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News Evaluation – Beyond the Checklist

As part of a larger news evaluation campaign, Sara Davidson Squibb and colleagues (Lindsay Davis, Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco and Elizabeth Salmon) created a jigsaw lesson to use with introductory writing courses. Students were asked to evaluate an article’s content, tone, and purpose in a large group before they discussed the article in the context of two other articles on the same topic in a smaller group. After these group discussions, the library instructor revealed the source of each news article and highlighted resources and strategies for learning more about news sources.

Share the Load: A Single Shot of Critical Pedagogy

Katelyn Burton (kburton@virginiawestern.edu) created the framework for this lesson plan while an Instruction Librarian at Radford University, a jigsaw comparing four different sources. Katelyn and Alyssa Alyssa worked with Dr. Michele Ren's Women's and Gender Studies 200 class at Radford. Dr. Ren asked for something related to global women's issues. Alyssa decided that the "Share the Load" Ariel commercial related to gender divisions of household labor would be topical, and something that students could relate to, and chose four sources that fit into Katelyn's framework.

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.

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.

Googling Google: Search Engines as Market Actors

There is a large body of research on corporate ownership and control of traditional media, such as print, television, and radio. Comparatively, research about corporate control of what we see online is underdeveloped, yet search engines are often the first place students uncritically look for research as opposed to the library website, catalogs, and discovery services. Dr. Safiya Noble shows that Google image searches for black women often perpetuate and reinforce dominant narratives involving racism and misogyny.

Information Literacy Project

This assignment was created for an introductory nutrition course for health related science majors and nonmajors to meet the Information Literacy Flag criteria for the core standards at Loyola Marymount University. The assignment focuses on the evaluation of a primary and secondary source on a specific topic to assess the similarities and differences between the sources of information. The primary goal of the assignment is for a pair of students to select a current popular press article that references a recent scientific journal article.

Summarizing different perspectives on a controversial topic

Using ProQuest SIRS Issues Researcher or similar database, groups of students work together to find and read four informative magazine articles representing a variety of opinions on a topic. For each magazine article they write an MLA citation. In an oral presentation of less than three minutes per group, they summarize the controversy without giving their own opinions and explain why they chose the four articles. Students are told to be prepared to answer questions about their topic and why they selected each of the four articles.

Finding Data for Self, Community & Society- Part 1

Students will learn to identify where they might find school and community data; practice accessing this data; and create a school community data profile. Students will also be introduced to some of the problems of bias when looking at school and community data. For part one, student will find data for the high school they attended and the community they grew up in. In part two, students will collect the same data for a school in the community they will be working in over the course of the quarter.

Source Notes

Students write to communicate and their writing, when citing sources, must communicate what they understand of others’ writings. By asking students to write with the purpose of summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting a selected article to their classmate, they will experience what you experience when you read their writing. They will understand the purpose and mechanics of using sources in their writing. Activity is highly adaptable and suitable for independent readers high school and above. Activity can be modified for lower level learners.

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.