Task 3: Apply advanced search skills to select credible open resources for a research topic

(The section numbers presented below are referring to the Task list found at https://edubits.nz/eduassessmentcriteria/42/downloadpdf )

3.1a

Statement:

What are the key criteria for assessing Digital Literacy for a tertiary level student?

3.1b

This topic is quite suitable at tertiary level since this research will help educators to design effective assessment of digital literacy skills for 1st year tertiary students who might have digital skills but not literacy. In order to develop the learners’ digital literacy, an assessment has to be done to find out if they have competency to do cognitive evaluation of the digital content in an inter-networked space. The students will be the subject of this research while tertiary educators will be doing the research.

3.2

The first place to start this research will be to do literature review to find out if anyone else have done similar research.

The research by Cartner (2020) presents a study which pointed out the mismatch between the use of digital tools in teaching and assessment. It is common to use blogs, social media and podcasts in teaching and learning, but essays are most widely accepted form of submissions for assessments. The research output emphasizes on setting constructive alignment among digital tools, learning outcomes, activities and assessments. If the students can clearly see the connection between all these things, they achieve the learning outcomes much more easily.  I picked this research as it is published in 2020 and it gave me a recent perspective.

 



Figure 8 Screen shot of mybib citation assessment

Another research came through search in google scholar is by Aagaard (2013) and it investigated the strategies teachers should adopt while developing assessment by taking into account the fact that many students are having access to computers to complete the tasks. This is a particular interesting topic for educators as many tertiary students are often tempted to use contents from Internet without giving proper citations or without knowing the copyright issues. This research has directions for educators about how to design assessments to address this challenge.


Figure 9 Screen shot of mybib citation assessment

Advanced searching in google scholar with the string “digital literacy assessment” for contents with free to use or share permissions resulted in the following results:

 


Figure 10 Screen shot advanced google search

 

 

Figure 11 Screen shot advanced google search result

I have chosen the highlighted result by Nikou and Aavakare (2021) as it is from a reputed publication (e.g. springer), have 28 citations, published in 2021 and mybib citation manager shows this as credible. The following screen shows that mybib has flagged this is credible:

 


Figure 12 Screen shot of mybib citation assessment

 

This research suggested focusing on digital literacy of educators for the development of students’ digital literacy. While designing digital literacy assessments it is really important to consider this perspective.

The following advanced search on google resulted in finding a very interesting blog post titled:

“A critical review of Frameworks for Digital Literacy: Beyond the Flashy, Flimsy and Faddish” (Brown, 2017):

 

Figure 13 Screen shot of advanced search on google scholar

This is a very interesting opinion post by professor Mark Brown of Dublin City University for clarifying the different frameworks of digital literacy capability assessment.


A quick search through DOAJ (https://doaj.org/article/10a1f160b5984ecf80efe7bab6bd250d) revealed a very innovative research by Johannes Steinrücke (Steinrücke, 2020) which aims to evaluate digital skills while participants played a game that required considering contextual information to make decisions to tackle a crisis moment. However, this study is designed mostly for a regional crisis management organization which needs to process lots of information very quickly while they are responding to a crisis. The gamification approach seems to have catered very well for simulating the scenario and assess the different skill levels. Can we do similar kind of testing for tertiary students? This will be quite interesting as many of them enjoy game playing a lot.  A lot of them might be thinking they have excellent command on their digital skills, without understanding the deeper and intertwined aspect of the connected world.

The following screen shot shows how I searched using advanced searching skill in the database where I have used key words (digital literacy assessment) in title to find relevant articles in the database.

 


Figure 14 Screen shot of DOAJ search

Among the search results the one titled “Evaluation of the Functionality of a New E-Learning Platform vs. Previous Experiences in E-Learning and the Self-Assessment of Own Digital Literacy” is worth reviewing as it is brand new research done only two months ago (Tomczyk, 2020). This work evaluates the effectiveness of eLearning tools for a group of educators with a varied level of digital literacy.

I did another advanced search on DOAJ and found an interesting article by Nelson (2017):

 

Figure 15 Screen shot of advance search on DOAJ

This article that allowing students to use unrefereed (e.g. youtube video, social media posts, blogs) sources can contribute to developing their digital literacy as longs as they cultivate critical thinking. I picked this article as it is from a reputed journal and the contents are quite relevant to my research.

3.3a

For evaluating the credibility of the research articles I have used the CARS checklist (checking Credibility, Accuracy, Reasonableness and Support) for information quality as presented by Harris (2020, October 19). It is really important to select articles which provide reliable, accurate and relevant information while doing research on any topic of interest. However, determination of information quality is considered an art because there is no single perfect test for reliability and one must develop skills to make an inference from a collection of indicators.

3.3b

1.     Credibility of the source: This can be the reputation of the journal/conference proceedings, author’s professional profile, expertise, collaboration etc. The citation of the article, whether it is peer-reviewed or not, the professional network of the author needs to be cheked. The citation count for the article is an important measure its acceptability. For journals a very well accepted measure for credibility is it’s impact factor and whether it has been indexed by databases and popular indexation services. For example, Index medicus is a very well regarded index for medical research as it is in publication since 1879. On the other hand, journals like Nature have one of the highest credibility as its impact factor is 42 in compare to journals having lower impact factors. If it is blog then the reputation of the author and the relevance of the content to the research questions must be taken into considering. 

2.     Accuracy: If the article is published relatively recently, it should contain more accurate depiction of the research question addressing the shortcomings of previous work. So, the year of publication is really important. However, it is often a call of judgement when a decision should be made based on publication year as an old article might have more credible substance and acceptability than a recent one. An online article must have a publication date.

3.     Reasonableness: It is important to consider if the article has any inherent bias pushing forward the ideas or concepts presented. A reasonable article will definitely contain objective analysis of the idea/concept taking into consideration of diverse views for and against the argument. 

4.     Support: Any argument presented in the article must be supported by sufficient valid statistics, data and references. Very often, an article might fulfill all the above criteria but lack enough evidence/artifacts to support the research idea.

         The following is a screenshot where I have checked the reputation of a journal

   


Figure 16 Screen shot of journal's reputation check

One of the citation management system (mybib) I have used, shows the credibility of the source when a new citation is created. Here is a screenshot that shows the article is “credible”:



Figure 17 Screen shot of mybib citation assessment.

Once I found a list of possible articles through short listing with the above criteria, my strategy for selecting an article to review would be to start by reading the abstract and then finding its relevance  to my research, then looking at the findings in the conclusion section. If I find it interesting, I would start readying the introduction and further.

3.4

-------

References:

Aagaard, T., & Lund, A. (2013). Mind the Gap: Divergent Objects of Assessment in Technology-rich Learning Environments. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 8(4/2013), 225-243 
https://www.idunn.no/dk/2013/04/mind_the_gap_divergent_objects_of_assessment_in_technology

This research investigated the strategies teachers should adopt while developing assessment. He suggested them to take into account the fact that many students are having access to computers to complete the tasks. This is a particular interesting topic for educators as many tertiary students are often tempted to use contents from Internet without giving proper citations or without knowing the copyright issues. This research has directions for educators about how to design assessments to address this challenge. This article was found through advanced search on google scholar. It is from a credible journal and the article is relevant to my research. I have used the criteria presented in section 3.3b to decide on the credibility of the article. It has impact factor of 1.5 and this is increasing since its first publication in 2019. 

Brown, M. (2017, October 5). A Critical Review of Frameworks for Digital literacy: beyond the flashy, Flimsy and Faddish – Part 1 – ASCILITE Telall Blog. https://blog.ascilite.org/a-critical-review-of-frameworks-for-digital-literacy-beyond-the-flashy-flimsy-and-faddish-part-1/

This is a very interesting opinion post by professor Mark Brown of Dublin City University for clarifying the different frameworks of digital literacy capability assessment. This research came through advanced searching in google scholar and I have chosen this due the authenticity of the Author and the content itself. It follows the criteria presented in 3.3b, it is a blog article written by a credible other with affiliation of as a professor at the Dublin City University. The quality of the content is high as it contains a holistic review of different frameworks with a critical analysis for each.

Cartner, H., & Hallas, J. (2020). Aligning assessment, technology, and multi-literacies. E-Learning and Digital Media, 17(2), 131–147. https://doi.org/10.1177/2042753019899732

The research by Cartner (Cartner, 2020) presents a study which pointed out the mismatch between the use of digital tools in teaching and assessment. It is common to use blogs, social media and podcasts in teaching and learning, but essays are most widely accepted form of submissions for assessments. The research output emphasizes on setting constructive alignment among digital tools, learning outcomes, activities and assessments. If the students can clearly see the connection between all these things, they achieve the learning outcomes much more easily. I used the criteria presented at section 3.3b to select this article.  I picked this research as it is published in 2020 and it gave me a recent perspective, it is from a reputed published (sage publishing). The journal has been indexed by couple of reputed databases including ERIC, ProQuest and Elsevier. Also the citation management tool mybib identified the source as credible. 

Harris, R. (2020, October 19). Evaluating internet research sources. Www.virtualsalt.com.  http://www.virtualsalt.com/evaluating-internet-research-sources/ 

This article presents a framework for evaluating Internet resources for research purpose. It introduces the CARS checklist for information quality that recommends checking Credibility, Accuracy, Reasonableness and Support for claims. I found this article from Lida 101 course materials. It is quite related to my research as it helps me to filter reliable sources for reviewing.

I selected this online article as it was suggested by the course.

Nelson, R. (2017). Doubt in Digital education: Critical Thinking in the Age of Trump. Digital Culture & Education, 9(2). https://doaj.org/article/59ee131f37d049818440bbc5f0f8f665

This article argues that allowing students to use unrefereed (e.g. youtube video, social media posts, blogs) sources can contribute to developing their digital literacy as longs as they cultivate critical thinking. I found this article through advanced search in DOAJ database. I selected this article based on the criteria presented in section 3.3b. The journal is a well established one and the content of the article is relevant to my research about digital literacy. The author has affiliation with Monash university, journal has been indexed by DOAJ database and the articles are published after going through a double blinded peer review. 

Nikou, S., & Aavakare, M. (2021). An assessment of the interplay between literacy and digital technology in higher education. Education and Information Technologies, 67(2). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10451-0 

This research suggested focusing on digital literacy of educators for the development of students’ digital literacy. While designing digital literacy assessments it is really important to consider this perspective.  I have chosen the research based on the criteria set in section 3.3b. It is from a reputed publication (e.g. springer), have 28 citations, published in 2021 and it has been indexed by reputed databases and indexing services like ACM Digital Library, DBLP, EBSCO, ProQuest and SCOPUS. mybib citation manager shows this as credible. 

Steinrücke, J., Veldkamp, B. P., & Jong, T. de. (2020). Information Literacy Skills Assessment in Digital Crisis Management Training for the Safety Domain: Developing an Unobtrusive Method. Frontiers in Education, 5(1), 140. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.00140  

This aims to evaluate digital skills while participants played a game that required considering contextual information to make decisions to tackle a crisis moment. However, this study is designed mostly for a regional crisis management organization which needs to process lots of information very quickly while they are responding to a crisis. The gamification approach seems to have catered very well for simulating the scenario and assess the different skill levels. Can we do similar kind of testing for tertiary students? This will be quite interesting as many of them enjoy game playing a lot.  A lot of them might be thinking they have excellent command on their digital skills, without understanding the deeper and intertwined aspect of the connected world. I found this article through a search in the DOAJ database and selected this for review based on the criteria presented in section 3.3b. This journal has been indexed by Scopus, Google Scholar, DOAJ, Crossref, CLOCKSS and ERIH PLUS. The authors have affiliation with University of Twenty and has been published after rigorous peer review. 

Tomczyk, Ł., Potyrała, K., Włoch, A., Wnęk-Gozdek, J., & Demeshkant, N. (2020). Evaluation of the Functionality of a New E-Learning Platform vs. Previous Experiences in E-Learning and the Self-Assessment of Own Digital Literacy. Sustainability, Vol. 12(10219), 10219. https://doi.org/10.3390/su122310219

This work evaluates the effectiveness of eLearning tools for a group of educators with a varied level of digital literacy. This research is relevant to my research as it brings a different perspective to look at from the view point of educators. I found this articled through advanced searching on DOAJ database and I selected this based on the criteria presented on section 3.3b This is from a reputed journal with impact factor 2.79 and has been indexed by Scopus, SCIE, Web of Science, GEOBASE, AGRIS and many other reputed databases. mybib noted this source as credible.

This bibliography with annotations are available on my public bookmarks:

https://www.mybib.com/j/TrickyJoblessCod

All bookmarks have open access.

 

 

 


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