.
I was talking about the assignment with R. last night and he's like 'it sounds like you're focusing a lot on Wikipedia'. Maybe I am. But Wikipedia is a large site with information on practically everything, which makes it a simple way to compare a print source with an internet source, using guidelines that can be used for any resource without having to deal with the idiosyncrasies of web pages published by a multitude of organizations and for a multitude of purposes, which can make for an impossible hands-on class period.
So I'm crossing my fingers that the assignment will work. That it will be useful, not terrible, and the teacher won't be like - um... go away and never teach my class again. Or alternatively, revoke my second class privileges because I really feel like discussing evaluation of sources is important to begin doing early on, not just in the quarter long paper research course. I just don't know if this is the best way to do it. I suppose time will tell...
And I just finished up my list of discussion questions for Monday so, we'll see.
