How do your students assess website credibility?

Wednesday, April 1st 2009 by Neil StephensoncloseAuthor: Neil Stephenson Name: Neil Stephenson
Email: neil.s@calgaryscienceschool.com
Site: http://thinkinginmind.blogspot.com/
About: You can find me on twitter: @neilstephensonSee Authors Posts (5)

Since I teach in a 1:1 classroom, and my students are continually accessing a variety of information sources, having them think about the credibility of the websites they use is a very important skill for me to develop in my classroom. In fact, I think is an absolute must for teachers who are working in technology-heavy, information rich environments. I believe strongly that having students think about credible websites should not be a “one-off” information literacy lesson, but rather should be a habit of mind that is continually and consistently developed throughout the year. For me, I want an approach that is simple yet powerful, and can be embedded into the many research projects that we do throughout the year.

So how do I have my students think about website credibility? I set it up like this:
At the beginning of the year, I give my students a mini research challenge. I tell them that I want to get a sense of how good they are at doing internet research. I tell them about a deadly chemical called “Dihydrogen Monoxide” and give them a few basics facts about it. I give them 30 minutes to research DHMO, and tell them that at the end of the half hour, they need to be ready to share the facts they have gathered, and decide whether or not they would ban this deadly substance.
So off they go – almost all to Google, and almost all following the first link that they find – which leads to this site, DHMO.org, which is a great fake site about the dangers of DHMO. As I’ve done this over the last couple years, most (though not all) are convinced of the dangers of DHMO, and argue that the substance should be banned. Those who do figure it out (and if you haven’t figured it out yet – DHMO is more commonly know as H2O), I ask them to keep their discovery quite for now. Their time will come!
After we discuss DHMO as a class, and most of the students feel sheepish about being tricked, we talk about how and why so many were fooled by the sites they used. We share and brainstorm some of the dangers they experienced. Then I introduce three criteria to use to think about the reliability of websites:

Reliability of Authorship

• the author or organization that is responsible for the website is clearly stated
• links to information about the author(s) is easily available
• the author or organization is know and respectable

Documentation of Sources

• the sources of the information (especially statistics) are given OR
• the sources of images (including pictures and photographs) are given

Overall Appearance

• the design of the site is professional and believable
• no ads, spam or random material on the site

This is just a quick description of the criteria. In class we spend much more time developing and unpacking what each mean and why they are important. We then return to DHMO.org and use the three criteria to assess the credibility of the site. As a class we fill out the following chart, first for DHMO.org, then for a couple other sites, looking for evidence from the site to justify the scores given.

For the rest of the year, students are asked to fill out the following charts everytime they are doing internet research. They fill them out for our Canadian History projects, for Health reserach, and for the Science explorations. It is a simple tool that is non-instrusive enough to layer on top of any research we are doing:

We have even used this tool to collaborate across schools. Earlier in the year, my students partnered with another school to research a specific time in Canadian history. Students at another school, in another district were also researching the same topics for the same project. As I have written before, students used Google Docs to collaborate and peer editing their historical narratives. However, students also used Google Docs to share web resources across the classes. The three criteria became the foundation of how they documented and assessed the websites they were sharing. Here’s an example of a collaboratively built list of websites.
During our last Student-Led conferences, assessing website credibility was one of the activities that students demonstrated to their parents. They were given two websites to assess, explained the three criteria to their parents, and then applied the criteria together. Many parents commented positively on seeing this skill being reinforced with their students throughout the year.

I know there’s more I can do to emphasize thinking about websites but I’m happy with the direction of this approach because it is consistent and continual. What about in your classes? How do you deal with website credibility? What am I missing here?

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