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…”.