Implications of document-level literacy skills for Web site design.
The proliferation of World Wide Web (Web) sites and the low cost of publishing information on the Web have placed a tremendous amount of information at the fingertips of millions of people. Although most of this information is at least intended to be accurate, there is much that is rumor, innuendo, urban legend, and outright falsehood. This raises problems especially for students (of all ages) trying to do research or learn about some topic. Finding accurate, credible information requires document-level literacy skills, such as integration, sourcing, corroboration, and search. This paper discusses these skills and offers a list of simple ways that designers of educational Web sites can help their visitors utilize these skills.
Psychology Department, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA. britt@niu.edu
Mary Anne
MA
Britt
Gareth
G
Gabrys
D003197:Computer Literacy; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D020407:Internet; D013334:Students