Are you finding reliable sources for your research papers and projects? Has your professor asked you to use scholarly sources? What is a scholarly source anyway? In this workshop, learn how to critically evaluate the information you find through books, articles, and websites.

**This lesson plan was adapted from "Establishing and Applying Evaluation Criteria" p. 74 -78 in Teaching Information Literacy Threshold Concepts Lesson Plans for Librarians, edited by Bravender, McClure, and Schaub (2015).**

This workshop delivers an action-oriented introduction to personal data privacy designed for new college students. The session is designed to reveal the systems in place to collect and analyze online behavioral data, and to unveil the real-world consequences of online profiling in contexts like sentiment shaping, consumer preferences, employment, healthcare, personal finance, and law enforcement. In lieu of a prescriptive approach, students analyze case studies to observe how online behaviors impact real-world opportunities and reflect on the benefits and risks of technology use to develop purposeful online behaviors and habits that align with their individual values. Developing knowledge practices regarding privacy and the commodification of personal information and embodying the core library values of privacy and intellectual freedom, the workshop promotes a proactive rather than reactive approach and presents a spectrum of privacy preferences across a range of contexts in order to respect students’ autonomy and agency in personal technology use.

The Business Task Cards is a 1-hour team-based activity. The activity was created for a business management course that needed to complete a business opportunity project. The activity requires students to complete four tasks: 1) Find company information, 2) Find a company's income statement, 3) Find articles on a company's management strategy, and 4) Find current industry trends that will impact the company. A print and online version of the activity is provided.

In this assignment, students are given a range of newspaper article about science topics and work in pairs to find the original research article that the newspaper article is based on in the library databases. Students then assess when they might use an original research article vs when they might use a well-written newspaper article.

After the activity, the librarian gave short lecture about online fact checking based on Mike Caulfield's excellent fast and frugal fact checking strategies. If time allows, students can do some of the activities that Caulfield lists in his textbook.

The purpose of this Business Benchmark assignment is to professionally present (3-5 minutes) a new idea to improve and aspect of the college. This presentation has no mandated materials, students are however expected to provide an excellent, well explained, supported and presented new idea. Your goal is to inspire your audience to take a specific action or position.

This project has four Business case elements. Each element is related to one of the student course outcomes. Each case will require students to complete the following:
Read all elements of each case, including exhibits.
Write a one page summary for each case answering the questions in each case, for a total of a 4 page report.
The report should be submitted as one consolidated report addressing all four cases below.

Ready to be an entrepreneur? Your final project is to create a business/product and sell it to your classmates, Shark Tank style! You will complete this assignment individually OR with a partner and your classmates will play the role of the Sharks!
Your company can offer a physical product or a service, but it should not just be a copy of something already offered … BE CREATIVE! Think outside of the box …

About: You are the Chief Executive Officer of an exciting start up Clean Energy Business. This is a web-based free simulation. Students play the role of the founder of a new start-up company in the exciting and competitive clean tech sector. Each quarter students must set prices, decide how many engineers and sales people to hire, and set compensation, including salary, stock, options and profit sharing. Students must also make financial decisions such as debt level, equity level and overall cash management.

Challenge: Will you lead your company to record profits or run your firm into bankruptcy?

Requirements: This is a several part project, which includes: at least 4 attempts at the simulation, 1 annual report assignment, 4 project quizzes, 2 blog posting , and 1 feedback survey. Note to receive full credit students must successfully complete 10 years of profitable simulation business (remember you can play as many times as you wish, however for full credit you must have played at least 4 times). Bonus points will be added to students who make the final leader board, based upon highest cumulative net profits. Students work independently, not part of a group, however students are encouraged to use blog space to discuss various game strategies.

When playing the simulation, select "play as a class." Your ID is your Wake Tech email address and your password is 4444. Please wait until week 2 of the class to start the simulation in order for the instructor to enter the class emails into the game site. Instruction Video (opens in a new window) Link to Play Simulation (opens in new window)
Play the game as often as you wish; play often throughout the semester to try different strategies and improve your scores.
Semester champion: the student the with highest cumulative net income will be declared the semester champion. We will periodically update students with a leader board in an announcement so you can see where you stand relative to other students.

This 30-minute activity demonstrates how to search in Google Scholar and explains how results are ranked. It requires students to explore Google Scholar and encourages students to reflect on potential biases this tool might have in regards to research. This lesson plan was Part 2 of an hour-long workshop that also included a 30 minute search engine algorithmic bias lesson. Please see Elisa Slater Acosta's page for part 1: https://www.projectcora.org/assignment/exploring-algorithmic-bias-summer...

This 30-minute activity was a quick introduction to algorithmic bias and the importance of critically evaluating search engine results. Algorithms increasingly shape modern life and can perpetuate bias and discrimination. In pairs, students analyzed the results from Google Image searches and Google Autocomplete suggestions. This activity was based on “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism,” by Safiya Umoja Noble. This lesson plan was Part 1 of an hour-long workshop that also included a 30 minute Google Scholar activity. Please see Jennifer Masanaga's Google Scholar activity for Part 2: https://www.projectcora.org/assignment/exploring-google-scholar-summer-b...