Week 5
How do you judge the value of expertise on the Web? Does it differ from your notion of expertise in face-to-face settings? Why or why not?
For me the largest divide between expertise on the Web and expertise face-to-face is how you determine their credibility in the field their are discusses. Most lectures or instructions that are face-to-face the presenter provides a detail of their background or experiences to gain credibility for their experience. Additionally, the speaker is normally backed by an organization or university that has also vouched for their expertise in the matter.
On the Web, articles or blogs are sometimes backed with a bio and references but it is in the hands of the reader to determine their credibility. Often, I will come across an article and it will provide no background on the author but I can normally search the name and find out their experience in subject matter.
Additionally because the Web updates so frequently from such a large number of sources, statically data doesn't always align and how do you determine which one to go with. I have also found it is difficult to rely solely on Web sources for my Academic purposes due to credibility or validity of the source. This class has changed my perspective on that and I feel that the Web is making major strides to define credible online sources.
Whats your opinion?
Hey Molly!
ReplyDeleteI should have ended my post with a question...I forgot!
Anyways, I was interested in reading your week 5 prompt blog entry, because at first I was really not sure how I should answer the questions.
After taking EDF5442 (Inquiry & Reseearch Course), I am pretty comfortable finding "expertise" among online resources. However, I advocate people researching both formal 'expert" sources as well as "novice" sources to get a diverse perspective on the topic being researched. For an example, see my week 5 prompt...ha ha ha ...how do you like that ending?! I'm just kidding...it doesn't matter to me, because I know I'm swamped this weekend with finishing my produsage 2 project and I bet your schedule is hectic, too!
Take Care!
There is a lot of junk out there for sure and a lot of it is incredible. When it comes to believing others, I feel like it is all context sensitive. Just like in before the web sites have to build up credibility before they can be sited with any kind of believably. I feel like if Niel Degrasse Tyson went out and created a blog on blogger and just started typing and claiming it was him people would be skeptical. He would have to prove the site is run by himself in some way, it could be as simple as saying so at a conference. The point is he would have to fight in some way for the site to become recognized. Every site has to do that, some sites are bigger than others because they were better at establishing credibility from the start. The information may not be as good, but it doesn't matter if no one believes the other guy.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Molly, it is more difficult to determine online if a person is an "expert" or not. I find that in face-to-face lectures or interactions it can be just as difficult because people can sounds very confident and cause you to believe them(sound familiar?). But you are also correct that online you can look up the name/information of the source to determine if it is credible or not.
ReplyDelete