This semester I'm working with the Business & Admin Writing class here at UCCS. One of the things that I think is really cool about this class is that the professor emphasizes Google as a research tool. His thinking is that once his students leave UCCS they won't have access to our library resources so they should get the skills to use the tools they're actually going to use on the job. And that tool is Google. Something that I felt was important to be transparent about was that Google is ubiquitous. The odds that anyone in the Teams meeting would be unfamiliar with Google were minuscule. So I started the portion of the class about how to do your best googling by saying that. I adopted an even more personal, casual tone than I usually do because Google is such a fixture in our lives. To show the students how to do their best work in google, I used two tools: meme archeology and skincare Youtube.
MEME ARCHEOLOGY Something that I really pride myself on is that I can take four words and the website where someone probably saw something and find their half-remembered meme in under 90 seconds. The example I used to demonstrate this in class is one of my favourite tumblr posts: Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via alexa! I love the future! Programmers/Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise. Security technicians:*takes a deep swig of whiskey* I wish I had been born in the neolithic [source] To demo my meme archaeology process, I started by vaguely describing what I "remembered" about this post: ["computer" AND "printer" AND "noise" AND "weird" inurl:tumblr.com]. Not surprisingly, that string got pretty much just tech support results even with the tumblr limiter. I then altered the string to ["computer" AND "printer" AND "noise" AND "internet of things" inurl:tumblr.com] which gets the post I wanted as the first result. This example gave me the opportunity to show that boolean searching works in Google too, the benefits of hard quotes, and how to search within a website or domain. I then hopped into Google advanced search to show how the search engine had "read" what I had entered in the simple search as well as the additional options and fields. "What Google does is finds you what you want to see..." When I'm having a really bad anxiety time, I often end up in skincare YouTube rabbit holes, specifically on James Welsh's channel. I just find his voice and cadence really soothing. I also really like his videos because he's transparent about his credentials (he's not a skincare professional, just passionate) and encourages his viewers to do research beyond a quick Google and toseek out the opinions of aestheticians and dermatologists. Personally, I think he's more of an expert than he gives himself credit for (there are more sources of authority than the academy!) but when he talks about the science of skincare I do really appreciate that he points to experts in the science. In one of his recent videos, he breaks down the reaction to the Fenty Skin release which apparently was divisive. And he has the following thing to say: "Here's an example I always use. If you type into google 'parabens will give you cancer' you'll get millions of results where people are telling you parabens will give you cancer. If you type in 'parabens won't give you cancer' again you'll get millions of results for the counter argument. So what Google does is finds you what you want to see. That's how it works..." [source] To illustrate the difference between Google and a library search engine, I think this is really illustrative. So illustrative that I used this example in class. OneSearch will find you what you want by searching exactly what you give it. Google will find you what you want by guessing what you want to see based on what you search, your search history, your browsing history, and so on. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's definitely something to be aware of. What Worked: Students referenced the examples in the discussion section of the session later, so it was definitely engaging. What Didn't: I cleared my search history wrong, so the changes to the search string in the meme archeology example were a little spoiled but hopefully no one noticed. What I'd Change: I ended up choosing fairly innoccouous examples where normally I would go for something more socially conscious that underscores the biases inherent in our search engines. However, in the virtual environment the students don't get the full benefit of nonverbal cues in a presentation nor do I get the benefit of being able to read the room. The meme archeology answer worked because it was light and humorous but also clear about the tools and the process. The parabens example allowed me to show how my search and browsing history intersected with the browsing history of others to generate my search results. In the future, I might reevaluate my examples or choose a more socially conscious Know Your Sources (read about KYS 2.0 here) but for this setting this really worked.
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