Researching Students’ Information Choices:
Determining Identity and Judging Credibility in Digital Spaces
In the information overload of today’s digital world, determining the purpose, quality, and trustworthiness of resources is essential to finding good information. By studying how STEM students identify resource types and judge credibility in online spaces, this project will help to develop meaningful strategies for teaching the information literacy skills that will allow students to successfully navigate the ever-evolving online landscape.
Full project website (University of Florida)
Impact
- Study the online information-seeking behaviors of two under-studied groups:
- Late elementary and middle school students
- STEM students
- Determine whether students are format agnostic in online environments
- Inform practical, effective approaches to information literacy instruction
Details
For this research project, we consider whether students are format agnostic. First coined by Abram and Luther (2004), the term refers to students who either cannot or do not identify the container (i.e. document type) when making judgments relating to use of digital resources. Judging the container can be difficult in an online environment, however, given what the researchers call container collapse, meaning that the visual context and cues that print containers used to provide to help individuals identify documents’ origins are now obscured or are more difficult to discern. In digital format, a document is “decanted” from its original container and must be carefully examined to determine the journey it took to reach the individual.
Soules (2009) goes so far as to say “E-book, e-journal? Users don’t care; in fact they never cared, and many only understood book vs. journal in the print world because of the difference in their physical structures. What they want is relevant content” (pg. S4). But how do students distinguish whether relevant digital content is also credible digital content?
There is limited published research on how late primary, secondary, community college, and undergraduate STEM students identify and determine credibility. We collected data from almost 180 STEM students from grade 4 through graduate school as they participated in a simulation. They selected resources for a hypothetical school assignment from search engine results, and judged the credibility and container of the resources.
The findings from these simulations can be used to help create better information literacy and digital literacy instruction, and improve students’ ability to effectively discover, access, and use online resources. New publications and presentations will be posted here and on the University of Florida site.
Outputs
Blog Posts & Trade Publications
Stop Source-Shaming: Acknowledge Wikipedia in the research process:
American Libraries | 1 September 2021
By Lynn Silipigni Connaway and Joyce Valenza
Connaway and Valenza share results showing that established professionals commonly start with Wikipedia to get their bearings on a topic before diving further into the literature.
What is “container collapse” and why should librarians and teachers care?
Blog post | 20 June 2018
By Lynn Silipigni Connaway
Connaway provides an update to the work being done as part of the study Researching Students’ Information Choices (RSIC): Determining Identity and Judging Credibility in Digital Spaces. She focuses on initial results and defining the concept of container collapse.
Posted on the OCLC Next Blog.
Find more project outputs on the University of Florida site.
Publications
Backgrounds and behaviors: Which students successfully identify online resources in the face of container collapse
15 February 2021
Christopher Cyr, Tara Tobin, Brittany Brannon, Amy G. Buhler, Ixchel M. Faniel, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Joyce Kasman Valenza, Rachael Elrod, Samuel R. Putnam
This study of students from primary through graduate school looks at their ability to identify the containers of information resources, and how this ability is affected by their demographic traits, the resource features they attended to, and their behaviors during a task-based simulation.
Mixed methods data collection using simulated Google results: reflections on the methods of a point-of-selection behaviour study
16 December 2020
Tara Tobin Cataldo, Amy G. Buhler, Ixchel M. Faniel, Brittany Brannon, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Christopher Cyr, Kailey Langer, Erin M. Hood, Joyce Kasman Valenza, Rachael Elrod, Randy A. Graff, Samuel R. Putnam, and Summer Howland
A multi-institutional, grant-funded project employed mixed methods to study 175 fourth-grade through graduate school students’ point-of-selection behaviour. The method features the use of simulated search engine results pages to facilitate data collection.
Science and News: A Study of Students’ Judgments of Online Scientific News Information
13 January 2020
Tara Tobin Cataldo, Kailey Langer, Amy G. Buhler, Samuel R. Putnam, Rachael Elrod, Ixchel M. Faniel, PhD, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, PhD, Christopher Cyr, PhD, Brittany Brannon, Joyce Kasman Valenza, PhD, Erin M. Hood, Randy A. Graff, PhD
This paper explores how students judge scientific news resources, as they might find through a Google search. The data were collected as part of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded project.
Project Lead:
Amy Buhler, MSLS, Principal Investigator, University of Florida
Active Team Members
- Amy Buhler, MSLS, Principal Investigator, University of Florida
- Tara Tobin Cataldo, MLS, Co-Principal Investigator, University of Florida
- Ixchel M. Faniel, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator, OCLC
- Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator, OCLC
- Brittany Brannon, M.A., Research Assistant, OCLC
- Samuel R. Putnam, MLS, University of Florida
Former Team Members
- Joyce Kasman Valenza, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator
- Randy Graff, Ph.D., Investigator
- Rachael Elrod, M.Ed., MSLS, Investigator
- Christopher Cyr, Ph.D., Investigator
- Erin M. Hood, M.L.I.S., Investigator
- Christine Towler, Research Assistant
- Robin Fowler, MSLIS, Program Assistant
- Summer Howland, Instructional Designer
- Shakiyl Kirlew, Research Assistant
- Kailey Langer, Research Assistant