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. They include a series of questions to make the student think about what makes a source reliable, if the source has a skewed perspective, or if the source is actually related to their research topic.

Lesson plan for a 1-hour introductory Communication Studies theory class. Emphasis is on getting students to use the appropriate tool for their information need while considering indicators of authority. Collection of exercises requiring students to do the following: 1) look up background information on a communication theory; 2) chase down further readings; 3) find a scholarly article that applies a communication theory using the ComAbstracts database. This supports an "interpersonal communication paper" where students outline and critique a communication theory and identify a study that applies the theory.

UPDATE: PLEASE USE SIFT & PICK INSTEAD!

I created the SIFT & PICK Fact Checking & Source Evaluation process to improve upon P.R.O.V.E.N. SIFT & PICK better distinguishes between lateral reading to fact check information and vertical reading to select the best sources for specific information needs. It is briefer and better lends itself to teaching concepts such as information creation,  authority/expertise, bias, and scholarly conversation, in the context of source evaluation.

Ellen Carey 4/14/23

P.R.O.V.E.N. was designed to provide students with a source evaluation process that was grounded in both the ACRL Framework and Michael Caulfield's "Four Moves and a Habit" from his ebook, "Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers" (2017). The process included both strategies for fact-checking by examining other sources such as internet fact-checking tools, and strategies for analyzing the source itself by examining its purpose, relevance, objectivity, verifiability, expertise, and newness. The "P.R.O.V.E.N." acronym emphasized the process students could go through to demonstrate credibility based on their particular needs, rather than the state of a particular source (i.e. credible or not). The questions were designed to guide this evaluation process, not to serve as a checklist.

For this assignment, students will spend time as a critical media observer - namely, their own uses of media in a 72 hour period. In order to complete the assignment, students MUST record each time they use/engage with media for a complete 72 hour (3 day) period in a LOG, recording their exposure to, uses of, and interaction with mediated communication (e.g., cell phone, social media, TV, radio, etc.) During this time, students are also required to make detailed autoethnographic “field” notes of their experience and how they were personally (socially, culturally) effected by the media- what interfaces/platforms/sources they interacted with, which were intentional and which were not, the effects (if any) on their mood, time management, body, further use of media, etc. After the 72 hours, students write a 2-3 page self-reflexive paper that responds to the prompts (see handout)

In this activity, students will work on maintaining eye contact with their audience while giving an impromptu speech. The goal is to stop (or reduce) students' tendency to look at their visual aid during speech presentations.

Students often depend on citation generators provided by databases, library discovery tools, and websites when tasked with correctly formatting their references. However, these generators often make mistakes that students don’t notice. This activity will help students to look critically at the citations provided by citation generators and to find the mistakes. This will both help students learn the citation style of their discipline and to look more critically at seemingly quick fixes during the research process.

This assignment is designed to encourage students in introductory-level religious studies classes to check the assumptions they bring to the subject matter and to develop their critical inquiry skills in this area through close examination of primary text passages. The primary textual sources used may be contemporary or historical, depending on the course context.

The assignment consists of two sequenced exercises:
Part one. In-class writing exercise analyzing an unidentified passage (1-2 pages)
Part two. Reflection and expanded analysis of the identified passage using scholarly sources (3-4 pages)

Document includes student learning objectives, assignment description (for instructors), assignment instructions with checklist (for students), additional questions for reflection or discussion, and example primary source passages for use in the exercises.

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.

This activity was created to introduce first-year students to library resources they can use for their annotated bibliography assignment. In pairs, students are assigned a task card that requires them to find an information source. After finding a source meeting the criteria of their task card, the student teams input their answers into a Google Form. Formative assessment takes place during class, allowing the librarian to modify instruction on-the-spot based on the responses from the form.

Summative assessment takes place at the end of the semester, when a rubric is applied to a sample of student responses from the activity. This assessment provides a more thorough picture of where students may have succeeded or struggled with the activity, and may provide ideas for how to adjust the activity in the future.

This recipe is from The First-Year Experience Cookbook, edited by Raymond Pun and Meggan Houlihan and written by Elisa Slater Acosta and Katherine Donaldson.

This resource and accompanying assignment focuses on evaluating news sources/claims and were used in an online information literacy class.