Research and Evaluation Skills in the 21st Century

One saying that I have heard repeatedly over the course of my career is that "the pendulum always swings back the other way."  Well the interesting thing about a pendulum is that it swings to far before coming back down and it is that momentum that carries it too far in the opposing direction.  The trick it seems is to keep it somewhere in the middle ground.  Well fortunately (or unfortunately, however you wish to look at it) the middle ground in the field of education is always moving.  As our kids, schools, technology, etc. changes so does the middle ground.  In many ways this is especially true regarding access to information.

Everyone of my and previous generations remembers the hours spent in libraries combing through a variety of sources looking for information to use in our schoolwork.  I always dreaded that research project because there never seemed to be enough hours in the day to complete my chores, homework, and then somehow convince my parents that I HAD to go to the library (now to defend my parents, it was obviously not their fault I waited until the last day to tell them about a project I had been "working on" for a week).  Even as adults life has an interesting way of rearranging your priorities on a moments notice.  The difficulties facing today's students however is a bit different.  Finding resources is not the problem, Google will supply you with as many as you could ever want.  Finding the correct resources on the other hand is another matter entirely.

When I was teaching World History I used to have my students do a presentation (yes it was definitely a boring slides presentation) over an explorer of their choice.  I repeatedly had students reporting the same terrible information that was so bad I was convinced that they had plagiarized off of each other.  I took a moment and looked over their reference pages and noticed one terrible similarity and this was it (this page is a teacher resource for teaching students about sourcing but my students never looked any further than their assigned explorer).   I was horrified and there are many other bad sources out there just do a google search for dyhydrogen monoxide. So the obvious question we must ask ourselves as professionals is how do help in our students and there are most definitely a number of things we can do to help them sort the good from the bad.

The first thing we need to do is to teach students how to sort the good from the bad. This is an essential skill that they will need as they further their education and there are a number of strategies that we can utilize.  I like to use Kathy Schrock's guide to critical evaluation in order to help students learn to evaluate good information from bad.  The C.A.R.S. strategy is equally valuable and both encourage students to analyze the credibility of the sources they are using.  I would suggest picking one and sticking with it and providing an activity where students can analyze a legitimate source against a hoax source can provide a fun and educational activity for your classroom.

Another strategy that educators may use is to provide their students with vetted sources.  This is especially effective when it is necessary to provide additional scaffolding and supports to classes with diverse learners.  A teacher can provide these resources through a variety of ways but two of my favorite is through Diigo, which is a social bookmarking tool that allows you to provide specific resources to your students through a shared link ( I will often just share the link on my Google Classroom).  Another way to provide these vetted resources is to create a custom search engine and you can do this through Google as well.  I would suggest however that you still allow students to search through additional resources as well because after all the journey for knowledge happens best when it's guided by our interest; however, encourage them to use a critical evaluation strategy on additional resources.