Information literacy is the ability to use critical thinking to create meaningful knowledge from information. The information literate student: engages in a process of inquiry in order to frame intellectual challenges and identify research needs; accesses, evaluates, and communicates information effectively; provides attribution for source materials used; develops insight into the social, legal, economic and ethical aspects of information creation, use, access and durability.

 

Related tips:
Information Literacy: Syllabus and Assignment Creation

Tell students the ways in which authors establish credibility to help students evaluate sources and establish credibility within their writing.

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Action:

  • Enumerate or have students brainstorm ways in which authors establish credibility. For example,
    Referencing a broad range of scholarly articles about a topic.
    Referencing seminal works within a domain.
    References scholarly rather than popular or opinion sources.
    Presents evidence to support the argument.
    Distinguishes between their ideas and the ideas of others.

Reason:

  • Understanding the disciplinary ways in which authors establish credibility is important for both evaluating and generating research papers.

Model in-class how to identify appropriate, authoritative, and seminal sources to introduce search and evaluation techniques.

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Action:

  • Increase the font size in your web browser and project your computer screen. Narrate your thought process as you search for and evaluate sources about a particular topic.
  • State explicitly the limitations of various search resources within your discipline.

Reason:

  • Live demonstrations can be helpful for capturing seemingly inconsequential steps that may confuse or stall students.

Ask students to summarize and then critique sources to have students practice synthesizing, contextualizing, and communicating the ideas of source authors and the students own evaluation of these ideas.

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Action:

  • In oral or written form, ask students to both summarize and critique a source. Ask students to separate their summary and critique.

Reason:

  • Separating their summary and critique can help illustrate the differences in content and structure.

Provide students techniques for evaluating sources to help them identify biased or non-authoritative sources.

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Action:

  • For a given source, direct students to ask and answer:

    • Who produced the information?
    • Who could benefit from the dissemination of this information?
    • What perspective is not represented?
    • Does the information support or challenge established understandings of the issue?

Reason:

  • Identifying biased and non-authoritative sources requires knowledge of the domain. Providing a concrete set of questions can help students more efficiently identify biased and non-authoritative sources.