Mountain or Molehill? Developing Online Tutorials on Web Source Evaluation

Type of Presentation

Poster Session (45 minutes)

Target Audience

Higher Education

Location

Lobby

Proposal

Auburn University Libraries recently transitioned its instruction curriculum for first-year composition students from in-person instruction to online. As part of this transition, we have been working to create active learning opportunities through a combination of LMS modules and online tutorials using the authoring software Articulate.

Our most recent challenge was to create a tutorial on evaluating web sources that avoided the binary CRAAP method of source evaluation, but which instead focused on context-specific evaluation of authority and credibility. We had initially planned to create one tutorial that covered both general web source evaluation and news source evaluation, but we quickly realized this topic was mountainous and vast, and required more time and consideration than one tutorial could provide. We not only had to introduce the concept of source evaluation to first-year students, but also address common misconceptions around web sources including the quality of websites with a .org or a .net domain name, the presence of ads in news sources, and how editorial bias factors into the credibility of a source, among others.

This poster will discuss our philosophy behind separating online web source and news source evaluation, share ideas for active learning opportunities in an autonomous online setting, and discuss future additions or opportunities to expand the current tutorials as web sources become more prevalent in undergraduate writing assignments.

Short Description

This poster will discuss Auburn University’s two newest online Articulate tutorials on web source and news source evaluation. The poster will discuss our philosophy behind separating online web source and news source evaluation, share ideas for active learning opportunities in an autonomous online setting, and discuss future additions or opportunities to expand the current tutorials as web sources become more prevalent in undergraduate writing assignments.

Keywords

Information Literacy, source evaluation, online tutorial, news, active learning, online instruction

Publication Type and Release Option

Presentation (Open Access)

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Feb 21st, 1:00 PM Feb 21st, 1:45 PM

Mountain or Molehill? Developing Online Tutorials on Web Source Evaluation

Lobby

Auburn University Libraries recently transitioned its instruction curriculum for first-year composition students from in-person instruction to online. As part of this transition, we have been working to create active learning opportunities through a combination of LMS modules and online tutorials using the authoring software Articulate.

Our most recent challenge was to create a tutorial on evaluating web sources that avoided the binary CRAAP method of source evaluation, but which instead focused on context-specific evaluation of authority and credibility. We had initially planned to create one tutorial that covered both general web source evaluation and news source evaluation, but we quickly realized this topic was mountainous and vast, and required more time and consideration than one tutorial could provide. We not only had to introduce the concept of source evaluation to first-year students, but also address common misconceptions around web sources including the quality of websites with a .org or a .net domain name, the presence of ads in news sources, and how editorial bias factors into the credibility of a source, among others.

This poster will discuss our philosophy behind separating online web source and news source evaluation, share ideas for active learning opportunities in an autonomous online setting, and discuss future additions or opportunities to expand the current tutorials as web sources become more prevalent in undergraduate writing assignments.