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Community of Online Research Assignments

What's Happening? Evaluating News in a Time of Information Overload

In this workshop, students learn about the driving forces behind fake news, reflect on how our opinions impact the way we evaluate information, and discuss and practice using criteria for evaluating news. The workshop includes a brief presentation on fake news and cognitive biases, reflection prompts for students to respond to, and an activity in which students work in groups to evaluate different news articles on a common topic.

The Gender Gap in Wikipedia

Students in an introductory Women's and Gender Studies course are required to critically analyze and edit an article in Wikipedia. Through class discussion and an active learning exercise, students begin to understand how and why women and many racial groups and individuals are underrepresented or systematically marginalized in Wikipedia. Students learn how to use the "Talk" tab to evaluate Wikipedia articles and learn about authority and power structures within that community.

Author Carpentry

Author Carpentry is a researcher-to-researcher training and outreach program in open authoring and publishing. It was initiated at the Caltech Library to enhance scientific authorship and publishing in the digital age. The aim of Author Carpentry is to promote and support good information handling tools, practices, and skills that help researchers prepare, submit, and publish contributions that add value to the scholarly record and invite others to adapt and build upon.

Twitter Politics - Metaphor, Enthymeme + Trump

This assignment is a non-partisan way to interrogate the way the 45th POTUS uses Twitter using the concepts of Metaphor and Enthymeme. The assignment could be altered to focus on any Twitter handle or trending hashtag. The teacher should give a short 15 minute introduction the concepts and then break students up into small groups to decipher Tweets. The last portion of class is for group presentation/discussion of students findings.

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.

Keepin It Real: Tips and Strategies for Evaluating Fake News

In an effort to provide students with an open space to learn about and discuss recent national concerns over “fake news,” the library offered four sessions of the workshop “Keepin’ It Real: Tips & Strategies for Evaluating Fake News” during a campus-wide Inauguration Teach-In on Friday, January 20, 2017. During this session, students had the opportunity to talk about how misleading news sources (encompassing misinformation, disinformation, click-bait, propaganda, etc.) have affected their views on civil discourse, specifically relating to the recent U.S.

Evaluating Internet Sources - Climate Change

Students will generate a well-reasoned conclusion in a two-page paper in which they identify a "good" Internet source and a "bad" Internet source, using IL source evaluation terminology (outlined in CRAAP) to guide their writing. They will then explain why the good source should be used to investigate the chosen topic, and why the bad source should not be used in their investigation.

Evaluating Claims: Facebook Edition

Students will be expected to find evidence to investigate a pseudoscientific claim or conspiracy theory. For their graded assignment, they will be submitting a two-page paper to their Chemistry professor (the lead professor for this class in which I’m embedding). In their paper, they make a case that either supports the claim or rejects it. They will be expected to use both library and credible online sources for support.

Critical Thinking in Action: Sustainability

Students will be exposed to various entry points of a sustainability topic in various formats. They will take notes as they experience those expressions on the Elements of Thought evidenced throughout. This in-class, two-part lesson includes an independent guided activity and a Think-Pair-Share activity for further reflection on source/ claimant evaluation. Prior to this lesson, instructor will have chosen a topic relevant to their subject area or course content – Possible examples: food deserts, clean water in US, bee colony collapse.

Information Literacy and Writing Studies in Conversation : Reenvisioning Library-Writing Program Connections

This book is intended to help widen and deepen the conversations between librarians and compositionists. How can we further build and strengthen teaching partnerships that invite students to engage in writing and information seeking and use as processes of inquiry, critical reflection, and meaning making? And what sometimes stands in the way of doing so? Written for both librarians and writing instructors, this publication considers these questions from multiple angles, including an explorations of:

Project Look Sharp

Project Look Sharp is a media literacy initiative of Ithaca College that develops and provides lesson plans, media materials, training, and support for the effective integration of media literacy with critical thinking into classroom curricula at all education levels, including integration with the new common core standards.

BEN Portal

The BEN Portal provides access to education resources from BEN Collaborators and is managed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Over 20,601 reviewed resources covering 77 biological sciences topics are available. BEN resources can help you engage student interest, shorten lesson preparation time, provide concept updates, and develop curricula that are in line with national standards for content, use of animals and humans, and student safety.

ACRL Framework for Information Literacy Sandbox

A place to discover ways to use the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in instructional settings, as well as share your own activities and teaching resources related to the Framework. Resources include activities, assessment, assignments, bibliographies, blog posts, learning objects, and practitioner reflections. Results can be filtered by discipline, information literacy frame, institution type, license, and scope.