Building Critical Thinking Skills for Online Research

August, 2003

One challenge of the Internet (and the Web in particular) is that information is almost too easy to find. What I mean by this is that a search on just about any domain of inquiry results in thousands of responses, some of which are probably quite useful. Faced with 23,574 responses to a search topic, a student researcher quickly encounters what I call the "incremental cost of ignorance." The student looks at the first page of search results, chooses one or two references that appear to be relevant, and then uses these few sites as the foundation for whatever task triggered the search in the first place since any additional exploration would take (presumably) too much time.

Educators, of course, tend not to stop with the first relevant hit, and may even look at a dozen or more sites in building a collection of resources. But even the most intrepid Web searcher is unlikely to see what gems are buried on page 382 of a search. We just don't have the time.

This would not be a problem if search engines ranked content by accuracy and applicability, but they don't. Even Google sometimes fails to provide the best sources in its first page of results.

This doesn't mean that search tools are not powerful - they are. Say you want to know the ZIP code for Lake Barrington, IL. Ask that question of just about any search engine and you'll get the right answer (60010) in the first one or two hits. But when you search on a domain of inquiry the results are not so clean.

In 1945, President Roosevelt's science advisor, Dr. Vannevar Bush, wrote an article for Atlantic Monthly called As We May Think.. In this article, Dr. Bush described his vision for the future of technology-mediated information access based on a device he called the Memex. This fictional device can be thought of as a personal computer connected to a hypertext environment similar to today's Web. (It is sobering to realize the Web was predicted only two years after my birth!)

In describing the Memex, Bush explored a hypothetical search on the topic of the long bow and its impact on the Crusades. In his fictional account, everything runs smoothly, with the researcher moving from relevant source to relevant source, even expanding the search to explore the elastic properties of materials used in archery.

Of course Bush was able to have his imaginary search run smoothly since computers as we know them hadn't even been invented at the time this article appeared.

Reality, as we all know, works a little differently. I recently ran a search on the history of the long bow in Google (just as Dr. Bush or today's student might). Looking at a sample of the 546,000 responses to the search query, I found:

• 42% relating to archery

• 23% relating to proper names

• 13% miscellaneous (Cupid, etc.)

• 12% relating to the bow of a ship

• 5% relating to bow ties

• 4% relating to decorative or hair bows

If our goal is to help students develop critical thinking skills for online research, it appears our work is cut out for us.

For years I've called for the recognition of three new basic skills: finding information or data, determining its relevance, and determining its accuracy. These skills are as germane offline as on, and are critical for students to have as we move away from textbook-supported instruction based on "teaching as telling."

The simple fact is that we can't expect students to develop these skills on their own, no matter how comfortable they are with the Internet. The very technology that provides us with tools to retrieve vast amounts of data on virtually any topic also drowns us in content that is as likely to move us away from our research goal as move us closer to it. Faced with a staggering number of potential "hits," it is easy to see why many students simply invoke the incremental law of ignorance and stop after finding one or two seemingly relevant results.

The solution to this quandary is two-fold. First, we as educators need to teach basic research skills to all our students. They will not develop them on their own. Second, we need to be on the lookout for tools that can help bring context to our searches.

On this front there is happy news. The topic of data visualization is gaining increased attention as the Web continues to explode in size. One company who has contributed significantly to this effort is Groxis, creators of Grokker, a tool that brings context to Web searches. Grokker is not a search engine. Instead it uses existing search engines to conduct a search on any topic you wish. As the search proceeds, results are placed on a map consisting of a large circle representing the search topic. This circle contains smaller circles named after categories or subcategories into which identified sites are automatically placed.

For example, a Grokker-mediated search on the topic of "civil rights" identified 1991 sites that it distributed among 353 categories (such as Montomery bus boycott).By applying a filter phrase to the resulting map (e.g., Martin Luther King), sites that fail to meet the filter criteria either drop from view or turn grey (based on the user's choice) thus pinpointing those sites containing the material you are seeking.

Furthermore, maps can be saved and explored offline (important in schools where bandwidth is an issue). When the user clicks on a site icon, a "details" view provides a summary of the content of the site. Once online again, double-clicking on the site opens it in the browser of your choice.

The idea behind Grokker is that documents know a lot about themselves if you know how to ask them. By creating maps based on metacontent (data about the data), this tool makes it easier for any user to research academic topics on the Web. Note that Grokker defines the map, not the territory. The ultimate quality of the search depends on the search engine that is used. Search engines can be added through the use of plug-ins, thus extending the value of this tool.

If we think of the search engine as "finding the data" and Grokker as a tool for establishing "relevance," then it remains to help young people learn to think critically about the accuracy of what they have found. This is a much larger task, and is one that applies to any source of information or data, whether it is online or off. In this regard, our task is to have students move beyond data and information, and venture into the realms of knowledge and understanding.

Years before the first digital computer was built, the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote:

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour, rains from the sky a meteoric shower. Of facts... they lie unquestioned, uncombined. Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill is daily spun, but there exists no loom to weave it into fabric...

Today we have the loom. Our challenge is to help students weave magic carpets of the mind with which they can explore the infinite world of ideas at the speed of thought.

Copyright, © 2003, Thornburg Center. All Rights Reserved.