This is designed to introduce students to the wonderful world of periodicals, in their great variety, and to how they will appear in different databases. It also begins the work of building their skills at evaluating information sources, determining perspective.
As part of the research process, students need to learn how to organize and synthesize their sources. This short lecture, followed by a matrix outline given to every student, gives students the opportunity to focus their research question even more and to add their own ideas to the conversation of research within their chosen topic.
Interactive lesson planning tool for identifying the skills and competencies necessary for reading, writing and participating on the web. While it includes basic information evaluation, it goes a lot further to examine the unique aspects of information on the web (e.g. remixing, coding, web design, accessibility, open licensing, etc). There are also a lot of associated lessons that you can use. Many are oriented towards K-12, but the lessons can be remixed and are certainly relevant to higher ed.
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.
