Rethinking how we teach evaluating resources and research

I just finished reading a post by Ellie Collier on the blog In the Library with the Lead Pipe. (Great blog by the way.  AND it is peer-reviewed!).  The post is titled “In Praise of the Internet: Shifting Focus and Engaging Critical Thinking Skills.”  It is a great post about rethinking how we teach the evaluation of websites.  She does a much better job of explaining it, I highly recommend reading it.  It is a long post and worth every word.

But she got me thinking about research in general and how we think about it and how we teach it (or attempt to in one hour sessions).  Clearly these are not original thoughts, lots of folks have been talking and writing about this for a very long time.  But, what are we really doing about it?  How are we applying these ideas.  I think Ellie gives a direction to move in and a way to apply our thinking. 

How do we actually teach students to be engaged consumers of information in their daily lives?  And how do we guide students to use that same kind of engagement in their studies and research in a way where they are not only learning the subject matter of their courses, but also becoming better researchers and critical thinkers.  In the past, I liked to think of it as encouraging students to develop a healthy dose of skepticism when evaluating information sources.  But after reading Ellie’s post I think it goes much deeper than that.  How do we help students learn to figure out what are the best kinds of information to use in their research? 

It may seem like the answer to this question has and will remain elusive, but Ellie’s post makes me think that isn’t really the case.  We are all taught, or conditioned to, question the information we get through the media these days.  Why not integrate that kind of thinking into our research and teach students to do the same?  Why not give students a broader set of questions to use when evaluating resources (not just websites, but all resources)?

Let’s start with some like this (some of this is like the standard evaluation of information, but a bit broader):

• Ellie’s idea of: Is it useful to use or is it useful to cite?
• Who is providing this information?
• Why are they providing this information?  Agenda.
• In my project, what am I trying to accomplish?  Do I want supporting information?  Conflicting information?  First hand accounts?   Hard data?  False information?
• What purpose will this information serve if I choose to use it?

And how do we draw students out of the tunnel vision they seem to be in thinking that there are three articles out there exactly on their topic?  Maybe giving them questions like these will help them open up their overall thinking about how to approach research.  Maybe . . .

And then there are the folks who say: “Yeah, but it is a waste of time for students to be evaluating resources.  It is more important for them to get the materials they need to actually write their papers.”

Not everyone will agree.  What about the fundamental act of ferreting out a variety of views, analysing them against a thesis and generating new conclusions, ideas, theories on a topic?  Doing research and writing about a topic is not just about blowing through the finding stuff stage?  When students spend time thinking about what information is useful they spend time with the materials and learn more about the scholarship and how to find good resources.  Thus, they become better scholars and critical thinkers.

And when I say critical thinking I mean it on several levels.  Critical thinking about what constitutes good research about a topic, critical thinking about the materials and how they contribute to the overall scholarship, but also critical thinking about the topic itself and whether the current theories are viable.

Funny, I’ve been reading that Ken Bain book, What the Best College Teachers Do, and his findings are starting to creep into my thoughts, and some of it has come out here in this post.  Some of my colleagues are somewhat skeptical of the book, and I was inclined to be so too.  But I think Bain might be on to something.  Take a peek if you are so inclined.

So, what do you think?  About how you teach the evaluation of resources?  About research?  How would you encourage students to approach research so that they become more engaged in their scholarship in general?  Has research changed based upon the way we access and use information these days, as well as the amount of information there is?  Or is research essentially the same, but because of the changes in access, use of and amounts of information we only believe research has changed dramatically?