As an (upcoming) professional you need information to understand the problem, to come to a good approach, to substantiate choices and afterwards to understand your results and to demonstrate the innovative nature of your solution, etc. With practically everything you do, you use information. But how do you determine whether your source of information can be trusted and whether the information you have found is usable for your specific situation?
In this building block you are introduced to the CRAAP test. A simple test that can be used to check how suitable your information is. First the test is explained with some examples, followed by some assignments to get you started. With the help of the CRAAP test you will no longer fall into the trap of using unreliable, useless information, which will certainly benefit your end product!
If you have any questions or remarks about this building block, please contact Danny Plass (Saxion).
Learning goals
After this building block:
you can evaluate the suitability and reliability of information you have found (with the help of the CRAAP test).
Evaluating information is part of information literacy. These are skills that help you find, find, assess and process information. This generally concerns information from Available work, which is used within the research strategies Library and Showroom in the DOT framework.
The CRAAP test
The CRAAP test consists of five aspects to evaluate information on: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy en Purpose.
Knowledge clip Introduction CRAAP test
Currency
Knowledge clip Currency
The currency of the information:
When was the information published? Have there been any changes or updates?
Is the information up to date (enough) or is it too out of date for your topic?
Do the links work (for a web source)?
This criterion is extra important in our field of IT, which is changing very quickly: the tools you use, the best practices, the possibilities of technology.
Relevance
Knowledge clip Relevance
The relevance of the information for your question:
Is the information related to your topic? Does it answer your question?
Who is the information for?
Is the information of a suitable complexity (not too much simplified or too complicated for your question)?
Have you looked at a number of different sources before you decided to use them?
Authority
Knowledge clip Authority
The authority of the author of the information:
Who is the author / publisher / source / sponsor?
What is the authority of this author? What is his background / education / image? What organizations is the author connected to?
What shows that this author is the right person to give this information about this specific topic?
Has contact information been given, such as an e-mail address?
Do you see anything in the URL (at web source) about the author or source?
Accuracy
Knowledge clip Accuracy
The reliability, truth, and correctness of the content:
Where does the information come from?
Is the information supported by evidence?
Has the information been reviewed?
Can you verify the information based on other sources or on the basis of your own knowledge about it?
Are there spelling errors, grammatical errors, or other typographical errors?
Purpose
Knowledge clip Purpose
The reason for the information to exist:
What is the purpose of the information? To inform? To explain? Or: sell? Enter? Convince?
Are the authors / sponsors clear about their intentions?
Does the information deal with facts? Or: opinions? Propaganda?
Does the point of view of the source seem objective and impartial? Or does it contain political, ideological, cultural, religious, institutional or personal prejudices or biases?
If the purpose of the text is not informing, chances are that the author has applied self-censorship. Not all sides of the story are told, so that as a reader you do not get doubts about what the piece is trying to tell you.
Note: it all depends on your purpose!
The ultimate usefulness of an article also depends on your goal with the information in it! You may want to know exactly how many people used certain operating systems 10 years ago (category: Actuality), or you might want to know the opinion of Apple's Tim Cook on IT in education (category: Goal). Take this into account for your CRAAP score.
Assignments
Self assessment
Individual assignment: Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a frequently used starting point for information. A lot has been said about the reliability of this information. A starting point on this is this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia.
How suitable is Wikipedia in general as a source and how do you deal with it properly? Go through the 5 aspects of the CRAAP test. Indicate for each aspect why it could be a problem and why not. Support your position with a source. Now indicate how you could deal with the problem if you wanted to use the information on a Wikipedia page yourself.
Problem, because ...
No problem, because ..
Solution in own actions
Currency
Relevance
Authority
Accuracy
Purpose
Project assignment
During projects, you will initially use information to understand the problem and the situation properly and to substantiate your choice for a particular solution direction and a specific approach. Find 2 sources per team member and indicate for each of these sources for each letter of the CRAAP test how this resource scores and why.
(If you already have enough sources in your bibliography, you can use them.)
Give each CRAAP category a score of 1 to 10 (1 = worst, 10 = the best possible). In this way you can give each source of information a score on a scale of 50 points to indicate its quality. Use the supplied pdf as a reference.
Use the CRAAP test regularly. At a certain point, it becomes automatic and you will develop a better intuition for the reliability and usability of information. The CRAAP test can still help you to explain why you think certain information sources are suitable or not.
See current information only with Google search Tools.
Use the Tools button in Google Search and then limit the period within which you want to search in order to search specifically for current information only.
It is easy to get bogged down in long-winded searching. Make sure that you are focused on a specific search question. That also helps you determine the relevance of information!
Beware of filter bubbles: when search results are personalized (for example in Google), you will not get to see certain information. Do try to use another search engine such as duckduckgo to avoid this problem.
Use a consistent way to refer to the sources you use, for example IEEE or APA style. This way, the reader of your documentation (e.g. a team member, a client, or a team that builds on your work) can more easily check whether the used sources are suitable, which makes your work more reliable and more convincing.
Tegenwoordig is er informatie in overvloed, maar wat is relevant en betrouwbaar? Een kritische houding ten aanzien van bronnen is een noodzaak. De CRAAP test is een veelgebruikt een handvat voor het evalueren van bronnen, met een makkelijk te onthouden acronym.
Plaats in het curriculum en module
Deze bouwsteen komt het liefst zo snel mogelijk aan bod in het curriculum zodat studenten effectiever online allerlei soorten informatie op te kunnen zoeken en evalueren voor gebruik.
Hoe deze bouwsteen precies wordt aangeboden is aan de betreffende moduleverantwoordelijke. Het materiaal is met opzet flexibel, zodat het in verschillende contexten goed ingepast kan worden. Het advies is om er een begeleidingsuur/workshop aan te besteden.
Deze bouwsteen is goed te combineren met andere informatievaardigheden, zoals informatie vinden, scannend en begrijpend lezen, en verwerken en verwijzen. Het is een goed vervolg op Informatie vinden. Scannend lezen is een handige vaardigheid voor het snel inschatten van de betrouwbaarheid en relevantie. Een geschikt vervolg is het kunnen Verwerken en verwijzen.
Voorbeeld lesplan
2 lesuren: De studenten kunnen worden gevraagd van te voren de bouwsteen door te nemen, met een korte verfrissing aan het begin van de workshop en een korte evaluatie met de voorbeelden uit de self-assessment (15min), om vervolgens eerst de individuele opdracht te doen (15min), gevolgd door de projectgerelateerde opdracht (40min).
1 lesuur: De kortste variant is om de student zelf thuis de bouwsteen te laten lezen en de individuele opdracht te laten doen en tijdens de workshop alleen de projectgerelateerde opdracht uit te voeren (5min verfrissing, 40 min opdracht).
Tips bij de opdrachten
Individuele opdracht - Het belangrijkst hier is dat studenten bewust worden van zowel de kracht als de zwakheden van Wikipedia. Tips voor het omgaan met wat op Wikipedia te vinden is komen over het algemeen neer op: (1) Gebruik Wikipedia niet zelf als bron, maar wel als startpunt voor het vinden van informatie; (2) Check de informatie in de bronnen waarnaar wordt verwezen; (3) Check de Talk pagina bij het artikel om te zien of er discussie is over het stuk informatie waar je geinteresseerd in bent; (4) Check of er andere bronnen zijn die hetzelfde zeggen (of juist wat anders!).
Projectopdracht - Je zou bijvoorbeeld in de eerste twee kwartielen studenten kunnen vragen standaard een CRAAP score bij elke bron in de literatuurlijst te vermelden, als oefening en bewustwording.
Tips voor projectbegeleiding
Hebben studenten de informatie die ze nodig hebben? (evt. verwijzen naar Informatie vinden)
Zo ja, hebben ze aangegeven hoe ze aan de informatie zijn gekomen? (evt. verwijzen naar Verwijzen naar bronnen)
Als zichtbaar is welke bronnen ze gebruiken, kun je ze eens vragen naar de geschiktheid ervan. Wie is de auteur van die stackoverflow oplossing? Hoe betrouwbaar is Wikipedia eigenlijk?
Beoordelen
In deze pdf staan 2 beoordelingsmodellen voor informatievaardigheden in het algemeen.
Het arrangement Evaluating information is gemaakt met
Wikiwijs van
Kennisnet. Wikiwijs is hét onderwijsplatform waar je leermiddelen zoekt,
maakt en deelt.
Dit lesmateriaal is gepubliceerd onder de Creative Commons Naamsvermelding 4.0 Internationale licentie. Dit houdt in dat je onder de voorwaarde van naamsvermelding vrij bent om:
het werk te delen - te kopiëren, te verspreiden en door te geven via elk medium of bestandsformaat
het werk te bewerken - te remixen, te veranderen en afgeleide werken te maken
voor alle doeleinden, inclusief commerciële doeleinden.
Van dit lesmateriaal is de volgende aanvullende informatie beschikbaar:
Toelichting
You need information for a variety of reasons. To understand things, to get inspiration for solutions, to know how you to best handle certain tasks, etc. etc. When you have found a source of information, how do you know if you can trust this source? And if this piece of information is really useful for you? This building block is about evaluating information, using the CRAAP test. This is an HBO-ICT building block for Research in Education.
Leerniveau
HBO - Bachelor;
Leerinhoud en doelen
Informatica;
Eindgebruiker
leerling/student
Moeilijkheidsgraad
makkelijk
Studiebelasting
2 uur en 0 minuten
Trefwoorden
applying available work, available work, building block, craap, evaluating information, hbo ict oio, information literacy, library, research, showroom
You need information for a variety of reasons. To understand things, to get inspiration for solutions, to know how you to best handle certain tasks, etc. etc. When you have found a source of information, how do you know if you can trust this source? And if this piece of information is really useful for you? This building block is about evaluating information, using the CRAAP test. This is an HBO-ICT building block for Research in Education.
CRAAP test (pdf)
