They aren't learning to think critically...

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, a book (Univ. Of Chicago Press)by Richard Arum, derives from an unusual study that followed several thousand undergraduates in the USA through 4 years of study. The important finding is that 45% of students made no significant improvement in their critical thinking, reasoning or writing skills during the first two years of college. After four years, 36% showed no significant gains in these so-called "higher order" thinking skills.
Being able to be critical about what you find and read and then build up an agument is what I am teaching most of the time. Therefore this report is of interesting to me and is a light bulb moment for those of us involved in Information Literacy. For more see here and here.

Blended Librarian talks Information Literacy

This little article in Chronicle of Higher Education 2 August 2010 tells of the work of Mark McBridge at Buffalo State College of the State University of New York. The work of this "blended librarian" should not be too much of a surprise to readers of this blog. "Mr. McBride teaches a course called Library 300. Its goal is not just to teach college students how and where to find information but how to weigh it—what counts as a reliable source and what doesn't." But there might just be some ideas here which could be of use in developing or justifying a service.

Evaluating Websites Tutorial

This TeacherTube video from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University Prescott may suite your need for a video to tackle the problem of how students should evaluate what they find.It's only 3 minutes long (I always favour the short ones...) and you may get some ideas here.

Information Source Evaluation Matrix

The new SCONUL Focus contains an article written by Mike Leigh and colleagues at DMU on the Information Source Evaluation Matrix, which they are using to enable students to assess information sources. Please send any feedback to Kaye Towlson (kbt@dmu.ac.uk).

Towlson, Kaye, Leigh, Mike and Mathers, Lucy (2009) The Information Source Evaluation Matrix, a quick, easy and transferable content evaluation tool, SCONUL Focus (47) p15 - 18

The Information Source Evaluation Matrix (ISEM) was developed by Leigh, Mathers and Towlson (2009) as part of a Research Informed Teaching Award funded project at De Montfort University. It is a quick, easy to use, information evaluation tool which identifies common criteria used in the evaluation of information sources. It provides a range of descriptors allocated to each evaluation criterion to allow a weighting to be allocated to a source within the context of a given task. This generates an overall score which gives a strong indication of the value of the source to the students’ work. This article provides background to its development and purpose, plus a copy of the matrix.

Online at http://www.sconul.ac.uk/publications/newsletter/47/5.pdf

At first sight this looks a very useful tool and its use would force students to apply all the criteria concerned in evaluating a website or any material.

There is also a copy of the matrix on the DMU site here.

Evaluating Web 2.0 resources

Readers of this blog may already know that I think the evaluation of resources is of paramount inportance in information literacy. Web 2.0 tools have provided us the means to deliver our teaching in new ways, but have also provided sources of information. In the case of Wikipedia this is now a huge! Blogs can give the latest buzz on topics.
Therefore it is useful to include these in evaluation guidance. This is what tghe UWE iSkill zone have done. Look at their site here.

Using MySpace and Facebook to teach critical evaluation

This post from Funky Librarian is great!
"The other day, however, when I was teaching library research skills in a lower-division Communications Class, something really wonderful and curious happened: students were talking, laughing, arguing, and questioning. "
A discussion on the merits of two articles (one magazine and one scholarly) led to discussions about MySpace and Facebook and genuine engagement about issues of security and authority. Recommended.