Evaluating Internet Sources
Teaching Students to Evaluate World Wide Web Resources for Research
Nov 12, 2007
Provide students with guidelines to evaluate authority, accuracy, and relevance of online resources used for academic research projects.
Internet Research
The Internet is, of course, a mother lode of information, but it is important to teach students to be critical of information gathered from websites. Since not all websites contain valid information for academic research, teachers should provide students with the tools to evaluate online sources to determine whether sources are authoritative, accurate and relevant.
Guidelines for Evaluating Web Sources
Authority:
- The authorship of a website should be clear. Is there a link to a biography or "about us" statement that verifies the person or organization behind the website?
- Is there a way to contact the author(s) and webmaster?
- The authorship of the website should be authoritative. If web content is produced for an organization, then students should be sure to evaluate the nature and the purpose of the group. Does the author or sponsoring group have an obvious bias that may skew how information is presented, or are facts and statistics honestly presented?
- Since most information on the web is unedited and unreviewed, students should be reminded that nearly anyone can post anything on a website. However, students may find clues about the authorship of online information by examining the three-letter suffix found at the end of the web address: .edu represents an educational or collegiate site, .gov indicates a government site, .mil suggests a military site, .com denotes a commercial provider, .net designates a network provider, and .org suggests a non-profit organization.
Accuracy:
- Are ideas supported by verifiable facts?
- Are arguments presented objectively? Are opposing viewpoints and counterarguments acknowledged?
- Can the information be changed by users of the site? Some websites, like Wikipedia, allow readers to actively add or change information. While these sites may be quite good for providing a "quick and dirty" overview of a topic, they should not be used as academic sources.
- Is there a balance between internal and external links? If information is only supported by statistics or ideas provided by the author or organization, then students should question the nature of the claims.
- Does the author provide a list of works cited? Are those sources unbiased and accurate?
Relevance:
- Does the author avoid logical fallacies? Are relevant statistics used responsibly?
- Is the work current? Encourage students to look for copyright and/or publication dates for both the website and any cited information. Revision dates should also be available.
- Does the website adequately represent the topic?
- Are supporting links operational?
- All writing has a purpose. What is the intended context and audience of the site?
Certainly, the Internet can be a wonderful resource, but only if it is used responsibly. For many projects library databases and book sources may be more useful to students. In all cases, students must actively taught how to identify and use research material.
The copyright of the article Evaluating Internet Sources in Curricula/Lesson Plans is owned by Susan Hyde. Permission to republish Evaluating Internet Sources in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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Oct 15, 2008 2:30 PM
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Oct 23, 2008 4:02 AM
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