The Exercise of Searching for Information - Research Paper Example

? Communication Strategies s of Learning: s Communication Strategies The modern environment is normally surrounded by different types of information and it is always difficult for one to know which among the sources of information to trust. This makes the position of being able to evaluate the credibility of any source an important skill that is applicable at work, in schools and in normal life situations. The exercise has become even more difficult with the increased controversy, advertisement and the on going blogging, making most people to wonder how they are expected to go about the process of sieving through all the available resources and come up with trustworthy and credible information. Systems that are openly distributed can be sources of information whose reliability is not certain. More so, the process of looking up for information in large masses of given data can prove to be a hectic and difficult process. In this life, we are often faced with similar situations calling for the need to make judgments on the reliability of information and the most effective method of accessing such information. Most people depend on the Internet as their main source of information but the uncertainty and complexity associated with the expanding Internet has made the users experience several problems. The problems include; how reliable the information they obtain from the Internet is. Most of the information from the Internet are on pages identified with queried keywords. This is meant to easily get at the information required but it ends up failing to qualify the information obtained with the data on the information sources themselves (George, 2006). Every person has his or her credibility standards when it comes to information they need. In most cases, this depends on the application of the information. This calls for the need to get it right every time one needs to evaluate different sources and settle on a judgment call. Most people depend on the Internet as their main source of information thus they have to be guided against the uncertainties and complexity associated with the expanding Internet. It is also close to impossible for any Internet user to sieve through all the available information from the Internet and pick out the best suited information. Following this situation, it is evident that reputation and trust play an important role in determining the credibility of a particular source. Some of the ways of determining if an Internet source is credible and can be trusted include The other problem is the issue of sematic mapping; the use of key words to locate information from different sources from the Internet can be misleading as the keywords used may have several meanings in relation to the language used or the context. It is also close to impossible for any Internet user to sieve through all the available information from Internet and pick out the best suited information. Following this situation, it is evident that reputation and trust play an important role in checking on such problems. It’s the nature of every human being to put more weight to the ideas and opinions of the people they trust and know well. Hence, by having the process of retrieving information be guided by trust , chances are that such information will end up being more reliable than the information obtained from arbitrary sources. This approach also checks on the information overload issue now that the internet users will only reach out to sources they trust. One can have the confidence to regard a source to be credible if the author of the source has a degree or a better credential on the subject. In a situation where the source has no author or the organization is not named, then there are high chances that the source is not credible. More so, there are sources where the authors are named but they end up not being credible (George, 2006). If the work is original, the ideas presented are the ones that have to be evaluated and not the author’s credentials. Another thing to look at is whether the source has been revised or published. In some disciplines such as science, the more current the source is, the more credible it is but in some fields like history, the older the source, the more relevant it becomes. There are chances of trusting on a source yet it is an older version of an updated publication. A source is more reliable when it has more editions or printings. The cost of coming up with a source is also a determining factor when it comes to the credibility of the source. This means that the more the costs incurred in the process of creating and publishing a source, the more the chances are that the source has reliable information. This argument makes printed sources to be more reliable than internet blog sources as their production costs higher compared to blogs where publication can be done for free. Some sources in the internet are believed to be always reliable thus can be trusted at any time. A good example of such sources includes peer-reviewed articles and journals. Most Internet users believe that peer reviewed journals can be relied upon as they have to be rigorously reviewed with several professionals before being posted or published. The professionals examine the factual information accuracy, the experimental process thoroughness and come up with critiques. With such guidelines, Internet users are now better placed to face similar situations that call for the need to make judgments on the reliability of information and the most effective method of accessing information. It has come to the realization of most institutions that students only evaluate resources from the Web sketchily while others don’t even make any effort. Without even seeking the guidance of the librarians, and with little help from their instructors, students rely and trust on their own inexperienced assessment to choose which of the resources from the Web are of the best quality and are suitable. Such students are definitely ill equipped and make no effort of evaluating web resources. This situation leads students to use resources from the Web that are unauthenticated. As the students were mostly introduced to junior school Web pages and publicity sites, they continue depending on such sites even after they have outgrown them. This is because of their ignorance of not checking on which Web guides or database presented to them. Such facilities play a crucial role in assisting students gain access to web resources that are reliable. This situation has been caused by the large gap between Internet users and the available instructions on the how to best access Web resources. This gap has resulted to most users being naive when it comes to accessing resources from the Web. Consequently, some of the users believe that they will access quality and reliable information from the internet much easier as compared to the way information is obtained from library materials. Some users end up concluding that the Internet is a poor tool for accessing information yet it is them who don’t know how to go about it. Most inexperienced users access the Web as they conduct research in an unchecked manner just because they normally use the Internet to chat or send electronic mails thus feel they don’t require any assistance in their research. Several researchers indicate that such behaviors practiced by students while seeking information is greatly influenced by those around them who include the academic staff, library staff, fellow students and friends(George, 2006). Students who depend mostly on the internet opt for online resources that are readily available in the library intranet and on the Internet. Other relied on print resources that they found in the library. The findings also indicate that the student’s behaviors while seeking information were influenced by time restrictions, how good they knew the sources and the services being offered and what the course expected them to do. It is evident that the behavior of students is organized but random when it comes to seeking information. The random behavior is normally witnessed in the initial stages when a student is picking on the area of concentration, coming up with the strategy to use while searching information and the general skimming of the ideas and information of the research. Organized behavior comes in later when it gets to the stage of having sessions planed and choosing strategies that will be used for searching. It is evident that the student’s behavior as they seek information is interactive. As the students get more knowledge and become organized in their research field, their behaviors become even more refined. However, the searching behaviors vary from one student to another and from disciplines and programs. It is evident that what influences where students go and search for online information first involves the graduate students who begin by meeting their instructors, tutors or professors. The company of other students and guidance from university libraries are also cited as a determining factor of where students will search for online information. According to the research findings, though print sources are thought to play a major role in influencing information searching behavior, students, teachers, availability of the internet and ease of access of information are cited as key determinants of where students would go and search for online information. In the past, students looked to books and dictionaries, along with detailed citations. With the invention of Google, an individual can just type their topic into the search bank and receive information. Unfortunately, the algorithm that this search engine runs on takes the amount of visits to the site as well as various other trivial factors to produce results. There is no filter for well-made sources. It is quite common when websites have misinformation. Many of these web masters have made strides to make sure that their information is up to date and supported by research. Some of the methods that should be used are checking the date of the last upload as well as cross-referencing with credible sources. Although there is an existence of capable web masters, there also is an abundant quantity of ineffective or uncaring ones as well (George, 2006). Synthesis This source looks at the way different people access information from different resources and how these resources can be regarded as being credible thus trust worth. Though most people assume that the exercise of searching for information is easy, it is evident that the process has proved to be a complicated one lest the person in pursuit for information does not take into consideration the reliability of the information obtained. The process has been complicated mainly because of the many sources that are available thus the process of picking the best material out of the rest becomes hectic and needs some expertise (George, 2006). This lives the choice of a source solely on the researcher but the researcher has to be guided on how to go about that. Basing on the guidelines, a person should be in a position to trust a particular source out of the rest and regard it as being credible as most of the available sources are normally ineffective, outdated or irrelevant. From the source, it is evident that the Internet is the most relied upon source when seeking information. This discovery has resulted to almost all information being put on the Web thus making the source flooded with both credible and ineffective information. The situation calls for those accessing the Web to be careful and experienced while searching for information as with the internet the process is more complicated and sensitive. According to the source, it is advisable for a person seeking information from the internet to do so with prior knowledge of the best method to use such as somatic mapping or to be vast with the best sites in the internet such as the recommended journal articles (George, 2006). Thus the credible source explains how most people deem sources as being reliable by highlighting how different people access and analyze various forms of information before settling on the most reliable once. Paraphrase Student’s skills when it comes to searching information have been viewed as being inappropriate. Most of them access Internet sources sketchily yet there are other students who rely on other traditional sources other than the Web. Students need to seek guidelines from their instructors and librarians in the process of choosing reliable information resources as their knowledge is not enough to do it on their own. This has led to most students miss out of the most reliable information as they lack the experience on how to evaluate resources from the Net (George, 2006). The outcome of this is that most students end up depending on the internet sites that are unauthenticated. This practice is closely associated with types of resources introduced to them early in their lives which they stick and trust in them even after advancing in their study levels (George, 2006). References George, C. et el. (2006). Scholarly Use of Information: Graduate Student’s Information Seeking Behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Read More