ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 3 0 2 / C&RL News ■ A p ril 2000 ACRL: PARTNERS IN HIGHER EDUCATION Teaching about the Internet An opportunity for faculty outreach by Trudi E. Jacobson and Laura B. Cohen T h inking critically ab o u t inform ation found on the Internet has become sec­ ond nature to librarians, w ho frequently vote a portion of their instruction sessions, and even entire classes, to the topic. As re­ cently as a few years ago, however, discus­ sion of Web site evaluation was not as wide­ spread. In early 1996, the authors developed a list of Internet resource evaluation criteria for use in our classes (www.albany.edu/library/ in ternet/evaluate.htm l).1 We believed the topic to be a crucial one, and after a year’s experience teaching Web evaluation in a va­ riety of ways, we considered writing about the topic for a library journal. To our initial disappointment, we found that w e had been scooped.2 Yet we didn’t want to abandon our publication idea. It occurred to us that not only were students unaccustomed to the idea of evaluating Web sites, but their professors were as well. Throughout the ’90s, librarians were gen­ erally in the first wave to use new digital re­ sources. Faculty and students, less dependent upon these technologies on a day-to-day ba­ sis, w eren’t generally learning about success­ ful search strategies, appropriate and inno­ vative search engines, and the importance of evaluation as quickly as many librarians were. We thought our experiences and insight might strike a chord with our faculty colleagues. de We targeted The Teaching Professor, a newsletter that includes many practical ar­ ­ticles with teaching tips, and queried the edi­ tor. She received our idea enthusiastically, and published “Teaching Students to Evalu­ ate Internet Sites” in the August/September 1997 issue.’ The article presented three ac­ tive learning methods for teaching the topic to students, and included some of the key criteria from our evaluation checklist. One of the teaching methods involved the use of a bogus Web site we had developed: “The Psychosocial Parameters o f Internet Addiction” (http://w w w .albany.edu/library/ internet/addiction.html). This site provides a bibliography mixing real and fake resources, and includes a biography of the supposed author, Professor Rudolph G. Briggs. Enthusiastic response The response to our article began shortly af­ ter its appearance and has continued for two years after the fact. Most of the approximately 40 pieces of e-mail we have received have come from instructors in institutions of sec­ ondary and higher education across the coun­ try and around the world. These instructors have expressed frustration over stu d en ts’ blind acceptance of too much that is on the Web, and related their enthusiasm for the rel­ evancy of our work as they try to combat this problem. Most asked for permission to use About the author Trudi E. Jacobson is coordinator o f user education program s a t the University o f Albany, SUNY, e-mail: tj662@cnsvax.albany.edu; Laura B. Cohen is n e tw o rk services librarian a t th e University o f Albany, SUNY, e-mail: lcohen@cnsvax.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/library/ http://www.albany.edu/library/ mailto:tj662@cnsvax.albany.edu mailto:lcohen@cnsvax.albany.edu C&RL News ■ A p ril 2000 / 303 our article, suggested teaching methods, or our bogus W eb site in their local settings. Our replies to this volume o f e-mail has been consistent: in every case, w e have given perm ission to use both our Web site and our teaching methods as described in our article. Our willingness to share this w ork is based on our understanding that teaching faculty has a vital and necessary role to play in train ing students to m ake intelligent use o f the Web. Librarians cannot do it alone. Further, the Web itself is an excellent medium for shar ing. There is no point in asking others to reinvent the w heel w hen w e have already devised som ething that works and is easily available. We have b e e n surprised and gratified to learn about the variety o f academ ic settings in w hich our material and methods are b e ing used. This has also been a revealing tes tament to the use o f the Web in an astonish ing range o f scholastic activities. Our work has been used in courses spanning the hu manities to the social sciences; in a course on medical imaging; in a W eb-based ocean ography class; in a course called Microcom puter Applications in Exercise Science; and in a high school class in Family and Con sumer Sciences. We even heard from an in structor at the Jo in t Military Intelligence Col lege in Washington, D.C. We have also heard from instructors w ho have spoken about our w ork in conferences. Examples include the New M exico Council for Higher Education and the American Psy chological Society’s 5th Annual Institute on the Teaching o f Psychology. Our work is now being cited in curriculum guides, new slet ters, and articles. O ccasionally the resp on ses have b e e n from students and have taken a humorous turn. We enjoyed the e-mail message from a student w ho asked us to give her Professor Briggs’s age because her teacher had assigned this question. More heartening was the stu dent w ho requested information about the Departm ent o f Psychotechnology “becau se I do not believe that this is a real department.” It was good to know that som etim es w e have also gotten through to students. Besides the written testimony in the form o f e-mail m essages, the Web traffic statistics o f our bogus site are also indicative o f its use. It is not unusual to log m ore than 1,000 hits each month, especially during the aca dem ic year. Opportunities for librarians The diversity, enthusiasm, and ongoing na ture o f these responses clearly indicate that w e have hit a nerve with the teaching com munity. Classroom instructors have identified the sam e uncritical student acceptance o f the W eb as w e librarians, and wish to play a con structive role in addressing this challenge. They are eager for solutions. We have demonstrated that it is possible to train students to evaluate Web sites, and that the strategies for doing so are neither time-consuming nor onerous. Moreover, in structors are com fortable with looking to li brarians for assistance. Our training in criti cal thinking, and the methods w e have de vised to apply this in a classroom setting, are recognized and respected. O ther librarians have also found that aca dem ics outside the library community w el com e the opportunity to learn about Web- related topics. For exam ple, Keith Gresham, instruction librarian at the University o f Colo rado at Boulder, wrote an article, “Surfing with a Purpose,” for EDUCOM Review. He explains how to develop a search strategy and includes a num ber o f test cases that show ed how a search can b e implemented and refined.4 Our experiences have convinced us that librarians should reach out to teaching col leagues to help them train students in critical thinking about the Web. T here is every rea son to believe that your efforts will be w el com e. In fact, there are signs that such col laborations betw een librarians and instruc tors have already begu n.5 There are a variety o f ways to acquaint teaching faculty with your efforts and encour age them to use or adapt your work: • write an article for a professional news letter; • submit a piece to your campus faculty newsletter; • if you have created a training Web site, offer its use by publicizing it with posters, advertise ments, press releases, word of mouth, etc.; • look for opportunities to team teach a ses sion with a professor for his or her course; and • offer to present or co-present a session for faculty through your cam pus’s teaching e x cellen ce center. 3 0 4 / C&RL News ■ April 2000 Continuing relationships Outreach to your teaching colleagues need not stop here. The success o f our article in The Teaching Professor led to the authorship o f a second piece, this one on choosing ap propriate search tools on the Web. We have b een invited to address other topics for this newsletter. It has becom e clear to us that we have technology-related knowledge that is not com m on among teaching faculty overall, and that this knowledge is eagerly sought. We urge you to share what you know with those who teach in the classroom. Librarians have done an excellent job o f sharing our ideas with each other. We have been on the cutting edge in devising ways to make intel ligent use o f the Web. It is time to take what w e know and share it. Notes 1. There is a wide array o f criteria check lists available. A handy compendium can be foun d at Susan B e c k ’s W eb site: http:// lib .n m s u .e d u / s ta f f / s u s a b e c k / c h e c s 9 8 . html#method. Esther Grassian’s checklist, Thinking Critically about World Wide Web Resources, is on e o f the earliest (http:// w ww.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/in- struct/web/critical.htm). 2. Marsha Tate and Jan Alexander, “Teach ing Critical Evaluation Skills for World Wide Web Resources,” Computers in Libraries 16, no. 10 (1996): 4 9-54. 3. Trudi E. Jacob so n and Laura B. Cohen, “Teaching Students to Evaluate Internet Sites.” The Teaching Professor, 11, no.7 (August/Sep tem ber 1997): 4. This article is also available at: http://www.albany.edu/library/internet/ teaching.html. 4. Keith Gresham, “Surfing with a Purpose: Process and Strategy Put to the Test on the Internet,” EDUCOM Review 33, no.5 (Septem ber/October 1998): 2 2-29. 5. Susan A. Gardner, Hiltraut H. Benham a n d B r id g e t M. N e w e ll, “O h , W h a t a Tangled W eb W e’ve Woven! H elping Stu dents Evaluate S o u rc e s,” English J o u r n a l 84, n o . 1 (1 9 9 9 ): 3 9 - 4 4 and Karen Hartman and Ernest A ckerm ann, “Finding Quality In fo rm a tio n o n th e In te rn e t: T ip s and G u id e lin e s ,” Syllabus 13, n o . l (A ugust 1999): 5 2 -5 4 . ■ ( “Dressing up SGML … ” continued fro m p ag e 294) O n ce the processin g is com p lete, the SGML file is displayed as a temporary html file that the com puter automatically removes when the user disconnects. Since the html version is created dynamically w hen the user selects a hypertext link, and is deleted when the user navigates to another Web page, there is only one perm anent file for any docu ment. This means that only on e file must be edited w henever corrections or revisions are needed. An additional feature o f the program is the creation o f navigational footnotes from the SGML. All the notes are collected at the end o f the html document with hypertext links so that the reader may jump to a note and back to the text. Creating navigational links for the converted document An auxiliary program called n a v b a r was writ ten to produce the html code for the hypertext links that display in a frame to the left o f the html document. T hese links function as a hypertext table o f contents, giving the user the ability to jump from one section to an other. This imitates the printed version o f the text by creating a method for jumping to spe cific sections and scanning the e-text for spe cific parts. This was critical for the poetry books com pleted early in the project. The navigation bar enables users to scroll through the volum e’s contents and jump to specific poems. Although transferring printed material to the Web poses many challenges, it also pro vides this generation o f librarians with the opportunity to improve on the design o f the book. Innovative projects like this one un dertaken at UNL unite the process o f infor mation preservation with information rede sign, giving us the opportunity to enhance the end product. Note 1. More information on the UNL e-text project and exam ples o f digitized texts can be found at http://libr.unl.edu:2000. ■ http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/in- http://www.albany.edu/library/internet/ C&RL News ■ A p ril 2000 / 305