Information Has Value

Voting Research Activity

Deciding who to vote for can be hard. On top of that, finding information about local elections can sometimes be difficult, as can be figuring out if you agree with a candidate on an issue that you don’t know too much about. This activity engages students in the civic process and in research. Students will use internet searching to find information about candidates, and database searching to find information out about an issue. 

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Discipline(s): 
Not Discipline Specific
License Assigned: 
CC Attribution License CC-BY

Politics, Science, and Media

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. 
License Assigned: 
CC Attribution-ShareAlike License CC-BY-SA

Thinking about digital privacy, including the Rewards and Risks of Convenience

This is designed as a 75 minute lesson plan. It isn’t tied to specific course content, but can be tailored to a particular course and scaled to shorter or longer class sessions. It is designed as more of a theoretical, reflective introduction to concepts of privacy and security than as a nuts-and-bolts or tech heavy workshop, and it includes a debate activity entitled "The Rewards and Risks of Convenience." It could also be used as part 1 in a two-part workshop series in which the second focuses more on specific strategies/methods/software.

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Information Literacy Frame(s) Addressed:

License Assigned: 
CC Attribution License CC-BY

Meta-literacy in the online music classroom: Opportunities for instructor and librarian collaboration

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.  
License Assigned: 
All Rights Reserved

Transformative? Integrative? Troublesome? Undergraduate Student Reflections on Information Literacy Threshold Concepts.

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.
License Assigned: 
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License CC-BY-NC-ND

Teaching Copyleft as a Critical Approach to "Information Has Value"

The credit-bearing classroom provides librarians with expanded opportunities to connect with students as teachers, mentors, and advocates. Both the content and approach of one-shot sessions are often driven by faculty requests for resource-based instruction. Librarians teaching credit-bearing classes do not face the same constraints on their time with students or limitations on instructional content. Accordingly, librarians in credit-bearing settings can go beyond demonstrating databases or teaching discrete skills to engage students in learning research concepts and to advocate for information- related social justice issues. One such advocacy issue is copyleft, a movement responding to the constraints of traditional copyright by allowing the licensed work to be used, modified, and distributed as determined by the work’s creator. By introducing students to the copyleft movement, librarians can encourage students to make their works more freely available and to engage in the conversation of scholarship. This chapter presents a case study of a research methods course in which students created and embedded Creative Commons licenses in digital platforms in order to encourage learners to critically evaluate the production and value of information.

Information Literacy Frame(s) Addressed:

Discipline(s): 
Not Discipline Specific
License Assigned: 
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License CC-BY-NC-ND

Privacy Workshop

This workshop delivers an action-oriented introduction to personal data privacy designed for new college students. The session is designed to reveal the systems in place to collect and analyze online behavioral data, and to unveil the real-world consequences of online profiling in contexts like sentiment shaping, consumer preferences, employment, healthcare, personal finance, and law enforcement. In lieu of a prescriptive approach, students analyze case studies to observe how online behaviors impact real-world opportunities and reflect on the benefits and risks of technology use to develop purposeful online behaviors and habits that align with their individual values. Developing knowledge practices regarding privacy and the commodification of personal information and embodying the core library values of privacy and intellectual freedom, the workshop promotes a proactive rather than reactive approach and presents a spectrum of privacy preferences across a range of contexts in order to respect students’ autonomy and agency in personal technology use.

Information Literacy Frame(s) Addressed:

License Assigned: 
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License CC-BY-NC-SA

What type of research do you need? (2.0)

Updated Version, please download this one!  This infographic helps students figure out more information about peer-reviewed articles, including types of secondary articles like meta-analysis and meta-synethesis.  This map gives more information and helps to point them in the right direction, especially those doing literature reviews in the sciences.  

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License Assigned: 
CC Attribution License CC-BY

Lecture Notes Toward a Theory of Everything — Information, Power, and Problems

A discussion and overview of the following ideasWhy we see things differently.Why we don’t like to be wrong.Why it is dangerous to question authority.Where we got the letter A.The morbidity of Puritan children’s books.How culture and community impact information.The origin of the political parties in America.How information is dangerous and can be used to disrupt or preserve a social order. take note of the following terms:cognitive dissonanceconfirmation biasdisconfirmation biasoppositional media hostilitypropagandatop-down information systemsbottom-up information systemspublic spheresocial responsibility theory of journalismobjectivitythe Fairness DoctrineNet Neutrality 

Resource Type(s):

License Assigned: 
CC Attribution License CC-BY

Path to Research (History Methods Research Snake)

Similar to my general "research snake" this one is specficially for history student searching for history resources, primary and secondary.  This is a visual resource you can use to show students how to start research and the steps they should follow along the way.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at samkennedy@gmail.com

Resource Type(s):

Discipline(s): 
History
License Assigned: 
CC Attribution License CC-BY

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