Evaluation - CAP 115 - Learning and Working Through Digital Technologies

As a digitally literate citizen, you will want to have the skills to evaluate information. How do you know if the information you find is credible and reliable? Some universities suggest to use the CRAAP Test to evaluate sources. CRAAP is an acronym for "Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose." The CRAAP Test was developed by Sarah Blakeslee and a group of librarians at the California State University at Chico.

Evaluating Information
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SIFT Method
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Resources

When Online Fact-Checking Is a Trap: The Weaponization of Media Literacy.
The article explores the aspects of weaponization of Media Literacy. It mentions about the kinds of principles that educators have been teaching students for decades to avoid falling for spurious information and claims. It discusses how online space that has gained attention as a virtual place that attracts people with extreme political and social views.
Moving up the ladder of source assessment: Expanding the CRAAP test with critical thinking and metacognition.
Information literacy is one of the fundamental skills to acquire to be able to navigate today’s complex information ecosystem, succeed as a lifelong learner, and make critical decisions as an active and informed citizen. Today’s information environment—saturated with misinformation, fake news, misleading information, propaganda, etc.—poses a great challenge to form unbiased views of the world and make sound judgment and decisions.
Assessing and fostering college students’ algorithm awareness across online contexts Internet users may fail to recognize how algorithms filter and personalize information. Two studies explored college students’ algorithm awareness across varying contexts. Study 1 examined Facebook users’ awareness of its algorithms (N = 222). Only about half recognized that Facebook does not show all their friends’ posts. These students more often reported making adjustments to News Feed settings than students lacking algorithm awareness. Study 2 compared students’ (N = 244) algorithm awareness for online shopping and search, and the efficacy of video instruction to increase awareness. Students were more algorithm aware for online shopping. Compared to those who watched a video on Internet storage, students who watched a video on Internet algorithms showed greater understanding of how search results are personalized. Across studies, students demonstrated high media literacy knowledge, yet knowledge was inconsistently related to algorithm awareness. This suggests the need to incorporate instruction about algorithms into media literacy curricula.
The Journalistic Approach: Evaluating Web Sources in an Age of Mass Disinformation A new approach to teaching web source evaluation is necessary for an internet that is increasingly littered with sources of questionable merit and motivation. Initially pioneered by K–12 educational specialists, the journalistic model avoids the cognitive duality of the checklist and a reliance on opaque terms and concepts. Instead, it recommends students apply the six journalistic questions of what, who, where, when, why, and how when evaluating freely available web sources. This approach outlines an evaluative procedure that is open-ended, discursive, and analytic in nature as opposed to formulaic and binaristic. It also requires students to consider both the context of the information need and a source’s potential use as central to its evaluation.