Abilock, Debbie. "Adding Friction. A Preservice Librarian Asks, 'How Can I Teach Triangulation Effectively?'." School Library Connection, November 2018, schoollibraryconnection.com/content/article/2180389.
Abilock, Debbie. "Adding Friction. A Librarian Asks, 'Why Do We Frame 'Avoiding Plagiarism' as Our Primary Goal?'." School Library Connection, September 2022, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Article/2285411.
Abilock, Debbie. "Adding Friction. A Preservice Librarian Asks, 'CRAAP? SIFT? RAFT? COR? What Should I Teach?'." School Library Connection, February 2023, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Article/2295302.
by Debbie Abilock, November 2018
The prefix tri-, derived from both Latin and Greek, signifies three. Surveyors, mapmakers and navigators have traditionally used the term triangulation to signify the process of determining an accurate location by viewing it from three different directions. Today, verification by threes has percolated through to other disciplines and professions, although three is not necessarily an essential factor for determining accuracy in every situation.
Librarians teach triangulation primarily as a technique for confirming the accuracy of a fact. As an antidote to fake news, they exhort their peers to teach students to "verify or corroborate the information in multiple sources, including traditional media and library databases" (Valenza). We're instructed to require students to consult at least three sources of different types to "either locate or confirm a topic" (Stanley 53). Whether framed as a "Rule of Thumb" or a "Rule of Three," these strategies echo the traditional assumption that "three of something" (Stanley 66) can resolve doubt.
Such rules are mental shortcuts, heuristics that make decision-making efficient. However, rules can work to undermine validity by reinforcing cognitive biases. For example, if students assume that they're seeking objective and certain knowledge, they may just search to find replications of the exact phrase of their presumed fact in three sources.
Yet people deploy facts within a context, for a purpose. They are embedded, whether iteratively as confirmation in social media or as evidence for a claim in an argument. As an example, ask students to search [value of human life…million] to observe how the number before the word "million" varies by country, time and publisher. Facts are wrapped in complexity or contingencies. If students were to change that search to [value of human life 6.3 million], they are searching to match that number in other sources. Poorly implemented triangulation is simply training students to exercise confirmation bias (Nickerson 201). Triangulation becomes a trivial pursuit.
This brings us to teaching sourcing, since "the framing, not the facts, are [sic] often the bone of contention" (Mansky). We can add friction to our teaching by redesigning triangulation as a thinking process in which students wrestle with conflicting points of view or "frames" in multiple documents. To resolve inconsistencies they will deploy contextually relevant facets of sourcing to judge the veracity of their sources':
Controversy creates cognitive dissonance, which can change how students employ triangulation. At a basic level, students might validate a fact and recognize that uniform agreement signals common knowledge, which would need no attribution. At other times they might realize that encyclopedic content is best validated in publications not referenced in tertiary sources. For example, students find it more fruitful to cross-check Wikipedia information in peer-reviewed journal articles, primary sources, personal narratives, and original research—publications that are poorly represented in that reference source. (Redi et al.) .
1. Ask for explanations.
I've included data in-the-wild in the triangulation scavenger hunt examples below, since students often are faced with unattributed statistics. Significant learning can happen when students are asked to triangulate their results and then explain why they've relied on certain sources to confirm or refute a statistic. What multiple independent sources can be used to establish or refute these claims?
2. Identify the type of thinking you expect students to do.
In these triangulation challenges, students are likely to encounter Internet sources of varying quality written by authors with diverse (or nonexistent) expertise.
3. Show authentic examples to ensure that students will transfer strategies to new situations.
Lacking real-world models, students may devise inappropriate strategies for validating the results of their own triangulation. For example, they might decide to average differing population statistics for the same country, rather than first determining the currency and publisher of each data source.
Offer examples of triangulation in action. For example, OpenSecrets (https://www.opensecrets.org/) triangulates campaign contributions with lobbying expenses and earmarks. Ask students to investigate money's influence on a legislator by comparing what is earmarked for companies by members of Congress who have benefitted from donations from company employees and political action committees supported by that company.
Sam Weinberg's draws on the practices of fact checkers to propose that students read laterally, that is, seek context and perspective from other sites before evaluating the source's author, About page, etc. (Wineburg; Wineburg and McGrew). Before asking students to read three reports on self-driving cars, suggest that they search on each publisher's name (in bold below) to see how others describe the organization. Then ask them to predict how each report will frame the issue of safety of autonomous vehicles. Finally, after reading the reports, ask students to compare their expectations to the report's actual position.
Automated and Autonomous Driving: Regulation under Uncertainty.
Goldfarb, Rebecca.
"How Safe Are Self-Driving Cars?"
On the Road to Fully Self-Driving.
|
Highly-focused triangulation assignments that target authentic strategies can take less than a single class to implement. Clearly they demand more intense planning than simply issuing the directive: "Go corroborate / triangulate this fact…". However, the additional effort on your part is warranted. A number of research studies correlate the cognitive process of evaluating sources with better comprehension, more-sophisticated argument writing and increased likelihood of synthesizing information (Bråten et al. 146). Instructional friction in triangulation assignments can reap large gains in student learning.
Bråten, Ivar, et al. "The Role of Sourcing in Discourse Comprehension." Routledge Handbook of Discourse Processes, edited by Michael F. Schober et al., 2nd ed., Taylor and Francis, pp. 141-66.
Mansky, Jackie. "The Age-Old Problem of 'Fake News.'" Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 7 May 2018, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/age-old-problem-fake-news-180968945/.
Nickerson, Raymond S. "Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises." Review of General Psychology, vol. 2, no. 2, 1998, pp. 175-220, pages.ucsd.edu/~mckenzie/nickersonConfirmationBias.pdf.
Redi, Miriam, et al. "What Are the Ten Most Cited Sources on Wikipedia? Let's Ask the Data." Wikimedia Blog, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Apr. 2018, blog.wikimedia.org/2018/04/05/ten-most-cited-sources-wikipedia/.
Stanley, Deborah B. Practical Steps to Digital Research: Strategies and Skills for School Libraries. ABC-CLIO, 2018.
Valenza, Joyce. "Truth, Truthiness, Triangulation: A News Literacy Toolkit for a 'Post-truth' World." Neverending Search, School Library Journal, 26 Nov. 2016, blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2016/11/26/truth-truthiness-triangulation-and-the-librarian-way-a-news-literacy-toolkit-for-a-post-truth-world/.
Wineburg, Sam, and Sarah McGrew. Lateral Reading: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluating Digital Information. Working paper no. 2017-A1, Stanford History Education Group, 9 Oct. 2017. SSRN, papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3048994.
Wineburg, Samuel S. "Historical Problem Solving: A Study of the Cognitive Processes Used in the Evaluation of Documentary and Pictorial Evidence." Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 83, no. 1, Mar. 1991, pp. 73-87, doi:10.1037/0022-0663.83.1.73.
About the Author
Entry ID: 2180389
by Debbie Abilock, September 2022
Agroup of librarians, while discussing their scope and sequence goals, agree they'd like to articulate a proactive ethical goal instead of "avoiding plagiarism." When schools are divided by contentious issues, they reason that an inspirational goal might unite groups around a shared commitment to academic integrity. It's a strategic and ambitious idea—but implementation will be challenging.
A culture embodies a group's beliefs as enacted through its behaviors and structures. For example, "a culture of attribution" becomes visible as a cultural norm when teachers, students, administrators, and parents habitually acknowledge influences on their ideas and actions. Implementation might include an ethics policy or code of conduct that is regularly reinterpreted. Through community dialogue and instructional scenarios,[1] the constituents review and recommit to their principles. The institutional structures might include an academic council[2] or a Courageous Conversation program[3] as well as traditions like awards and extracurricular programs that celebrate individual excellence. Instructional practices are likely to integrate multiple goals in the academic program. For example, lessons on reading comprehension and paraphrasing contribute to both a culture of reading and a culture of attribution.[4]
In addition to practices, policies, and traditions, a culture includes less visible influences that reflect the constituencies that make up a school. Their unspoken assumptions and beliefs have a profound influence on an institution's culture. For example, in a recent large-scale study[5] conducted at ten colleges ranging in size and educational purpose, the college students, alumni, faculty, administration, parents, and trustees were asked what education means to them. The interviews revealed a wide range of beliefs about "the purposes of college and what they themselves expect and hope to gain from the experience." [6] The investigators sorted the results into what they labeled "mental models":
Let's see how these models could influence an assignment involving research tasks like finding information, developing a research question, and evaluating sources. Suppose a student tackles a project transactionally, while the teacher assigns it with a transformational mindset, and the librarian curates resources and conducts classes that support an exploratory approach. Conflicting mindsets affect the type of feedback the teacher and librarian give and how the student applies it, as well as the qualities that are valued and the criteria that would evaluate the product. In terms of emotional impact, if the student approaches a project with an exploratory mindset, while both the teacher and librarian treat it transactionally, imagine how impatient the adults are going to be with the student's progress and how out-of-step and incompetent the student might feel! Clearly, values or assumptions that are not explicit can thwart any "culture of…" goal!
School cultures do respond to societal changes. As fear and mistrust soared in many communities during the pandemic, I think it's likely that both plagiarism and cheating increased in many schools. Multiple surveys report that teachers believe that cheating has become more prevalent online.[8] I've read about "chegging" (a form of contract cheating)[9] and automatic writing tools powered by artificial intelligence[10] that rewrite submissions. Such software offers students with an inertial or transactional view of learning multiple options for avoiding impactful learning. Of course, my hypothesis about why new technology and problematic online teaching have contributed to increased academic dishonesty is based on anecdotal evidence.
However, research does show that consistent, focused attention on developing common beliefs, practices, and structures has resulted in significant changes in school culture. In a meta-analysis of three key long-term studies of academic misconduct, Guy J. Curtis, Senior Lecturer in Applied Psychology at the University of Western Australia, concluded that a series of academic integrity interventions (skills instruction, educational modules, honor codes, etc.) coupled with low-stakes implementation of text-matching software has been effective in reducing cheating and plagiarism over a thirty-year period before the pandemic.[11]
These studies confirm that a developmental approach, in which students are treated as learners rather than punished as miscreants,[12] increases "integrity and disincentivizes academic misconduct." [13]
In summary, librarians looking to replace negative goals like "avoiding plagiarism" with "a culture of inquiry" or "a culture of academic integrity" or "an ethical culture" are on the right track!
There's general agreement that the following practices promote a developmental approach to academic integrity:
Over and above getting a good grade or fulfilling a teacher's requirements, why do honest work? Students want to know what's important, useful, or relevant[14] about what they're learning. I'm not arguing that grades and requirements are unimportant—but they apply transactional reasoning that has little hope of inspiring honesty in a community.
"A better why"[15] emphasizes exploratory and transformational mental models. You're teaching multiple paths for growth, offering multiple options to self-assess one's personal best, and opening the door to a culture in which honest work is respected and valued.
When librarians act with these intentions, we demonstrate why "avoiding plagiarism" is too low a bar for learning. We can aim higher!
[1] Debbie Abilock, "Scenarios as Dilemmas: Embedded Ethics," Noodling: The NoodleTools Blog, entry posted October 11, 2021, https://www.noodletools.com/blog/scenarios-embedded-ethics/.
[2] Piedmont High School, "School Site Council," Piedmont High School, last modified March 31, 2022, https://www.piedmont.k12.ca.us/phs/site-council/.
[3] University of New South Wales, "UNSW Courageous Conversations," UNSW Sydney, accessed June 15, 2022, https://www.edi.unsw.edu.au/conduct-integrity/conduct-unsw/unsw-courageous-conversations.
[4] Debbie Abilock, "Adding Friction. How Do I Teach Students to Avoid Plagiarism?" School Library Connection, January/February 2019, https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Article/2184539.
[5] Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner, The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022).
[6] Fischman and Gardner, The Real, 119.
[7] Fischman and Gardner, The Real, 122.
[8] Helaine Mary Alessio and Jeff D. Messinger, "Faculty and Student Perceptions of Academic Integrity in Technology-Assisted Learning and Testing," Frontiers in Education 6 (April 20, 2021): https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.629220.Doug Lederman, "Best Way to Stop Cheating in Online Courses? 'Teach Better,'" Inside Higher Ed, July 22, 2020, accessed June 11, 2022, https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2020/07/22/technology-best-way-stop-online-cheating-no-experts-say-better.
[9] Jeffrey R. Young, "More Students Are Using Chegg to Cheat. Is the Company Doing Enough to Stop It?," February 23, 2021, in EdSurge, podcast, audio transcript, 24:28, accessed June 9, 2022, https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-02-23-more-students-are-using-chegg-to-cheat-is-the-company-doing-enough-to-stop-it.
[10] Michael Mindzak and Sarah Elaine Eaton, "Artificial Intelligence Is Getting Better at Writing, and Universities Should Worry about Plagiarism," The Conversation, November 4, 2021, accessed June 9, 2022, https://theconversation.com/artificial-intelligence-is-getting-better-at-writing-and-universities-should-worry-about-plagiarism-160481
[11]Guy J. Curtis, "Trends in Plagiarism and Cheating Prevalence: 1990-2020 and Beyond," in Cheating Academic Integrity: Lessons from 30 Years of Research, ed. David A. Rettinger and Tricia Bertram Gallant (Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass / Wiley, 2022), 32.
[12] Tricia Bertram Gallant and Jason M. Stephens, "Punishment Is Not Enough: The Moral Imperative of Responding to Cheating with a Developmental Approach," Journal of College and Character 21, no. 2 (April 2, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1080/2194587X.2020.1741395.
[13] Douglas Harrison and Sharon Spencer, "Beyond Doing Integrity Online: A Research Agenda for Authentic Online Learning," in Cheating Academic Integrity: Lessons from 30 Years of Research, ed. David A. Rettinger and Tricia Bertram Gallant (Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass, 2022), 188.
[14] Eric M. Anderman et al., "Academic Motivation and Cheating: A Psychological Perspective," in Cheating Academic Integrity, ed. David A. Rettinger and Tricia Bertram Gallant (Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass/ Wiley, 2022), 88-92.
[15] Thanks to Kristin Fontichiaro for suggesting this phrase after one of our online conversations with educators. Kristin Fontichiaro, "Are You in Libraries or K-20 Education and Yearning for Deep Conversations about the Field?," Twitter (blog), entry posted March 17, 2022, https://twitter.com/activelearning/status/1504522656657272847.
About the Author
Entry ID: 2285411
by Debbie Abilock, February 2023
When the first graphical browser was released in 1993, Internet information literacy instruction was extrapolated from print paradigms. For example, educators taught students that superficial webpage errors could serve as a proxy for a source's quality since such mistakes in print were the result of sloppy editorial oversight. Likewise, format flaws signaled a publisher's inattention to design aesthetics. Since print newspapers drew a bright line between advertisers and the newsroom, students were taught to be suspicious of ads, as it implied that financial considerations might be influencing the content or claims.
Early search structures also favored single-source evaluation. One had to use the library catalog for books, a database for digitized magazines and journals, and Internet search engines for webpages. Although search engines like AltaVista and Yahoo indexed every word on the pages they crawled, searchers had to drill down through human-organized directories to find relevant results. The logic of evaluating sources one-by-one transferred to source-based checklists like CRAAP and RADCAB.[i] These asked students questions related to currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose. [ii] Students were to arrive at an assessment of the source based on what it said about itself. At times, students practiced on hoax sites,[iii] clever but inauthentic substitutes for actual webpages. Only if factual accuracy seemed dubious were students advised to search laterally to confirm the same facts on three other sites, an ineffective strategy in an echo chamber environment.
As Google's single-search box accelerated container collapse, students struggled to recognize the genres on which they were to base their evaluations.[iv] Magazines, journals, newspapers all looked like websites. Instead, students gravitated toward relevance-ranked results delivered as context-free, miscellaneous answers[v] which often sufficed for their regurgitated bird reports.[vi]
Not only was the Internet disrupting publishing, but it also was devaluating traditional expertise. Self-branding, popularity, and notoriety became more influential than the credentials and formal expertise of professionals. Just as librarians redesigned triangulation strategies to corroborate networked information,[vii] reading teachers were redefining reading comprehension strategies in the face of "informational hypertexts" and "multiliteracies."[viii] In a networked environment in which elegant digital megaphones were being produced and uploaded by anyone wishing to promulgate anything—including misinformation or disinformation—educators sought new instructional approaches to sourcing, corroborating, and contextualizing information.
Rather than beginning with theoretical frameworks, recent scholarship has been investigating the real-world practices of successful searchers that might guide authentic instruction. Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew, history researchers and educators, chose fact checkers "because they are information generalists who in a single workday navigate topics that traverse a wide swath of disciplines, topics, and research methodologies."[ix] Like defensive drivers anticipating the unexpected behaviors of others, fact checkers quickly turned outward to aggregate views about a publisher's or author's reputation. By storing their findings in multiple browser tabs where they could be efficiently compared, fact checkers were managing their attention under time constraints and, as a result, producing assessments about the authority of a source in less time and with greater accuracy than disciplinary experts or veteran Internet searchers.[x]
Seeking, managing, and comparing selective "gossip" to make a quick judgment call pairs well with the dynamic webbed architecture of the Internet. The strategy isn't new but, in contrast to giving credibility to any single "megaphone," these fact checkers were developing a feel, through trial-and-error and educated guesses, for the trusted guides and reliable sources in an information sector that, in aggregate, will provide reasoned intelligence about an organization or actor.
As Wineburg and McGrew caution, this heuristic works for civic issues, appropriate when a citizen (or future citizen) wants a sense of the current players discussing gun control, wildfire mitigation, student loan forgiveness, or Supreme Court reform. It should not become a comprehensive strategy for an entire research project. During inquiry, students move through different stages of research from open exploration to a guiding question, and then to communicating, informing, and acting upon their new understanding. Students' thoughts, feelings, and actions change in response to different information and implementation needs and experiences.
In Weinberg's latest field study, high school students in government classes learned and practiced a series of sequential but flexible moves designed to improve their ability to use lateral thinking.[xi]
Inspired by Wineburg and McGrew's initial work, I outlined an instructional sequence that could teach a modified triangulation heuristic.[xiv] It began with the trivial pursuit of matching a fact across sources to experience the echo chamber effect. Through a progressive series of activities in which students work with various source types and evidence, accompanied by prompts for different types of thinking, I hoped to teach a triangulation heuristic that could be used to verify certain kinds of facts. Unlike verifying a photograph or the source and accuracy of a quote where one searches for the original instance, students would use flexible triangulation to contextualize and assess authority and credibility. Lifelong learning includes the understanding of when to use a heuristic and when to disregard it.
The pre-service teacher's question should not be about which acronym to teach but rather how and why to teach it. Lateral reading and triangulation are mental shortcuts—strategies that address the problems of searching, evaluating, and using information in a dynamic environment. A routine is the repeated teaching of that strategy in ways that develop a habit. Guided practice is instruction that scaffolds incrementally more challenging situations so that students use, build on, or reject the strategy. Heuristic instruction builds a working understanding of the value of the strategy for life. Wineburg's latest field study has developed and tested a coherent model for teaching lateral reading. Friction isn't deciding which acronym to teach—it's about employing authentic heuristics in sequenced instruction.
References (Chicago style)
[i] Mike Caulfield, "A Short History of CRAAP," Hapgood (blog), entry posted September 14, 2018, https://hapgood.us/2018/09/14/a-short-history-of-craap/.
[ii] Kathleen Schrock, "Critical Evaluation of a Web Site: Secondary School Level," Internet Archive, last modified 2007, accessed November 13, 2022,
[iii] See early hoax examples such as Ken Umbach, "California's Velcro Crop under Challenge (1993)," Internet Archive, last modified December 1996, https://web.archive.org/web/20010418003542/http://home.inreach.com/kumbach/velcro.html and James B. Wood, "The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus," Internet Archive, accessed November 13, 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20000818130120/http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.html.
[iv] Helena Francke and Olof Sundin, "Format Agnostics or Format Believers? How Students in High School Use Genre to Assess Credibility," Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 46, no. 1 (November 18, 2010): [Page #], https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.2009.1450460358.
[v] David Weinberger, Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (New York, NY: Times Books, 2007),
[vi] David V. Loertscher, Carol Koechlin, and Sandi Zwaan, Ban Those Bird Units!: 15 Models for Teaching and Learning in Information-rich and Technology-rich Environments (Salt Lake City, UT: Hi Willow Research & Publishing, 2004),
[vii] Debbie Abilock, "Adding Friction: A Preservice Librarian Asks, 'How Can I Teach Triangulation Effectively?,'" School Library Connection, November 2018, https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Article/2180389.
[viii] Julie Coiro and Elizabeth Dobler, "Exploring the Online Reading Comprehension Strategies Used by Sixth-grade Skilled Readers to Search for and Locate Information on the Internet," Reading Research Quarterly 42, no. 2 (April 6, 2007), https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.42.2.2.
[ix] Sam Wineburg et al., "Lateral Reading on the Open Internet: A District-wide Field Study in High School Government Classes.," Journal of Educational Psychology 114, no. 5 (July 2022): 895, https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000740.
[x] Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew, "Lateral Reading: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluating Digital Information" (working paper, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, October 9, 2017), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3048994.
[xi] See figures and tables in Wineburg et al., "Lateral Reading,"(2022) and lessons in Sam Wineburg et al., "Online Supplemental Materials for 'Lateral Reading on the Open Internet: A District-Wide Field Study in High School Government Classes'," APAPsycNet, https://supp.apa.org/psycarticles/supplemental/edu0000740/EDU_2020_0630_Supplemental_Materials.pdf.
[xii] Wineburg et al., "Lateral Reading," (2022): 897.
[xiii] Wineburg et al., "Lateral Reading," (2022): 897.
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Entry ID: 2295302
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