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Teaching and Learning Resource (TLR)

1. Title

Virtual Climate Change: Critical Evaluation of Internet Sources

2. Keywords

Climate change; Global warming; Greenhouse effect; Internet

3. Introduction

Global climate change is, for many people, the single most important environmental issue facing contemporary society. It is the subject of a vast amount of academic writing - emanating from disciplines across the natural and physical sciences, the social sciences and the humanities - and it is frequently reported in the mass media. It is also a fiercely contested subject in the political arena, where a variety of stakeholders (eg business, governmental, non-governmental) put forward competing knowledge claims concerning every aspect of climate change (eg the fundamental science of its 'causes', the likely implications over different temporal and geographical scales, and the most appropriate ways in which to respond) - and even over its very existence.

Not surprisingly, a great deal of 'information' about global climate change can now be found on the internet. This includes accounts of research, essays, national and international policy-related material, campaign literature, and information about meetings and other kinds of event. Whilst at least some of this material would undoubtedly be of use to students studying climate change, certain characteristics of internet publishing raise problems that differ from those associated with more traditional forms of publishing - especially academic publishing. For example:

• Any individual or organisation with the right technology can publish material on the internet.
• The necessary technology is widely available, and is becoming increasing cheap and easy to use.
• There is little or no control over what is published.
• There is no requirement for publishers to provide information about themselves, their interests and any associations they might have (economic or otherwise) with other interested parties.

Students need to be aware of these characteristics and, more importantly, be able to take account of them when making critical use of material that is published on the internet.

4. Aim

The aim of this TLR is to encourage students to adopt a critical approach to the use of internet sources and, specifically, to provide them with a tool for evaluating the credibility of knowledge claims published on the internet. It seeks to do this by means of a mini-research project focusing on a particular aspect of global climate change. The TLR is not intended as a 'how to' guide on in-text or bibliographic citation of internet sources. (For information on the latter, see Recommended Reading (Section 15).)

5. Learning outcomes

After using this TLR, students should:

• be aware of some of the general characteristics of internet publishing, including its heterogeneous and unregulated nature;
• have identified a wide range of internet sources concerned with at least one aspect of global climate change;
• have evaluated the credibility of some of those sources
• have produced an annotated bibliography of those sources;
• have acquired - after sharing their work with other students - a series of annotated bibliographies covering other aspects of global climate change;
• be able to evaluate the credibility of internet sources; more generally.

6. Pre-requisites

Students should have some knowledge of environmental ethics/values; they should be broadly familiar with the idea that knowledge production can be seen as a process of making knowledge claims; and they should be able to evaluate the credibility of knowledge claims. Where these pre-requisites are lacking, it is suggested that other TLRs might be used prior to this one. (See Section 13.) Students should also be able to use the internet with little or no supervision.

7. How to use TLR

The TLR has been designed to be used broadly as follows:

i) Introduce the TLR - reviewing the nature of the content, the aims and learning outcomes, and the way in which the TLR will be used - and hand out the accompanying Briefing Sheet.

ii) Assign students their research topics. These might be suggested by the tutor or the students themselves. Possible topics include: emissions of greenhouse gases (national, regional, global) and their fate in the atmosphere; climate change (temperature, rainfall, extreme weather) in different places and/or over different spatial scales; effects on natural and agricultural ecosystems; predicted effects on human health (eg the spread of tropical diseases); socio-economic effects; policy responses (eg efficacy; economic, social and environmental costs and benefits); politics (who should do what? Who should pay?).

iii) Instruct the students - working independently or in small groups - to make a few notes on how they would go about identifying internet sources concerned with their topics. (For information internet searching, see Recommended Reading (Section 15).)

iv) Review - in an all-class discussion - the students' ideas.

v) Instruct the students to make two lists. One should contain the names of any organisations they can think of that might be expected to publish information about their topic on the internet. The second should contain any keywords associated with their topic that might be used in an internet search.

vi) Instruct the students to undertake their climate change internet search. They should identify at least five internet sites that contain a significant amount of information on their topic. They should use their lists as a point of departure for their searches, but they should not restrict themselves to the keywords and organisations on their lists. In particular, they should be prepared to follow-up any 'links' that might be suggested on any of the sites they visit. For each site they identify, the students should make notes on the following:

• The Universal Resource Locator (URL) of the site (ie its internet 'address'). This must be recorded accurately.
• The owner of the site and the author of its contents. These might be individuals or organisations.
• A general description of the site's content and organisation. This might include the range of topics covered on the site, the number of different 'pages' on the site, and whether or not the site includes 'links' to other sites.
• An evaluation - with reference to the briefing sheet - of the site's content.

vii) Instruct the students to produce a report consisting of their notes on each site and an overview of the exercise commenting on:

• The number of sites they identified.
• The range of organisations involved in publishing information about their topic on the internet.
• The strengths and weaknesses of those sites, and the extent to which this might be related to the nature of any organisations associated with the site.
• General reflections on the quality of internet publishing and/or the process evaluating internet sources.

viii) Conclude the exercise with a general discussion of any key points that have emerged during the exercise.

As described above, the TLR could be used with a class of up to about 30 students. Parts (i) to (iv) could be completed in about one hour of class time. Parts (v) and (vi) would require several hours of private study - depending on how many sites the students were expected to identify and evaluate. Part (vii) could be completed in approximately one hour of class time.

8. Instructions to students

As directed by tutor.

9. Stimulus Material

None.

10. Degree stage

In principle, this TLR could be used with students at any degree stage - provided that they satisfied the pre-requisite requirements. (See Section 6.) In practice, however, it is likely that students at levels two or three would get more out of the exercise than those at level one.

11. Resource requirements

This TLR requires that students have reasonable access to the internet; that is, access to a sufficient number of computers that provide reliable and reasonably quick access to the internet. (Poor internet access may substantially increase the time required to complete this exercise, and may also de-motivate the students.)

12. Preparation

None.

13. Links with other TLRs

The aims and/or learning outcomes of this TLR are related to those of other TLRs listed in the following 'thematic clusters':

• Critical thinking skills
• Contested science
• Case studies

14. Follow-up activities

This exercise could be repeated with almost any topic as its subject.

15. Recommended reading

Bibliographic citation of internet sources

Crane, N (No date) Bibliographic Formats for Citing Electronic Information. [Online]. Available: http://www.uvm.edu/~ncrane/estyles/ [1998, October 2].

Li, X. and Crane, N.B. (1996) Electronic Styles: A handbook for citing electronic information (Revised edition). (Medford, NJ: Information Today)

Page, Melvin E. (1996) A Brief Citation Guide for Internet Sources in History and the Humanities. [Online] Available: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~africa/citation.html [1998, October 2].

Stein, Stuart (1999) Learning, Teaching and Researching on the Internet. A Practical Guide for Social Scientists. (Harlow, UK: Addison Wesley Longman) (See especially Part I, Chapter 4: Referencing Internet Materials, pp.37-49.)

Walker, Janice R. and Taylor, Todd (1998) Basic CGOS Style [Online] Available: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/cgos/basic.html [1999, February 15] (This is an online extract from the authors' book, The Columbia Guide to Online Style, published by Columbia University Press.)

Searching the internet

Anon (1998) Ten Friendly Tips for Internet Research [Online] Available: http://coppersky.com/ongir/excerpts/10friendly.htm [1999, February 15] (This is an excerpt of Chapter 5 from Official Netscape Guide to Internet Research, Second Edition.)

BUBL (an internet-based information service for the UK higher education community) provides access to a series of online guides on internet searching. Available: http://bubl.ac.uk/searches/guides.htm [1999, February 15]

Stein, Stuart (1999) Learning, Teaching and Researching on the Internet. A Practical Guide for Social Scientists. (Harlow, UK: Addison Wesley Longman) (See especially Part II: Searching the Internet, pp.51-89.)

BRIEFING SHEET

Virtual Climate Change? A Guide to Evaluating Internet Sources

Introduction

Global climate change is, for many people, the single most important environmental issue facing contemporary society. It is the subject of a vast amount of academic writing - emanating from disciplines across the natural and physical sciences, the social sciences and the humanities - and it is frequently reported in the mass media. It is also a fiercely contested subject in the political arena, where a variety of stakeholders (eg business, governmental, non-governmental) put forward competing knowledge claims concerning every aspect of climate change (eg the fundamental science of its 'causes', the likely implications over different temporal and geographical scales, and the most appropriate ways in which to respond) - and even over its very existence.

Not surprisingly, a great deal of 'information' about global climate change can now be found on the internet. This includes accounts of research, essays, national and international policy-related material, campaign literature, and information about meetings and other kinds of event. Whilst at least some of this material would undoubtedly be of use to students studying climate change, certain characteristics of internet publishing raise problems that differ from those associated with more traditional forms of publishing - especially academic publishing. For example:

• Any individual or organisation with the right technology can publish material on the internet.
• The necessary technology is widely available, and is becoming increasing cheap and easy to use.
• There is little or no control over what is published.
• There is no requirement for publishers to provide information about themselves, their interests and any associations they might have (economic or otherwise) with other interested parties.

Students need to be aware of these characteristics and, more importantly, be able to take account of them when making critical use of material that is published on the internet.

Evaluating Internet Sources

In this exercise, you will be asked to undertake an internet search in order to identify - and then evaluate - internet sources concerned with global climate change. In evaluating the sources, you might find it helpful to consider both the claims being made on each particular site and the claims makers who are making those claims.

Evaluating claims - in general

Briefly, evaluating the credibility of claims in general involves thinking about such things as:

• the extent to which claims are supported by sound reasoning;
• the extent to which claims are supported by relevant evidence;
• the extent to which the credibility of such evidence is demonstrated - either via an account of the methods by which it was produced or by virtue of the authoritativeness of its source;
• the credibility of any underlying assumptions - positive or normative - upon which claims are based;
• the credibility of any implicit messages conveyed by means of literary devices (cf rhetoric and the use of metaphor) and graphic images;
• other …

For further guidance on the evaluation of knowledge claims, see the following TLRs:

• Classifying Knowledge Claims
• Evaluating the Credibility of Knowledge Claims
• Bibliographic Citation for Authoritative Academic Writing
• Producing Credible Knowledge Claims
• A Guide to Reading Scientific Research Papers
• Critical Reading of Corporate Environmental Reports: A Discourse-Based Approach

Evaluating claims - about climate change

In addition to the above, you might consider the following when evaluating the credibility of claims about climate change:

• the extent to which the site acknowledges the uncertain, provisional and contested nature of claims concerning global climate change;
• the extent to which the site acknowledges the wide range of claims makers involved in debates concerning climate change - and the differing values and interests of those claims makers;
• whether the site makes reference to acknowledged authorities in the UK (eg researchers involved in the Economic and Social Research Council's Global Environmental Change Programme, the Meteorological Office) and beyond (eg the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change);
• other …

For further guidance on the evaluation of knowledge claims, see the following TLRs:

• Introduction to Personal Environmental Values
• Approaches in Environmental Ethics
• Valuing Nature? - Economics And Environmental Valuation

Evaluating claims makers

Having considered the claims themselves, you might also consider the possible influence of the following on the nature of the claims made on each particular site:

• whether the purpose of the site is made clear;
• whether the intended audience is specified;
• whether the individual contributors to the site are identified;
• whether any organisations associated with the site - either directly or indirectly (eg through relationships of funding, membership, ownership, partnership, sponsorship, support) - are identified;
• the extent to which the nature (eg academic, business, governmental, non-governmental) and purpose of any such organisations is made clear;
• the extent to which the interests and values of any such organisations is made clear;
• whether the site provides evidence as to the authoritativeness of its contributing individuals and organisations (eg details of any relevant qualifications, experience and/or expertise) with regard to the specific aspects of climate change about which they are making knowledge claims;
• other …