There is no question that, in general, today’s student would rather use the Internet for research than go to the library. However, are they prepared to effectively navigate the Internet for academic information? In many cases, the answer is no. Can they find their favorite artist on iTunes? Sure. Can they locate a friend on Facebook? Absolutely. Nevertheless, online academic research is a different animal altogether, and something that is not necessarily intuitive. More importantly, instructors often neglect making it a learning objective.
Enter Internet Detective…
Internet Detective is a free online tutorial that will introduce your students to the ins and outs of online research. Examples of topics include evaluating websites, plagiarism, and copyright. Sure, you could simply direct students to the site, but I have some even better news. You can import the Internet Detective learning modules into your Blackboard WebCt course.
It gets even better…
How can you hold students accountable for working through the tutorial? How about assigning a graded quiz? Internet Detective also allows you to import quizzes into your Blackboard WebCT course. Once imported, the quizzes are ready to go, gradebook column and all. Why not make this an assignment the first week of class?
Watch this tutorial to learn more about importing Internet Detective learning modules and quizzes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbGI2ig38MQ
