EXpertise, Authority and Control on the InterneT (EXACT): a study of the formation of source credibility in Web 2.0 environments for learning

The EXACT project addresses how people come to grips with the transference of formal expertise and control of information from institutions, such as publishers, schools, and libraries, to the users in Web 2.0 resources, and how users justify and uphold trust in the resources’ authority.

Description

With the increasing use of Web 2.0 tools in schools, a better foundation for understanding how students approach these tools as resources for learning is needed, so that schools can develop methods that better support the students. Studies in education and library and information science have shown that students have difficulties with judging source credibility.

Three groups of agents involved in the use of Web 2.0 resources in a school environment are studied: consumers (high school students), intermediaries (teachers and librarians), and producers (authors of wiki entries and blogs). To provide a multifaceted understanding of how the agents construct source credibility in Web 2.0 resources, a number of complementary methods are used, e.g. focus groups, interviews, web questionnaires, blog diaries, and text analyses of trade journals and of wiki and blog entries. The project also includes a study of how the material properties of wikis and blogs influence authority. This investigation of the interaction between learning and new tools for information seeking will contribute new theoretical and empirical understanding of practical importance in schools and libraries.

Professor Mikael Alexandersson, Department of Education, University of Gothenburg is also a member of the project.

Link to the research project's website

Project manager

Sundin, Olof

Subjects

Library and Information Science
Pedagogy/Theory of Education

Research areas

Library and information science

Researchers

Francke, Helena
Limberg, Louise
Lundh, Anna
Sundin, Olof

Financiers

Swedish Research Council

Start date

2008-02-01