This low-stakes, in-class assignment is designed to help first-year seminar students learn about important library resources and present their findings to their fellow students. In teams, students complete a series of authentic research tasks (called challenges) such as selecting and citing images from our digital collection and using our discovery tool to find books on the library shelves. Each team is also assigned a unique challenge to learn more about the library.

The goal of this activity is to explore spaces, services, and information literacy (IL) concepts through problem-based scenarios, guided discovery, and peer teaching. Ideal for orientations for K-12, undergraduate, transfer, or graduate students, but can also be used for instruction requests with no clear research assignment or at the start of a research project. Students work in groups to find solutions to a scenario using guided directions and tools, and then teach the rest of the class based on their findings.

Students self-reflect on ways in which they do research and create knowledge. This is a discussion topic in an online library research class. My students are mostly adult learners with full-time jobs.

A two-credit online undergraduate information literacy course used in an adult degree completion bachelor's program.

Did fake news affect the presidential election? Do websites purposely publish misleading stories? In this workshop, learn how to evaluate the trustworthiness of news stories while responsibly sharing reliable information.

Are you finding reliable sources for your research papers and projects? Has your professor asked you to use scholarly sources? What is a scholarly source anyway? In this workshop, learn how to critically evaluate the information you find through books, articles, and websites.

**This lesson plan was adapted from "Establishing and Applying Evaluation Criteria" p. 74 -78 in Teaching Information Literacy Threshold Concepts Lesson Plans for Librarians, edited by Bravender, McClure, and Schaub (2015).**

This 30-minute activity demonstrates how to search in Google Scholar and explains how results are ranked. It requires students to explore Google Scholar and encourages students to reflect on potential biases this tool might have in regards to research. This lesson plan was Part 2 of an hour-long workshop that also included a 30 minute search engine algorithmic bias lesson.

This 30-minute activity was a quick introduction to algorithmic bias and the importance of critically evaluating search engine results. Algorithms increasingly shape modern life and can perpetuate bias and discrimination. In pairs, students analyzed the results from Google Image searches and Google Autocomplete suggestions. This activity was based on “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism,” by Safiya Umoja Noble. This lesson plan was Part 1 of an hour-long workshop that also included a 30 minute Google Scholar activity.