Information Literacy Learning Goal C:
Judge the utility, quality, and extent of information needed in making decisions.
Judge the utility, quality, and extent of information needed in making decisions.
C1. What efforts contribute to source reliability and quality?
C2. Select credible sources for different research topics.
C3. How do experts select credible Google results?
C4. Choose the most appropriate and credible Google results.
C5. Understand the peer-review process and explore its effectiveness.
C6. Under what circumstances are popular sources appropriate to consult?
C7. Know where to find information in your career job.
C8. Conduct a comprehensive search for information.
C9. Where and how do professionals search thoroughly for information?
C10. Compare search strategies for conducting a thorough search.
Adapt and/or simplify these assignments to better suit the needs of your students and course materials.
Feel free to mix different parts of different assignments together.
You'll need to work out the details for deploying the assignment as an individual or group assignment, or as a worksheet, quiz, reading, discussion, etc. You'll also need to work out details for grading the assignment.
We encourage you to consult with your subject librarian for advice on creating and tailoring information literacy assignments to your needs.
Note: This assignment is applicable to Learning Goal B or C.
Have your students explore the processes that are (or aren't) in place to bolster the quality and reliability of different types of sources in your discipline – such as peer-review, editorial review, fact-checking, accreditation, standardization, formal reviews, user reviews, endorsements, etc.
Students could also work through some or all of the following questions:
For which types of sources is reliability and quality most important and why?
Which efforts to promote reliability and quality are most/least effective?
How do efforts to promote reliability and quality affect the credibility of different sources?
Can you envision improvements to these processes? How could we do a better job at ensuring sources are reliable?
What happens when a source is found to be unreliable and inaccurate? What are the repercussions for the author and/or the publisher (if any)? What are the repercussions for the user of the source, or for society?
Depending on your discipline, you might also want to investigate the replicability crisis, or websites like RetractionWatch and/or Data Colada. Or, you could explore current or historical scandals in information quality.
Note: This assignment is applicable to Learning Goal B or C.
Present your students with one or more research topics such as:
a scholarly research topic
a personal research topic (like personal healthcare, finance, etc.)
a potential career research topic
For each topic, provide students with a wide variety of sources to consult (10 to 15?) that provide information on that topic. Ensure they have a mix of 1) credible sources, 2) questionably credible sources, and 3) some that are definitely not credible. Have them sort the sources into these three groups and then explain their thought process for each source. Finally, show them how YOU would sort the sources and why. That way they can see how an expert would make choices about which source to use.
Note: This assignment is applicable to Learning Goal B or C.
Present your students with one or more research topics such as:
a scholarly research topic
a personal research topic (like personal healthcare, finance, etc.)
a potential career research topic
Tell them to begin their search in Google to gain more background information on their topic and provide them with the keywords YOU would use to run the search in Google (and explain why you would use those keywords). and why. Have them run the searches using your keywords. Then, have them look through at the first page or two of results and identify which would be the most appropriate, credible results to click on first and why. Have them also explain what makes other results less appropriate/credible and why. Finally, show them how YOU would make choices about which results would be most promising to click on first in terms of their appropriateness and credibility and why. Discuss the discrepancies between students' choices and your choices and why those discrepancies exist.
Note: This assignment is applicable to Learning Goal B or C.
Have students pick a topic, or present them with one or more research topics such as:
a scholarly research topic
a personal research topic (like personal healthcare, finance, etc.)
a potential career research topic
Have them conduct Google searches to put together three to five of the best sources they found in their Google searches. Have them annotate the best choices by what makes them:
relevant
credible
useful
appropriate
Have them also note three to five sources they clicked on to explore, but ultimately rejected. Have them explain why they rejected these sources. Review their choices and let them know if any of the best sources they picked are inappropriate or questionable.
You could also give the entire class the same topic and see what sources students converge on as the best ones, and which they reject as worst, and discuss those that fall on the fence. Show them how YOU would assess the results compared to the strategies they are using.
Note: This assignment is applicable to Learning Goal B or C.
If you work in a discipline where peer-review is an important process, consider having your students learn about it in more detail so they fully understand how it works. Then, have them explore questions such as:
What is the history of peer-review? How did it start? How has it changed?
How well does peer-review work?
Is the peer-review process more rigorous than other types of vetting processes?
How can bias enter the peer-review process? What practices are in place to prevent bias?
What are the implications for peer-review when reviewers are not paid or credited for their efforts to review others' work?
Should the peer-review process be improved? Why?
How could the process be improved?
Note: This assignment is applicable to Learning Goal B or C.
Supply students with a mix of imaginary scenarios (such as some plausible career scenarios) where they need to find information. Set up your scenarios so that for some, popular sources would be the best to consult, and for others scholarly sources would be the best to consult. Have students decide which type of source (popular or scholarly) would be most appropriate and why.
Then, encourage them to explore these questions:
Why are popular sources sometimes more appropriate to consult than scholarly sources?
In what circumstances would it be important to judge the credibility of popular sources?
Are there popular sources that you intuitively feel are credible? If so, why?
What types of popular sources would you be especially wary of quality and reliability? How would you handle that?
Note: This assignment is applicable to Learning Goal B or C.
Work with your librarian to develop a list of databases and other resources that students can leverage in their career when they need to seek information. Depending on the situation, these resources could include any of the following or more:
free databases like Google, Google Scholar, PubMed, ERIC, etc.
government databases
state library databases
public library databases
college and university library databases
special library databases
company databases
free web resources specific to a profession such as discussion forums, expert websites, society websites, etc.
Ask your librarian to show students where to find these databases and how to use them. Also have your librarian show strategies for obtaining the full-text of needed sources. Then, present students with one or more hypothetical employment scenarios that requires conducting a thorough search for information. Have them write up a strategy for where and how they would search to find the information they need.
Note: This assignment is applicable to Learning Goal B or C.
Supply students with imaginary scenarios where they need to conduct a thorough search for information. For example, provide them with a plausible future work scenario where they need to research and put together policy recommendations, or a set of best practices, or create informational materials for the general public, etc. Then, have them work through the following questions:
Why would it be important to do thoroughly research this topic and find as many relevant sources as possible?
What databases would you use to search for information on this topic?
What keywords would you use to ensure your search was comprehensive?
What actions would you take to feel confident you had not missed any relevant sources?
What might be the repercussions if you failed to find and incorporate some particularly important, relevant sources?
You might also ask students to find and compile a thorough list of relevant sources on the topic, and/or have them compare their search strategies with other students so they can learn from each other.
Note: This assignment is applicable to Learning Goal B or C.
Identify some professionals from your discipline who regularly need to thoroughly search for information as part of their job. Invite one or more of them into your classroom to talk to students (in person or via Zoom) about how they solve information problems in their job. Have them describe where and how they seek information, and how they know when they have found enough information.
Then, present students with one or more hypothetical career scenarios where they need to come up with a strategy for conducting a thorough search. Have them write up their strategy including where and how they would collect information. Ask them to follow their strategy, then document any problems with it. Have them also document new ideas for improving the strategy that they discover as they are searching.
Note: This assignment is applicable to Learning Goal B or C.
Run a search on a fairly narrow research topic and put together a bibliography of relevant results. Try to land on a topic for which there are 20-30 relevant results. (Ask your librarian for help if needed.) Note where you searched and how you searched.
Then, assign your students the same research topic. You could couch it as research that needs to be done for a hypothetical future work scenario, or to hypothetically write and publish a review article. Have them document where and how they searched, and have them put together a bibliography of the most relevant results they found, letting them know how many relevant articles you found, so they have an idea what to aim for. When they have turned in their work, use it to foster a discussion of their search strategies and what they found, and what they failed to find. Basically, the point is to compare how YOU did a comprehensive search, and how YOU chose the most relevant articles, compared to how they did it. This shows them how their novice skills differ from an expert's skills, and makes it clear how they fall short, and what they need to aspire to!
Do you have existing assignments or other ideas for assignments that we could add to this list? If so, Cline Library's Research and Instruction Services team would love to hear about it. Contact us!