This exercise was designed for 1st year writing students with several different goals in mind: • encourage deeper, closer reading; • introduce the concept that information sources have perspective; • develop vocabulary around describing information and perspective; • acquaint students with the many values/uses of subject encyclopedias; • practice topic narrowing using these types of encyclopedia articles.

This session was part of an undergraduate, critical thinking and global perspectives course. The course is offered by various disciplines on campus. This instance focused on global challenges (The Seven Revolutions developed by csis.org). For the session the students applied two frameworks to data: authority is constructed and contextual and scholarship as conversation. Students learned about a data life cycle concept with emphasis on evaluation. One of the main goals in introducing the students to the life cycle of data (see attached) was to broaden their understanding of how to search for data. Students may encounter data via social media or in a magazine article. Often those formats are more accessible and present data in a way that is easier to understand. The exercise helps students to see how data can sometimes be manipulated in those formats, while also developing search techniques to track data to its source.

This is a 65-minute workshop designed for 1st year composition students who will be using periodical sources in their research. Students will practice writing contextualizing statements, e.g. describing authors, genres, types of periodicals, for a variety of information sources of the type they will be using in their own research projects.

This lesson was developed for HIS484 (Topics in the History of Gender and Sexuality/Pride in the time of HIV/AIDS) in the Spring of 2018. The students’ final assignment culminated in a multimedia or digital research project on a topic of their choosing and heavily relied on primary source and visual materials. This lesson focuses on how students, as content curators and analysts, can engage in deeper analysis and contextualization of the sources they present through their projects. Students collectively analyzed one example from a particular resource that they are already acquainted with and considered the language used by both systems of knowledge and the communities that they are studying, in order to help them form thoughtful, critical, and reflective perspectives.

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. Discussion is guided so as to touch on the processes by which sources are created, what these methods say about their authority, and to consider contextually appropriate uses for them.

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.

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.

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