This activity is designed to support teaching at the intersections of scholarly communication and information literacy. The choose-your-own scenario activity, designed in LibWizard, can be used in a flipped classroom setting or in a traditional classroom. The choose-your-own scenario activity is inspired by and adapts questions from: Hare, S. & Evanson, C. (2018). Information privilege outreach for undergraduate students. College and Research Libraries. From 2018-2020 this took the place of an interactive survey with skip logic. In 2020, this was substanitally revised to use LibWizard, incorporate short videos, and still provide scenario-based learning. 

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.

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.

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

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. Through the lesson, students were able to focus more on content, corroboration, and source knowledge (rather than a mere checklist) to make decisions about an article’s bias and level of accuracy. All four instruction librarians taught this lesson to multiple sections of introductory writing courses. Though the librarians started with an original set of three articles on the topic of health care enrollment, we also identified two other sets of materials that were targeted to the course content of specific introductory writing sections.

A two part instruction session that uses the "fish bowl" method, or students as instructors, to find scholarly sources and complete an annotated bibliography citation.

A gallery walk is a silent, interactive exercise followed by small- or whole-group discussion. You can use this exercise to introduce students to new material, to review previously-introduced material, or to assess teaching and/or learning.

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.

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. presidential election. By the end of the session, we hope students became more confident in their ability to use critical thinking skills to judge the reliability of news reports, whether they come via print, television or the internet.