Developed in order to move students away from an outdated checklist approach to evaluating online content, we developed this tutorial to teach students how to read laterally and think critically. This tutorial consists of several small chunks of microlearning activities including an assignment. Students can complete as much or as little as they feel they need.

The assignment has students search the same topic in Google and the Web of Science or BIOSIS database. They are asked to pick one result from each search, identify its components (title, author, year) and identify the container of the information (journal, book, news, etc.). They are then asked to compare and reflect on the different results. 

How can we facilitate first-year student engagement with critical Framework concepts, especially in a one-shot class? This active learning activity is designed to teach source evaluation in a 50-minute class. The activity, which incorporates elements of problem-based learning and uses a flipped classroom approach, was added to our institution’s first-year experience course.

This assignment introduces students to United States patents and to prior art searching using two free, online databases: Espacenet and Lens.org. Instructional videos are available at: http://guides.lib.campbell.edu/patents . 

A primer on how to read academic articles by guiding the class through a series of questions. Give students 5-15 minutes per slide to answer the questions (individually or in groups) before talking about their answers to questions with the whole class.

This lesson on journal prestige could be taught by itself, as part of a series on scholarly communication, or as a small part of a larger lesson on information prestige.

This is an activity to get students to think critically about the sources and information presented in a Wikipedia article.

This lesson on the nature and cost of scholarly publishing could be taught by
itself, or as part of a series on scholarly communication, or as a small part of a larger lesson on
information privilege.

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

This essay assignment asks students to reflect on their research process, evaluate on their sources, and reflect on social justice implications in reference to Catholic social teaching.