7#(5'222223f3z3z3z 3 33383x3z4V 4v4*42442444.444444 Incorporating Online Searching into Courses Version 1.0 A guide for lecturers / course providers by David Nichols, Michael Twidale & Mike Hutchison August 1996 Produced by the IHE Project Support for learning information searching skills Copyright 1996 the authors. Permission to use, copy and distribute without fee for academic use within the UK is granted provided that this copyright notice, the authors and the origin of the document are retained and remain prominent. Not for Commercial Use. Information provided in these pages may not be sold. Table Of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Background: why information searching is A Good Thing 2.1 The potential 2.2 The danger 3. Examples of Information Searching Activities 3.1 The dissertation 3.2 The literature review / annotated bibliography 3.3 The top 20 3.4 The abstract survey 3.5 The treasure hunt / paper chase 3.6 Critical evaluation of a Web Site 3.7 An explicit account of the search process 1. Introduction The availability of the facilities for online searching offer a range of educational opportunities. We outline a few here, not so much to provide a definitive list but to provoke ideas for how you might create quite new activities relevant to the needs of your course. A separate guide (How to Find Things: a guide for information searchers) produced by the project is available from the World Wide Web Site: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/ cseg/projects/ariadne/ihe/ A separate IHE project, WebTeach: Supporting the Use of the Web in Teaching (1996/7) has further related information at: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/webteach/ 2. Background: why information searching is A Good Thing Authenticity Students of a subject area can practice the skills of academic professionals in the field, researching the primary literature. Student centred Students can be encouraged to investigate areas of interest to them and to accept responsibility for finding that material, rather than the course tutor providing all the materials in the form of a recommended reading list. Transferable skills The ability to search for information will clearly be a highly prized skill in the emerging Information Society. Many of these skills, even though acquired for the pursuit of an academic goal, can be reapplied in other contexts. 2.1 The Potential With online resources, it becomes possible for undergraduates to undertake information searching activities that are more similar to those previously only undertaken at the postgraduate level. The ability to do complex keyword searches over many years of article indices with a few keypresses means that literature-based activities can be more complex, challenging and rewarding for the students. Moreover, the skills of information searching are generic: they can be applied to any subject area and are clearly important for graduates entering an increasingly information-based economy. 2.2 The Danger Just because undergraduates can now perform activities that are usually done by postgraduates, that does not mean that we can or should treat them as such. In particular, although they can undertake the mechanics of information searching, their lack of experience in the subject domain means that inevitably they are less able to make sensible value judgements about the quality, relevance and importance of retrieved items. We need to allow for this problem, by explicitly addressing it in any devised activities. 3. Examples of Information Searching Activities 3.1 The dissertation This is merely an extension of existing practice. The student chooses an advanced topic (usually for a final year course) and researches it and writes a substantial dissertation, integrating their work into the research literature. Dissertations were researched and written before the availability on online search methods. The existence of the latter imply a few changes: We can expect literature reviews to be more substantial and thorough. Dissertation topics can be more varied: students can search global databases and obtain papers (funds permitting!) through Inter Library Loan on topics where Lancaster's library does not have a good supply of materials. This is a trend that has been particularly observed in the ex-Polytechnics where the rapid growth in the use of online resources (e.g. BIDS) has coincided with a substantial increase in inter-library loan requests. 3.2 The literature review / annotated bibliography This may be undertaken by students at all levels of their undergraduate careers. Its origins are in postgraduate study and the traditional end of year report of a first year PhD student. The are numerous variants: Student is given a subject area to investigate / chooses one from a list provided by a tutor. Student picks a topic of interest. This may be checked for feasibility with a tutor. Groups of students undertake one of the above, with various ways of splitting the work. Possibilities include splitting by search medium (individuals search the same topic on different databases), by writing process (some search, others read and report, others collate and edit) or by subtopic: each student picks a theme within the general topic and is responsible for that theme and its integration into the overall report. 3.3 The top 20 A variant on the literature review where the student is required to submit only the 20 most important / relevant items, with a brief summary of each. The report may be accompanied with justifications for the inclusion of the 20 and the criteria for excluding the near misses. Similarly, students may be required to produce a literature review that is subject to a strict space limit as measured by number of pages (and minimum font size!) or by word count. The latter is feasible given the ability to calculate word counts on most word processors. The advantages of such an exercise are: authenticity (practitioners often have to write to strict size limits), practice of revising documents using a word processor (you can never get it the right size first time) and marking efficiency (considerable student effort is needed to write a good short document and yet this makes it faster to mark than a longer rambling essay). 3.4 The survey of abstracts Where a database includes a brief abstract of the articles, students are required to extract useful information from just reading the abstracts in order to generate a report on the state of the art in the field. This is an explicit acknowledgement of the kinds of practice we all undertake when time (or access) does not permit an immediate reading of the entire article. This exercise can usefully be accompanied by discussions of other time saving methods, and a noting of what is lost by use of these methods. 3.5 The treasure hunt / paper chase Students are given a sequence of obscure factual questions whose answers are obtainable by ingenious searching of databases. Students may be formed into teams to add a greater enjoyable competitive element to the task. The chief educational aim is to practice information searching techniques including the handling of complex queries and efficient search techniques. The nature of the questions can be geared to exercise the desired techniques, with strict time limits or speed bonuses to encourage the deployment of efficient techniques. There are two variants: There are known to be answers that are obtainable from the sources available to the student. The questions are like research: the questioner does not know whether an answer exists either at all or from the available sources. In the latter case the students can themselves be involved in the task setting activity. 3.6 Critical evaluation of a Web site Students are given a framework for evaluation of a Web site and either: are given a Web site to evaluate choose from a prepared list, or select one they are interested in The evaluation criteria can be adapted from existing criteria and tailored to the specific subject. Most evaluation criteria have started from a library and information science perspective and contain examples such as: Who created the page? Can you prove/check the information is true? Is it up-to-date? Who is the intended audience? Is it consistent with other sources? Are any graphics essential for comprehension? Any user interaction with the site? Each discipline can then add its own spin, for example: Modern Languages: How formal is the language? Slang? Regional variants? Are the information technology terms anglicised? Marketing: Who pays for the site? Why? Is there any advertising? Does it work well? What enticements are there for surfers to return? Unique Browsing Point? An example of a set of evaluation criteria can be found at: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/webteach/critical.html Work on the development of materials for critical evaluation of web sites will continue in our 1996/7 IHE funded project, WebTeach. 3.7 An explicit account of the search process This activity is run in parallel with any of the above. In addition to finding and reporting on the results of their searching activity (the product), students must also report on how they obtained those results (the process). Students should note down the various search strategies and tactics that they used and their effects, along with approximate information of the time taken for each of the stages. A useful motivation for this activity is that it attempts to show how a professional intermediary might justify their fee for obtaining information for a client. The pedagogic advantages of the activity are clear, affording opportunities for reflection by the student, and remedial guidance from the tutor or other interested parties either during or after the completion of the search. Issues of efficient search techniques can be more productively raised after a review of a particularly inefficient search account. Furthermore, it is possible to set hard problems (including ones for which the result is unknown and may not even exist), since even if the student fails to find a single relevant hit, their account can still provide evidence of an excellent attempt.  u}  !/@irHZ[ U2aQ` C V#r#(((((( @ @@   @  00(/01=>?@ijklmnqrEFHZ[kCTn ſ X X X X X  X  X  X  X X  X X  X  X X:aOa A W < = O  kfgUp'V67]  !.!!""$"]"""#6#r#$)$*$Xڼ˷˼ڬ X X X X X X X  X X X X X  X   XD$X(((((((( X  X 8 para-continuehead2head1outputhead39$ _hP  '((G '$'`C($X( !"9:~HH +6G{HH d@A.hRDH -:LaserWriter ChicagoTimes HelveticaCourierLLLE9(;. IHE Materials Dave Nichols Dave Nichols