First Year Seminar: Evaluating Sources

Source #1

Source #2

This activity was developed with generic resources that may not pertain to your students' discipline areas or assignments. All of the worksheets and handouts are in editable formats (Word, PowerPoint, etc.) and you are welcome to customize the content to meet your needs.

If you have questions about choosing subject-specific resources, or have an idea but aren't sure how to change the activity to suit, ask a friendly librarian!

This lesson has an awards show theme to get students engaged in evaluating sources for quality and appropriateness in a scholarly assignment.  Students will be given an introductory overview of the criteria for evaluating sources, framed as criteria for their decisions as judges in the awards program and shown 4-5 sources and their accompanying authors (nominees).

Time Required

• Total time: 50 minutes
  • 25 minutes to go over the awards criteria and the "highlight reel" of the nominees
  • 15 minutes for the judges to cast their ballots and determine the winners
    
  • 10 minutes to award prizes, wrap up and cover any Instructor Talking points missed in the presentation
    

Required Equipment

• Sample Sources Packet for each student or group of students
• Highlight Reel to showcase the strong points of each source before giving it to the students
  
• Ballots for judges
• White erase board or demo computer for tallying scores and writing winners in each category
  
• Candy or prizes for students
  

Source Packet

• Using the sources provided, students will look for criteria to rank the sources according to quality and appropriateness for a scholarly project. The ballots are designed to help students discover what they can expect from journal articles in a UTA database or searching the web for their paper topics.
• The Instructor Talking Points is an editable Word document. Feel free to make additional notes or even change out the selected sources with sources related to the discipline area the students are studying. If you would like to customize your source packet but need help setting it up or creating the Highlight Reel, ask a friendly librarian.
  

Session Details

• Introduction
  • Indicate what students will be doing and why you are asking them to do it.
  • Break students into groups of no more than 4 students.
  • Let them know that they will be judging the source awards and determining winners for today's nominees. They will want to make certain to clearly mark on their ballots which criteria each of the sources meet.
  • Show students the awards criteria and review the ballots together.
    
  • Show them the Highlight Reel and distribute the Source Packets to the groups.
    
• Group Activity
  
  • Each group gets a Source Packet and each student recieves a ballot.
    • Every group should review the sources together and discuss the criteria in their judge's panels.
    • Each judge fills out the "Your Choice" selections and submits their ballots.
  • Tally the votes together using the whiteboard. If there are any ties, offer suggestions from the highlight reel why one source might be more deserving than the other. Have the class vote with a show of hands to break the tie.
    
• Awarding prizes
  
  • Return the ballots to each student and as you announce the "winners", have students fill out the "Actual Winners" section of their ballots. Students with the most correct choices should pick out prizes (candy or pencils) as everyone leaves.
    
  • Thank everyone for participating and encourage them to keep their ballots for reference when selecting sources for future projects.
    
  • Make certain that students address the following:
    • The definition of currency
    • How to recognize authority in a subject
      
    • Print vs. electronic indicators of relevance or timeliness
      
    • "Suspicious" indicators that a source is biased or irrelevant
    • BONUS: How to use a literature review or citations list for additional research
      
    • BONUS: Where to get help finding sources
      

Instructor Talking Points

• See the Evaluating Sources Talking Points in the Highlight Reel PowerPoint at right. The Talking Points are entered as "notes" and will not display when you are running the slideshow from presentation mode. You can print the slides as a handout with notes and use this hard copy during the lesson.