I am happy to report I am done with the project. Overall I would say I am a better database searcher now. Although I think I lean a bit heavily on my AND command, I have enjoyed truncation and even the occasional field search.
As I annotated my bibliography, I also felt I learned a lot about the research topic. Although I won't be organizing this into an actual literature review any time soon, I can see themes forming around user age and other demographics, visual features vs. content, the effect of domain names, the effect of purpose in searching in credibility criteria looked for, brand trust, and more.
For anyone curious, here is the almost final* version: https://viewer.zoho.com/docs/kcd2bi
*The first citation should actually read "seeking out .edu domains" -- oops!
Friday, December 9, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Final Project Post 5
My goal was to be done with this project by today...and while I'm not quite there yet, I am happy to report some more progress. This week I branched out to a new database and found some more good articles. I was also able to select and annotate the ones I chose from my first round of searches and get my search report written up.
Choosing the articles was a bit of a challenge. For one thing, I had a few on my list that I hadn't realized were just abstracts. Those I wasn't able to track down full text articles had to be removed. Then there were a few that weren't quite on-topic as much I had originally thought, and a couple that I realized were just dissertations (and had not been published/peer-reviewed). I am hoping the second round will be a little better. Just a few more annotations and I will be proud to call this done. Hope to report back soon!
Choosing the articles was a bit of a challenge. For one thing, I had a few on my list that I hadn't realized were just abstracts. Those I wasn't able to track down full text articles had to be removed. Then there were a few that weren't quite on-topic as much I had originally thought, and a couple that I realized were just dissertations (and had not been published/peer-reviewed). I am hoping the second round will be a little better. Just a few more annotations and I will be proud to call this done. Hope to report back soon!
Friday, December 2, 2011
Final Project Post 4
This week I tried some new search techniques. First, I tried searching fields. This began by searching the KW Identifiers Field in ERIC. I tried to search "credibility AND adult AND online" with all fields set to KW Identifiers. To my surprise this produced no results. I was only able to produce results when searching for just one term in this field and results were fairly limited. I decided to try something different. Next I searched "credibility" in the SU Descriptors (subject descriptors) field and "online" in all fields. Through this method I found three articles I ended up taking a second look at, including one that made it to my list of potential articles:
Metzger, M.J., Flanagin, A.J., Zwarun, L. (2003) College student web use, perceptions of information credibility, and verification behavior. Computers & Education, 41, 271-290.
Having sifted through many results, I had some new ideas for keywords I wanted to try out. These included "truth," "trust," "evaluating," "validity," "information source*," and "web." Since there were variations on these that also might be useful (for example, "trustworthiness" or "evaluation") I was also eager to try out truncation. Next, I tried "cred* AND students AND information source* AND Internet OR Web." I also limited my results to only search Journal Articles and Peer Reviewed articles. This proved to be a very productive search, resulting in the following articles making it to my list:
Van de Vord, R. (2010). Distance students and online research: Promoting information literacy through media literacy. The Internet and Higher Education, 13(3). 170-175.
Rhoades, E.B., Irani, T., Telg, R., & Myers, B. (2008). Internet as an information source: Attitudes and usage of students enrolled in a college of agriculture course. Journal of Agricultural Education, 49(2).
Iding, M., Crosby, M., Auernheimer, B., & Barbara Klemm, E. E. (2009). Web site credibility: Why do people believe what they believe?. Instructional Science, 37(1), 43-63.
Next, I tried "Internet AND 'information literacy' AND students NOT elementary NOT 'high school'". I had shied away from searching "information literacy" since I felt it was too broad a term and not quite what I was investigating. Though numerous, my results confirmed this. Many were prescriptive rather than investigative and focused on a set of information literacy activities much broader than what I was interested in. Nonetheless, I identified two more potential articles:
Halverson, K.L., Siegel, M.A., & Freyermuth, S.K. (2010). Non-Science majors' critical evaluation of websites in a biotechnology course. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 19(6) 612-623.
Yarmey, K. (2011). Student information literacy in the mobile environment. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 34(1).
As I look towards wrapping things up things, I hope to identify a few more articles through more searches. Then I will begin reviewing them for relevance and usefulness in answering my research question. Hopefully a few themes will emerge for my hypothetical literature review and I will have a good set of articles to use. I am a little confused about whether we are allowed to use more than one database for this project, but if so, I think this will be very useful in finding more articles, particularly since my topic extends from the education field into communications. (Since one would feel free to in a real literature review I would assume so, but I will check to make sure!)
For now, I am going to start annotating some of my clear "winners." :)
Metzger, M.J., Flanagin, A.J., Zwarun, L. (2003) College student web use, perceptions of information credibility, and verification behavior. Computers & Education, 41, 271-290.
Having sifted through many results, I had some new ideas for keywords I wanted to try out. These included "truth," "trust," "evaluating," "validity," "information source*," and "web." Since there were variations on these that also might be useful (for example, "trustworthiness" or "evaluation") I was also eager to try out truncation. Next, I tried "cred* AND students AND information source* AND Internet OR Web." I also limited my results to only search Journal Articles and Peer Reviewed articles. This proved to be a very productive search, resulting in the following articles making it to my list:
Van de Vord, R. (2010). Distance students and online research: Promoting information literacy through media literacy. The Internet and Higher Education, 13(3). 170-175.
Rhoades, E.B., Irani, T., Telg, R., & Myers, B. (2008). Internet as an information source: Attitudes and usage of students enrolled in a college of agriculture course. Journal of Agricultural Education, 49(2).
Iding, M., Crosby, M., Auernheimer, B., & Barbara Klemm, E. E. (2009). Web site credibility: Why do people believe what they believe?. Instructional Science, 37(1), 43-63.
Next, I tried "Internet AND 'information literacy' AND students NOT elementary NOT 'high school'". I had shied away from searching "information literacy" since I felt it was too broad a term and not quite what I was investigating. Though numerous, my results confirmed this. Many were prescriptive rather than investigative and focused on a set of information literacy activities much broader than what I was interested in. Nonetheless, I identified two more potential articles:
Halverson, K.L., Siegel, M.A., & Freyermuth, S.K. (2010). Non-Science majors' critical evaluation of websites in a biotechnology course. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 19(6) 612-623.
Yarmey, K. (2011). Student information literacy in the mobile environment. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 34(1).
As I look towards wrapping things up things, I hope to identify a few more articles through more searches. Then I will begin reviewing them for relevance and usefulness in answering my research question. Hopefully a few themes will emerge for my hypothetical literature review and I will have a good set of articles to use. I am a little confused about whether we are allowed to use more than one database for this project, but if so, I think this will be very useful in finding more articles, particularly since my topic extends from the education field into communications. (Since one would feel free to in a real literature review I would assume so, but I will check to make sure!)
For now, I am going to start annotating some of my clear "winners." :)
Friday, November 25, 2011
Final Project Post 3
I need to email for approval but the research question I have (tentatively) chosen is: What factors affect perceptions of credibility of online information sources among adult learners? My first searches revealed that this is a subject that has been studied quite a bit, but in large part to assess information literacy among K-12 learners. I am now working on revising this search to find studies focusing on the postsecondary population.
Using a Boolean search for "online AND education AND credibility" in ERIC here are some potential studies I found:
Biddix, J. P., Chung, C. J., Park, H. W. (2011). Convenience or credibility? A study of college student online research behaviors. Internet and Higher Education, 14(3), 175-182.
Kubiszewski, I., Noordewier, T. G., Costanza, R. (2011). Perceived credibility of internet encyclopedias. Computers & Education, 56(3). 659-667
In order to target the population, I changed the search to "online AND education AND credibility AND college." This helped refine my search results in a useful way and resulted in discovering the following potential studies:
David, A. & Glore, P. (2010). The impact of design and aesthetics on usability, credibility, and learning in online courses. Online Journal of Distance Education. 13(4).
Gough, J. (2008, December). The critical evaluation of bibliographic web sources. College Quarterly 11(1).
Although productive, these early searches provided a lot to wade through and illustrated the importance of good search skills. As I continue the search, I will be exploring more advanced search methods such as truncation and searching fields.
Using a Boolean search for "online AND education AND credibility" in ERIC here are some potential studies I found:
Biddix, J. P., Chung, C. J., Park, H. W. (2011). Convenience or credibility? A study of college student online research behaviors. Internet and Higher Education, 14(3), 175-182.
Kubiszewski, I., Noordewier, T. G., Costanza, R. (2011). Perceived credibility of internet encyclopedias. Computers & Education, 56(3). 659-667
In order to target the population, I changed the search to "online AND education AND credibility AND college." This helped refine my search results in a useful way and resulted in discovering the following potential studies:
David, A. & Glore, P. (2010). The impact of design and aesthetics on usability, credibility, and learning in online courses. Online Journal of Distance Education. 13(4).
Gough, J. (2008, December). The critical evaluation of bibliographic web sources. College Quarterly 11(1).
Although productive, these early searches provided a lot to wade through and illustrated the importance of good search skills. As I continue the search, I will be exploring more advanced search methods such as truncation and searching fields.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Final Project Post 2
This has not been a busy week project-wise! I have been investigating databases other than ERIC. So far I have had good results using Communication & Mass Media Complete and Academic Search Premier. I am currently working on narrowing down my topic using these results, and am considering investigating credibility and online learning resources.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Final Project Post 1
For my final project, I have decided to conduct an online database search. I am still looking to narrow down my review topic but am looking at topics having to do with informal/user-created or open source learning resources. (I am currently working on a literature review in EIS500 that relates to how these are used for health-related information but need to narrow it down to something else for this class.) Right now I am considering using good old ERIC database but am open to other suggestions! Stay tuned for updates.
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