finding knowledge: assessing knowledge in the age of search
DESCRIPTION
I gave this talk at the Society of the Query #SoQ conference in AmsterdamTRANSCRIPT
Finding Knowledge:
The epistemic context of search & assessment
Simon Knight@sjgknight
Denmark
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8341589.stm
Danish exams with internet access
• Allows testing of problem-solving and analysis - sifting information
• Currently, no communication sites allowed• Fundamentally epistemological claims
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8341589.stm
Why does epistemology matter?“…assessment is one area where notions of truth, accuracy and fairness have a very practical purchase in everyday life”
(Williams, 1998, p. 221).
Why does epistemology matter?Denmark:• Evaluation & understanding connected
knowledge matters• Personal testimony (e.g. a teacher or
friend) is forbidden• Web/search informants are ok
Exam Questions
• What is Clepsydra?
• What do we know?
Example: Do you know the
year of the first moon
walk?
This problem?
• Figure 2 – xkcd comic illustrating one of the concerns regarding access to the internet, and an agent’s individual intelligence (xkcd, 2011).
Task Matters…
• Analogue with exams?• http://lmgtfy.com/?q=jfgi
Task Matters
• Figure 2 – xkcd comic illustrating one of the concerns regarding access to the internet, and an agent’s individual intelligence (xkcd, 2011).
What were the main causes of….
Compare and contrast poet ‘a’ and poet ‘b’…
Evaluate the evidence for…
Two sides of the coin• What we ask students to do (tasks,
assessment, tools)• What they do
Epistemology: In action• What the tools and assessment assume• What students do• Perception doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it is
action oriented
Communication and Testimony
Bing: For every search, there is someone who can helpGoogle: “know what you want before you know it”
Filter Bubbles
Risks: Injustice
• testimonial injustice – marginalisation of some knowledge by specific users (personalisation based on user’s search history) (prejudice)
• hermeneutical injustice – marginalisation of some knowledge by system-level assumptions (e.g. personalisation on a country level); users may not realise they are being marginalised
Risks: Content holes• Gender & language bias
in Wikipedia articles• Social search has same
problem• Perspective
But testimony is fundamental
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bridge.png
Good informants personalise
Reconciling users and tools
• User & tool responsibilities in the giving and receiving of information
Diversity Aware SearchBalancer analyses your web browsing to show you the political slant of your reading history. If you get way out of balance, we may even give you reading suggestions.
NewsCube: Delivering Multiple Aspects of News to Mitigate Media Bias
‘liquid publications’: Scholar search to avoid homophily in one’s academic network by down-ranking papers with authors whom the searcher has co-authored with in the past http://project.liquidpub.org/tools.
Information Literacy
• But in many cases news articles don’t give opposing views, they just don’t give a view.
• This ‘testimony of silence’ is harder to deal with
• Good indicator of why info literacy still v important
Epistemology: In action• What the tools provide• What students do• Perception doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it is
action oriented
Epistemology: In action
• Multiple Perspectives• Some people might be
standing in different positions/have different information
• Tools should foreground assumptions & users should be aware
Thank you
Simon Knight@sjgknight
You are asked to draw a comparison of the perspectives in the sources, using your knowledge of the time. “Right”, you think, as you open up a popular search engine, “what do I need to know…”.