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Access, Power, & Privilege

This activity is designed to support teaching at the intersections of scholarly communication and information literacy. The choose-your-own scenario activity, designed in LibWizard, can be used in a flipped classroom setting or in a traditional classroom. The choose-your-own scenario activity is inspired by and adapts questions from: Hare, S. & Evanson, C. (2018). Information privilege outreach for undergraduate students. College and Research Libraries.

Occupy APA: A Citation Sit-in

This lesson was co-developed by Daniel Ransom and Nicole Branch. This is an intensive APA workshop that could be broken into parts. It covers both APA citation and formatting, with a protest theme. The workshop was conducted as a stand-alone, outside of class workshop at Holy Names University in 2014 and 2015. Though Occupy is now dated, the theme of protest could be adapted to something more current. We didn't think it would be possible to make APA citation engaging, but this lesson did just that. It was especially popular with nursing and education students.

Scholarly Article Autopsy

This lesson is intended as a single session within a major’s research methods course. Rather than using a shorter “scholarly vs. non-scholarly” comparison worksheet, this activity asks students to work in groups to systematically examine a scholarly article in depth, identify and evaluate its various components visually and in writing, and then compare it to a non-scholarly article on the same topic. Groups then report back to the entire class.

Evaluating Historical Sources

Made to be an in class activity or a library resource requested by professors for courses. The first page goes with the instruction portion of a class. 'What is a primary source? What is a secondary source? What is a tertiary source?' It takes them through example types of sources, particularly concerned with history courses. The second and third pages require evaluation of a student's primary and secondary sources.

Investigation of a Disease and Prescribed Treatment

In biology or health classes, assign each student a 'diagnosis'. Have them act as responsible patients by investigating both the diagnosis and the prescribed treatment. Results presented in a two-page paper should cover: a description of the condition and its symptoms; its etiology; its prognosis; the effectiveness of the prescribed treatment, its side effects and contradictions, along with the evidence; and a comparison of the relative effectiveness of alternate treatments.

Simply Map: Visualizing Census and Survey Data

This instructional session coincided with a project comparing data from two cities for an Urban Studies 1000 level (Freshmen) course. The session provided a basic overview of Simply Map as a web-based application, described the data available within and its origins (Census, American Community Survey, etc.), two activities for creating and visualizing the data, and supporting materials for understanding the data including a libguide and deliverable handout.

An Introduction to Information Literacy for High School Educators

Through a reading assignment, a brief lecture, and small group discussion, students training to be high school teachers learn about Information Literacy (IL) and Critical Information Literacy, and consider how they can apply these concepts within their disciplines and in their teaching practice. This short, 55-minute session was taught for a course called "Foundations in Secondary Education", offered through the Single Subject (Secondary) Teaching Credential program at Saint Mary's College of California's Kalmanovitz School of Education.

Seeking Social Justice in Information | Graduate Counseling, Leadership and Education Students

Created by M. Brown-Salazar Saint Mary's College of CA This lesson was developed to have graduate level students explore social justice issues in information found on the internet. It is based on Dr. Safiya Noble's work: Algorithms of Oppression. Simplified, we asked students to consider that when we seek information, we need to examine the perspective/privilege of the voices/sources of information and identify/understand whose voices are represented and whose voices are missing and how that impacts/influences our understanding.

Evaluating the Interwebz with Think/ Square/ Share

This activity asks students to work in groups to evaluate Internet sources to meet a research need. Students will use their available wireless devices, smartphones, tablets, computers, or laptops to retrieve the URLs provided to them. Working together, students will ask evaluation questions, guided by a CRAAP handout (attached) or instructor. Then, groups will share their findings with the class. o Students are grouped (3-4 students per group, number of groups in total is irrelevant what it important is the size of the group remains very small).

Evaluating the Interwebz with Designated Skeptics

This is a short, engaging activity suitable for learners of all levels. In it, students evaluate web sources that are provided by an instructor using the acronym CRAAP (currency, relevance, accuracy, authority, and purpose). Students work together in groups and explore evaluation processes aloud, with guidance from the CRAAP cards and the instructor. This is an adaptation of various evaluating sources activities available in LIS literature and professional resources. This activity is ideally implemented as a kind of collaborative game moderated by the instructor. It is highly adaptable.