Research: Publications

This is a pre-print of an article published in Spring 99 in Issue 7 of HABITAT - the journal of CTI for the Built Environment.

Internet Detective

A Web-based tutorial designed to help people evaluate the quality of information they find on the Internet

Internet Detective is a free interactive tutorial on the World Wide Web designed to help anyone who is interested in improving their Internet information skills.

The tutorial has been created by staff at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol, with funding from the European Union's DESIRE project.

The tutorial has been developed with an academic audience in mind (staff and students). It aims to raise awareness of the often questionable quality of information that can be found on the Internet. Its purpose is to encourage people to critically evaluate the quality of Internet information before they use it in their work.

The Internet is full of information, but much of it is not of the high quality that academics might hope for.

The Issue of Information Quality on the Internet

Information Content

Unlike traditionally published materials, Internet resources have not always been filtered by third-party publishers, editors or peer reviewers. Given that anyone can publish what they wish, Internet Detective offers tips and hints for evaluating the content of Internet sites.

Format

Internet resources can come in many different formats and designs, ranging from simple text files to elaborate multimedia Web sites. How might this affect the quality of the site? The tutorial highlights some of the key format issues for users to consider.

Integrity

Internet sites can be extremely volatile - here today and gone tomorrow - both the information content and the format might change at any moment. Internet Detective raises some of the issues of information integrity that Internet users need to be aware of.

Think like a Detective

The tutorial encourages users to think like a detective when evaluating the quality of information found on the Internet:

• look for clues
• ask questions
• consider the motives of the people publishing on the Internet
• trust nobody - until there is good cause to do so!

The tutorial is interactive - there are quizzes, exercises and examples to work through. It takes between 2 and 4 hours to complete but need not be finished in one sitting - when users log on for the first time they are given a unique ID that enables them to work over more than one session and re-enter the tutorial at the point they left off. A running total of their scores will be recorded as they work.

The tutorial system used is called TONIC-NG and was developed by staff at the University of Newcastle and also funded by the DESIRE project. The tutorial is hosted at Netskills.

Teaching Internet Information Skills

Internet Detective is freely available for use and has already been incorporated into many university courses and library user-training programmes. People are welcome to try it out and use it in their teaching and training.

Internet Detective can be accessed on the World Wide Web at: