The following assignment was designed by Nancy Snow (Faculty Development Coordinator, Family Medicine), who shared it at a recent WAC workshop about evaluating Internet sources. Though designed for students in the School of Medicine, it can readily be adapted to any class in which students use Internet resources. See also the related story "Evaluating Internet Resources" in this newsletter.

There is a huge amount of information, both valid and specious, on the Internet about medical care. As a medical practitioner, you will need to be aware of information that is available to your patients and their families. You will need to be able to determine the value of information and guide your patients in evaluating the information they find.

For this project, you need to find several sites on the World Wide Web relating to a particular health issue in family medicine. Summarize and evaluate the information you find for your colleagues. This project should take about a half day of your time.

Objectives:
On completion of this project, you should be able to

1. find sites on the World Wide Web relating to a specific medical topic in Family Medicine,
2. compare information from the Internet to established standards in the medical literature,
3. evaluate the validity of medical information from the Internet, and
4. summarize and present your findings.

Methods:

1. Read the two attached articles:
   a) Public Citizen's Health Research Group (1997).
   Health risks of the Internet. Health Letter 13 (9):10-11.
   b) Online Connections. (1998). Inaccurate medical info
   found on university web sites. Academic Physician & Scientist: 9.
2. Determine the health issue that you will investigate. This could be
   (a) a health issue that you've encountered with your patients here at Indian Ripple, or
   (b) one of the top 30 health conditions treated by family physicians, discussed in Rakel, R.E. (1993). Essentials of Family Practice. Philadelphia: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, page 12.
3. Discuss your health issue choice with a faculty supervisor and get written approval for it.
4. Conduct Internet searches for World Wide Web sites related to your issue. Determine the validity of the information you find by comparing it to published or generally accepted information on the topic. Your sources for this information can be faculty, textbooks, reference books, manuals, or journals.
5. Summarize your findings and present them to the faculty at an academic meeting.

-Nancy Snow

The November WAC newsletter featured Roberta B. Boyd's "Journal Writing in the Classroom," which was based on her part in a workshop hosted last spring by the Center for Teaching and Learning. At the workshop, her introductory presentation was followed by two others discussing ways in which journals had been used in specific classes. As promised, this month's WAC newsletter provides a summary of those discussions. The first is by Dan DeStephen, Associate Professor of Communication and Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, who outlines the way he has used journals to enhance the understanding of new concepts being introduced in his class. In the second, Jack Dustin, Director of the Center for Urban and Public Affairs and Associate Professor of Urban and Public Affairs, outlines how journals can be used in connection with an internship to help students make the transition from school to work.

Journals in the Classroom

I have found the use of journals to be an excellent method for enhancing the understanding of theory. In my course on communication and conflict I ask students to relate an idea, concept, or theory from the course to something they are experiencing in their lives. Each journal entry must

(a) identify the idea, concept, or theory,
(b) provide a brief explanation of the idea, concept, or theory,
(c) describe how what is happening in a current relationship illustrates the idea, concept, or theory, and
(d) evaluate the usefulness of the idea, concept, or theory in light of their experiences.

Students must complete at least one journal entry a week. Each journal entry is evaluated on three criteria:

• How well the journal entry reflects an understanding of the idea, concept, or theory,
• How well the journal entry reflects an ability to link theory and experience,
• How well the journal entry reflects an ability to evaluate theory in light of experience.

I have found students are better able to understand theory if they have the ability to relate what they are learning to their own experiences. Having students attempt to explain theory within the context of their own experiences also provides me with feedback on how well the students understand the theory. I do not have the students share their journal entries with other students. I have had students, however, refer to their journal entry in asking a question or making a comment about course material. I also do not limit what the student can write about to any specific topic within the course. A lot of students will mirror their journal entries to the class material covered in the week they complete their entry. Others will write on topics covered in previous weeks or on material from the text which is not discussed in class

I have found students are better able to understand theory if they have the ability to relate what they are learning to their own experiences.

Journal writing integrates the understanding of course material, practice in writing, and the development of critical thinking skills into one assignment. For those courses in which a student's life experiences are related to the topic of the course, instructors should consider the use of journals as valuable learning tools.

-Dan DeStephen

Using Journals in the Urban Affairs Internship

Designed to help students make the transition from school to work, the Urban Affairs Internship (URS 492) is a required course taken during the senior year. Students work 200 hours in the offices of a local agency under the supervision of a professional in that office. In connection with that work, students are required to keep a daily journal and to submit a report at the end of the internship. They are first given the requirements for the journal in a letter outlining all the duties and responsibilities that go with the internship. In addition, the requirements will be discussed more informally during meetings with the supervising faculty member before they begin.

The letter describes the requirements in these terms: "Interns are required to keep a journal detailing work tasks, events that take place in the agency and thoughts about the purpose, operation and impact of the organization on its clients. Journal entries should correspond to the work schedule—an entry for every day worked. The journal will be submitted to the faculty in charge after 100 hours of served internship time and again with the internship report—after 200 hours of time served."

The supervising faculty member also gives students a more detailed one-page guide for the journal. After identifying the agency, date, and hours worked, they write about the day's activities in three areas. In the first, they simply describe what occurred. The second section asks for analytical observation that links the day's activities to knowledge gained from their classes and their reading. The final section calls for a self-reflective, personal response to their experience—what concrete lessons they have learned and what they think and feel about that experience.

Those who do not write well in class often perform much better. Seemingly, without having to worry about the "rules" they can finally express their thoughts more freely.

The journal is "free writing" in the sense that it doesn't have to be typed and isn't evaluated for spelling, punctuation, or other grammatical concerns. But it is not free expression of thoughts. Students are asked to describe their work and reflect on what they learned and how it relates to their class work—e.g., the theories and principles they have covered. In addition, the journal prepares them for the final internship report.

The quality of the journal does not always have a relationship to past performance. Good students are often disappointing journalists, while those who do not write well in class often perform much better. Seemingly, without having to worry about the "rules" they can finally express their thoughts more freely. The journal is not graded since the internship is a pass/fail course. Predictably, some students take the assignment more seriously than others, and it shows. However, students who do devote time to the journal clearly benefit from it.

The journal allows them to express concerns about ethical questions that may arise at work. That usually occurs after students have taken my course in ethics (URS 450 Ethics in Public Service), but other courses may help make them more sensitive to these issues too. It is not unusual for students to use the journal to deal with their emotions as they enter the internship. Some are worried about their preparedness, feeling they have not been taught everything they need to know, and some reflect on the emotional demands of the work. For example, Criminal Justice students working with juvenile probation programs sometimes comment on the tragic situation of young people facing so many problems at so early an age.

In addition to helping students get the most out of their internships, the journal helps prepare them for writing their senior capstone project . For most students, the journal is the longest document they have ever produced. Knowing that they had succeeded here helps relieve some of the pressure about producing a 25-30 page senior paper. At the same time the journal enriches their learning, then, it also builds their self-esteem.

As I read, I sometimes sense students are making the transition from student to professional. Some are themselves cognizant of that change, others not. The benefits of the journal are not limited to the student. The information in these documents provides valuable insight into how we can improve the internship and the program as a whole. On several levels, then, the journals prove to be very useful.

-Jack Dustin

The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is offering the following workshops this quarter. Faculty attending the CTL CORE CURRICULUM offerings (Instructional Design and Applications and Writing Across the Curriculum programs are included) may request documentation of their participation for merit or promotion and tenure purposes. Upon completion of offerings from three of the five CORE CURRICULUM modules, faculty may also receive a Teaching Enhancement Certificate (TEC) for the current academic year.

To register or to obtain more information about any of these workshops, call the CTL at x3162. You can also register on the CTL Web page.

I. COURSE DESIGN

Student Learning in the Information Age (Book Group Luncheon).
Led by Virginia Nehring, Professor of Nursing and Health. Thursday, January 21, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. in W025 Student Union. Call x3162 to make your reservation and to receive your complimentary copy of the book.

Roles in Service Learning (Luncheon).
Led by Rachel Anderson, Center for Non Profit Resources, and Mary Clark, Service Learning Program, CTL. Monday, February 22, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. in E156A Student Union.

Instructional Design (Luncheon).
Led by George Frey, Associate Director, CTL, and Bonnie Mathies, Assistant Dean, Technology and Communications, Education and Human Services. Thursday, February 25, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. in E156A Student Union.

Learning Communities for First-Year Students (Luncheon).
Led by Catherine Queener, University Division. Panelists are Drs. Marlese Durr (Sociology) and Edgar Melton (History), andTerri Limbert, Catherine Queener, and Doug Saul (all of University Division). Tuesday, February 2, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. in W169C Student Union.

II. PRESENTATION MODES: Improving Classroom Teaching

Case Studies (Luncheon).
Led by Rebecca Koop, Professor of Management Science and Information Systems. Tuesday, January 26, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. in E156A Student Union.

(See Instructional Design and Applications Workshops for more Presentation Modes)

III. ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES

The Teaching Portfolio: More Reasons to Create One (Luncheon).
Led by Jeanne Ballantine, Professor of Sociology. Wednesday, March 3, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. in E156A Student Union.

Promotion and Tenure (Luncheon).
Led by Jim Sayer, Chair and Professor of Communication. Wednesday, February 3, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. in W169C Student Union.

IV. POLICY ISSUES

Tools for Transformation: Making the Learning Paradigm a Reality (Videoconference).
Thursday, February 4, 2:00-4:00 p.m. in Studio B, Television Center.

V. DIVERSITY ISSUES

Resources for Teaching Diversity (Luncheon).
Led by Anne Runyan, Director, Women's Studies Program, and Dan DeStephen, Director, CTL. Wednesday, January 20, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. in E156A Student Union.

Racial Legacies & Learning: How to Talk about Race (Videconference).
Wednesday, January 27, 1:00-3:00 p.m. in Studio B, Television Center.

The Chilly Classroom Climate: A Guide to Improve the Education of Women. ( Book Group Luncheon).
Led by Kelli Zaytoun Byrne, Director of the Women's Center. Tuesday, February 16, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. in E156C Student Union. Call x3162 to make your reservation and to receive your complimentary copy of the book.

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND APPLICATIONS WORKSHOPS

Multimedia Using Astound (WIN). Friday, January 15, 2:00-4:00 p.m. Multimedia Using Astound (MAC). Friday, January 22, 2:00-4:00 p.m. both held in 054 Rike.

Making Images Digital . Friday, January 29, 10:00 a.m.-12:00 noon in 054 Rike.

Introduction to PowerPoint (WIN). Friday, February 26, 2:00-4:00 p.m. or March 5, 2:00-4:00 p.m. Both held in 215 Library. Introduction to PowerPoint (MAC). Monday, February 1, 2:00-4:00 p.m. in 054 Rike.

Preparing Images for the Web. Monday, February 8, 10:00 a.m.-12:00 noon in 054 Rike.

Advanced Features with Astound (WIN). Wednesday, February 17, 2:00-4:00 p.m. in 054 Rike.

Digital Cameras: "The World of Digital Photography". Friday, February 19, 2:00-4:00 p.m. in 054 Rike.

Faculty Online: The Easy Way to Get Yourself on the World Wide Web. Friday, March 5, 9:00 a.m.-12:00 noon in 215 Library.

Advanced Features--PowerPoint (WIN). Wednesday, March 10, 2:00-4:00 p.m. in 215 Library.

Graphics and Information Design 101: Creating Effective and Engaging Presentations. Friday, March 12, 10:00 a.m.-12:00 noon in 215 Library.

Working with English 102 students on research papers this summer, I was struck by how many of them wanted to conduct all of their research on the World Wide Web. It's easy to understand their point of view. In a matter of minutes a person can find a wealth of information without the frustration of discovering a book or article is unavailable. Usually it is possible to e-mail or download text for later reference, which is distinctly an improvement over photocopying it.

Much of the information available in this form is very valuable. The amount of information published by the government agencies alone is staggering. Thanks to the Internet we also have access to the full text of books, refereed academic journals, and proceedings of international conferences. Books that have been out of print for years and information posted only minutes ago are equally available. At the same time, the ease with which information can be posted and retrieved has led to serious concerns about the quality of that information. It has often been pointed out that anyone can post anything on the Internet--and probably will.

This summer it was soon clear that students were not always very selective in their use of this information. One student writing on an AIDS-related topic, for example, used material from an ACT-UP site and from a fundamentalist site without taking into account the likelihood of bias in either. Though that is an extreme case, I saw little evidence that other students were evaluating the material they found on the Internet. Conversations with people in other disciplines reveals a similar situation. Clearly, as the availability of information in the form continues to grow, we need to provide our students with some guidelines for evaluating what they find on the World Wide Web.

Although research paper textbooks are beginning to devote attention to this important topic, most of the ones I've seen are still providing little coverage. On the whole the advice given is similar to that for evaluating any written text: students are urged to judge a Web page on the basis of its authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency, and coverage. However, much more thorough treatment of the topic can be found on a number of Web pages (a development that may be seen as either appropriate or ironic, depending on your point of view).

The most useful page I've found is Evaluating Web Resources, a site developed by Jan Alexander and Marsha Tate of the Wolfgram Memorial Library at Widener University (Chester, PA).

Alexander and Tate begin by asking students to identify the type of site being evaluated as an advocacy page, a business/marketing page, news page, informational page, or personal home page. As well as providing guidelines for recognizing each of these categories, the authors also supply appropriate questions for evaluating the authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency, and coverage of each type of page. (Most textbooks do not distinguish varieties of Web sites, let alone suggest that they may need to be evaluated by different criteria.)

A MESSAGE FROM THE LIBRARY ABOUT SUBJECT-SPECIFIC WEBSITES
If you want your students to engage in a critical thinking exercise like evaluating websites, you or they will need to locate likely candidates to evaluate. Tracking down useful websites can take time. You and your students can save time and still find worthwhile websites on the "Subject Guides to Information" webpage created by the Wright State University Libraries. Guides are available for subjects from Anthropology to Urban Affairs. In addition to recommended websites, the guides provide pointers to electronic and print resources for each subject area. If you are interested in additional websites to support a particular course or project, please contact your subject librarian. A list of all the subject librarians and their contact information is available at <http://www.libraries. wright.edu/staff/central/ cnis/outreach.html>.

The authors link each set of definitions and criteria to two or more sites so that students can work with the complexity of actual Internet sites. Their illustrations have been carefully chosen to provide maximum contrast (for example, the discussion of advocacy pages is linked to the Web pages of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, the National Right to Life Committee, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party).

In addition to these internal illustrations, Alexander and Tate provide another separate set of Web pages for students to work with. There are also sets of links for other online resources, such as a bibliography of materials on Web evaluation techniques and other sites devoted to learning to evaluate Web sites.

Finding a good resource can be time consuming, and a number of pages do some preliminary evaluating and screening for the user. One that I've found particularly useful is Librarians' Index to the Internet. Updated daily, it lists a number of categories, including both academic and popular topics, some of them subdivided. Individual links lead to a set of databases, each of which is described briefly.

For example, under the main heading "Reference Desk," I selected the subheading "Statistics" and found a list of 57 Internet resources. Here's the description I found of Public Opinion Poll Question Database. "This database allows users to search for specific poll questions by using key words and then narrow by poll and date. Included are over 1000 Louis Harris Polls (going back to 1958) with more than 60,000 questions covering a diverse range of topics, as well as items from the National Network of State Polls, and others. Developed by the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill." With that sort of information provided, finding reliable information on the Internet is considerably simplified.

Our own library has been at work on a similar project and will work with faculty in developing further resources in their subject areas. Additional information is provided in the sidebar above.

How might such materials be used in teaching WI courses? Becky Koop (MIS) gives students in her various classes a handout based on A Student's Guide to the Internet: Surfing for Success in Business, 1998-1999 (Prentice Hall) and asks that they use it to to evaluate any Internet resources they use. The lead article in this month's newsletter provides another sort of illustration from the School of Medicine. When I next teach English 102, some of the assignments preliminary to papers requiring research will include some short evaluations of Web pages likely to be used in the final draft. No doubt others have developed other assignments, assignments that I would be pleased to share in future issues of this newsletter.

-Joe Law

To register for either of the following workshops, you may call Joe Law at x2155 or e-mail him at joe.law@wright.edu. Each workshop will be offered twice to accommodate different teaching schedules. All begin at noon and last about an hour. A light lunch will be provided.

WAC I,
Writing Assignments for Critical Reading

Wednesday, January 13, 12:00-1:00 p.m., 117 Millett
OR
Thursday, January 14, 12:00-1:00 p.m., 379 Millett

How can we encourage our students to read more carefully and critically? This session will focus on writing assignments designed to foster that ability. If you have developed effective assignments along that line, please bring a copy to share.

WAC II,
Second-Language Writers and WAC

Wednesday, February 10, 12:00-1:00 p.m., 117 Millett
OR
Thursday, February 11, 12:00-1:00 p.m., 379 Millett

Faculty are often uncertain how to respond most effectively to the writing of students whose first language is not English. How should we respond to errors? Should we apply the same grading criteria for these students as for native writers of English? You can discuss your own questions with Rick Johns, director of the LEAP Program, an intensive program designed to help students learn English for academic and professional purposes.