Scientific Skepticism for Autonomous Learners and Effective decision makers

Pedagogies for the 21st century address new competencies that today’s learners need to develop in order to attain their learning autonomy (UNESCO, 2015). To master the skills they require, learners must engage in meaningful real-world problem solving experience to construct and organize knowledge, hold in-detailed research, enquiry, writing and analysis, and communicate effectively to audiences (Barron and Darling — Hammoud, 2008).

Researching is one of the prerequisite skills required by learners in every step of their problem solving experience; learners are expected to do research mainly to prove the significance of the problem they are going to solve and to find and report a review about the solution they suggest. All this require the readiness of teachers who are following up with their students through online researching.

Learners, in their researching tasks, focus on online resources, neglecting actual books (Jones, 2002). In previous studies investigating students’ online researching processes, it was found that successful research is directly related to the ability to discriminate between reliable and unreliable sources and the selection of reliable reading material for a high percentage of the research time (Wiley, Goldman & Graesser, 2002; )

A survey of Advanced Placement and National writing project, was conducted in US to explore teachers’ views of the ways today’s digital environment is shaping the research and writing habits of middle and high school students through teachers’ experiences and perspectives (Purcell, Rainie, Heaps, Buchanan, Friedrich, Jacklin, Chen, and Zichuhr, 2012). Some of the results obtained from this study were students’ overdependence on search engines and the challenge they face in judging the quality of online information.

Based on these results, it is clear that students and teachers, need instruction in evaluating the reliability of information that they find on the Internet. Work by Brem, Russell & Weems (2001) has shown that in general students are fairly uncritical of the arguments they read on web pages.

Five criteria, used to determine the quality of print information in libraries, as suggested by the Library and Documentation Center of United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (retrieved from: http://unfccc.int/essential_background/library/items/1420.php ), can be applied to the evaluation of web resources:

Criteria 1: Accuracy

To determine how reliable and free from error the information contained on a website is, it is important to look at who is hosting the site. Is it a University, a government, a professional association, a commercial host, an advocacy group, a publisher? What are their biases? A good website should state its purpose and intended audience. It is always a good idea to check with other web resources, journals or magazines that publish website reviews to see if the site has received a stamp of approval, and if so, by whom. Usually, to verify the information on the website, we compare it with information found in other print and/or web-based sources.

Criteria 2: Authority

To determine the authorship of a website, we must examine the page closely for information about the author and to see if anyone else has contributed to the site through references. A good website should provide a way to contact the producers of the site. It is important to identify the type of Webpage to i.e. educational, professional, personal, advocacy, advertising etc.….

Criteria 3: Objectivity

To determine the objectivity of a website, we need to check if advertising and informational content are being supplied by the same person or organization. If so, we have to examine whether there is a bias to the informational content. Keep in mind that many websites with excellent information are sponsored by commercial entities or take advertisements to finance the website.

Criteria 4: Currency

To determine the currency of a website, we need to find out when the page was last updated. Also we look to see if there are broken links on the site; it could be an indication of an abandoned page.

Criteria 5: Coverage

To determine if the information is adequately covered on a website, we compare the information with information found on other websites. Does one site provide more information, more references, more contacts? Also we compare the information on the website with information available in print sources such as books, journals, reports, etc. (if available).

While integrating project-based learning or problem-solving performance tasks, students are expected to do researching for their outcome, however, without the teachers’ guidance they will be lost in the world of web information. Scaffolding research tasks into phases is prerequisite for the success of the student’s outcome: (1) Researching the community problems (2) Researching the science concepts behind latest sustainable inventions solving problems, (3) Researching the beneficiaries from the project done, and (4) Researching the type of materials and the way these materials work for their project

We are living now in a time where rapid and amazing developments in the scientific knowledge and its technological applications are happening. These developments affect students’ ethic dimension at the moment of making decisions (Salim Zo Bi, 2014). So we need to train students on using the science and technology, that is reliable, in developing their lives and in the adaptation of the current changes in the society and the surrounding environment. Through this, we will be creating citizens who are developed scientifically and technologically, active and interactive with the society and its problems and they are also objective in taking their decisions in their daily life.