The information literacy in class assignment was introduced to Sophomores and Juniors in STEM during a math class. Concepts such as types of information sources and critical evaluation of information sources were introduced.  The remainder of time is devoted to a group assignment on evaluating information sources both on the Web in comparison to the information resource.Students worked in groups to complete the assignment which was handed out on paper.  The first part explained again criteria for evaluating information sources while the second part gave 3 example sources from a Wikipedia article.  Students were asked to identify the type of information source (scholarly journal, news, book, website) and the authors with their credentials.  Then the students were asked to infer the intended audience for the information source and the usefulness of the information for their coursework later in the semester.  Finally, the students were asked to located an item in the library’s discovery search interface that was of high quality in the characteristics they had explored.

An open access MOOC in French to bonify the information literacy skills of university students (with Moodle).

In this activity, students work in groups to craft a response to a presidential tweet from an assigned perspective (e.g. right or left leaning news source). In doing so, they are required to find, evaluate, and effectively use information to make a case. Unlike a research paper, which aspires to be neutral or unbiased, this activity asks students to respond to a tweet from a particular perspective, with a particular bias, requiring them to engage with their sources in a new way. The activity is followed by a discussion of students' interactions with the information they found and presented. 

This lesson plan uses Kevin Seeber's process cards and our newly created set of process cards that focus on news sources.  In the activities using the process cards, our students were able to define and contextualize different types of information resources, including news sources.  The tranfer and apply assessment used to close the session provides an opportunity for the students to think about how they would integrate these types of information into coursework, the workplace, and their personal lives.

If there were a list of things I absolutely required all my students to understand before leaving my class, the relationship between mass media, politics, and science would be close to the top of the list. But there are a lot of moving parts in these relationships, so the terrain is difficult to traverse.  As one might expect of a difficult topic, there is much to read and a lot to unpack.   This pathfinder discusses how politics and our mass media system complicate the dissemination of important scientific information. 

This is a lesson plan that centers around a 30-minute activity that gets students thinking and talking about the primary sources they create as they go about their daily lives, in order to prepare them to understand and contextualize the primary sources they encounter in historical research. They will also learn skills that can be transferred to future archival research. This works well as part I of a two-part interaction with classes. Typically, I go to their classroom for this lesson, meeting the students in a room in which they feel comfortable. They then come to the library several weeks later for a research-intensive workshop.

Studying music in an online setting requires that students and instructors leverage digital resources and participatory technologies with understanding and intentionality. Meta-literacy, a framework promoting critical thinking and collaboration, is an inclusive approach to understanding the complexities of information use, production, and sharing in a digital environment. This chapter explores the implications of meta-literacy for the online music classroom and identifies ways in which the librarian and music instructor can collaborate to promote student self-reflection on the use, creation, and understanding of musical information or content.  

In this exploratory study the author asks students enrolled in a credit-bearing undergraduate research methods course to rank and evaluate the troublesome, transformative, and integrative nature of the six frames currently comprising the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. The results indicate that students have valid insights into threshold concept-based instruction, but may confuse the application with the theory. If practitioners are to embrace not only the frames, but also the spirit of the Framework, we must directly involve students in our teaching and research practices.

Although much of the classical music repertory is centuries old, musicians and musicologists participate in ongoing and lively conversations about the works. New insights on old works increasingly surface thanks to technological innovations: from data-rich digital humanities projects to casual online forums where media and text can be posted and discussed. The study and performance of a musical work--even more so than text-based disciplines--should be informed by a variety of sources in a wide array of formats. As the interplay between audience and performer becomes increasingly dynamic and the potential sources for study multiply, librarians can help students negotiate this sustained, multi-format discourse. Unlike other disciplines in which there may be an uncontested answer, a musical work is subject to interpretation in unique ways. “Scholarship as Conversation” provides a framework with which musicians might begin to navigate the many considerations of how to perform or understand a piece. In order to fully appreciate the lifecycle of the work, for example, once must synthesize a variety of contemporary and historical recordings, scholarly, manuscript, and performing scores, composer biography, and other contextual information. Academic librarians must partner with music faculty to offer instruction that specifically targets and assesses student understanding of the dialogic nature of music performance and study. By helping musicians understand the many voices engaged in this dialogue, such collaborations could make a meaningful impact on the musician’s stock-in-trade: her performance.

A classroom activity and lesson plan for first-year students. Your students will learn to differentiate between different categories of items -- such as Popular/Scholarly, or Primary/Secondary/Tertiary -- by playing this fun and easy game.