MINING FOR "GOLD": STUDENT-DERIVED CRITERIA FOR WEBSITE EVALUATION IN INTRO COURSES

In introductory physical science courses, a challenge with writing assignments is the appropriateness of the online sources found and used by students. When left to their own devices, students can find excellent sites, but all too often try to use sources that have incorrect or dubious content, have an intended audience below college level, or both. In order to help students recognize and avoid such websites and be able to choose suitable ones, we have instituted a library instruction lesson based on the work of Benjes-Small et al. (2013), in which students learn to evaluate websites based upon their own “gold standard” criteria. First, working in small groups, students are introduced to pre-selected “bad” websites and are asked to determine what about them makes them poor choices to use for an assignment. These choices are shared and discussed with the class as a whole.

Then, considering the elements of what makes a source inappropriate for assignments in these classes, the students devise criteria that would make for good source choices, identifying the class “gold standard” elements. Using these criteria, the groups then find websites that are appropriate sources on the same assigned topics.

Finally, the groups present their findings to the rest of the class, explaining why they felt they fit the criteria and reflecting on the processes that they used to find and choose their sources, with the instructors giving feedback. To help them with their future assignments, students keep worksheets from the instruction class, and photos of the whiteboards (for the face-to-face classes) or exports from a Padlet (for the online classes during the COVID pandemic) that document the discussions are posted in the class LMS. After the session, students complete a feedback survey, which includes questions on how they students might use what they learned outside of the specific course assignments. Time permitting, a second library session follows, allowing for reinforcement of the evaluation criteria.

References

Benjes-Small, C., Archer, A., Tucker, K., Vassady, L., and Resor, J., 2013, Comm. Info. Lit., v. 7, 39–49, doi:10.15760/comminfolit.2013.7.1.133.