Educators are well aware of the shortcomings of relying on crowd-sourced content for authoritative information, but the meaning of the message appears to be not taking hold for students. In short, what constitutes "research" for students today has come to mean "Googling." To address this gap in student skills, Turnitin has worked with academic experts to develop The Source Educational Evaluation Rubric (SEER). Instructors and students who use SEER can quickly evaluate a website and arrive at a single score based on five criteria scaled to credibility. This white paper highlights the recent findings regarding student research practices, presents SEER, and offers guidance on using the rubric to improve student research skills.
Paper
What's Wrong with Wikipedia? Evaluating the Sources Used by Students
Evaluating the Sources Used by Students