CCCC 2005: ReviewReview: B.23 Research-based Recommendations for Evaluating and Citing Electronic Resources Douglas Eyman presented “Migratory and Ephemeral: Locating, Evaluating, and Contextualizing Online Sources.” Eyman analyzed our field’s most widely used handbook instruction on citing online sources. He noted common elements of all handbooks and pointed out they generally advise using print conventions and add on some electronic information. Eyman pointed out the lack of instruction and some confusion about domain evaluation in the handbooks. In essence, handbooks lack a fully useful methodology for FY students to cite online sources. Eyman’s insightful analysis was respectful of the handbooks while clearly pointing out shortcomings and contradictions such as advice for evaluating online sources. Essentially, the handbooks teach students to look for sources that have been institutionally validated when there are non-institutionally online sources that are of value. In other words, the same values for print sources are generally being applied to instruction for citing online sources. Eyman showed us “the way back machine” which is a web site to see how each web site has been changed over time. He also demonstrated how Google judges worth of a site based on links to the site. He mentioned Jim Ridolio’s site that will be published in Kairos called “Online Comprehensive Document Evaluation” which will become another tool to judge web site validity. He concluded that students need to compose online citations with textual and contextual analysis that is more screen savvy. Eyman’s work is clearly essential for our field. “What citation style is most useable for citing electronic sources?” asked Colleen A. Reilly as she began presenting “Works Cited and Usability: Relocating Electronic Sources.” She considered APA, Columbia Guide, and the MLA styles of documentation. Reilly analyzed 6 composition classes taught by 4 instructors meeting in traditional classes. She got 129 student replies and met with each class for 30 minutes to offer instruction about how to use particular documentation styles. She focused on four main types of electronic sources and offered handouts for each class with one of the three citation styles used in her study, and then she followed up this work with “application sessions.” Using the handout and sample sources, students were asked to write online source citation. Reilly noted the errors and categories of errors for each source done in class. Reilly analyzed the most frequently occurring errors for each of the three styles and with several examples of web sources and she found that no citation proved clearly more useable. She found that teachers should use most common problems with each style to determine what to emphasize. Reilly’s presentation brought cutting edge research to our conference in a very professional manner. Her explanation of her methodology and her analysis of her research results were professional and very helpful. Joyce Walker and Jim Purdy presented “Practices of Online Research and Citation: A Case Study.” They switched reading parts of their study and offered a very seamless and inspiring presentations. They began by explaining that they went beyond the field to find ways source material is cited because our field is not focused on these issues as much as others. They came up with a qualitative analysis to focus on the stories and the metaphors people use to describe their research experiences. They used interviews from 4 researchers to find that all of the researchers used commercial search engines. All of them used Google at some point in their research process, and generally began with Google before going to the library data bases to get a sense of the search. Google helped the researchers locate key words in library resources, though not all of the subjects use library databases and sources. They found online systems were used to find and access specific sources to focus their library requests as a retrieval resource. The research subjects gravitated toward Google and Amazon as research tools because they were perceived as more friendly, fun, and more useful than libraries for searching for sources. The fun aspect may help create a more positive attitude toward researching. The mental or metaphorical maps of online search are more organic and less structure- driven as would be expected from hypertextual tools. This presentation is important because our field can do more to stop negative pedagogical bias against online research and Purdy and Walker’s research is a fine step in that direction. Q&A The best question turned tables by suggesting that students are making rhetorical decisions, not necessarily error. The discussion bantered back and forth, and concluded that in-text writing as well as citation works best. Walker made a key point about online research—“it’s not making them worse researchers, just different researchers.” |
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