Library:Faculty Information Literacy Toolkit/Evaluating

Evaluating

In the spring of 2013, learning and assessment librarians from the UBC Library met with groups of first year students to ask them about their experience and understanding of research as their first term of studies drew to a close. The conversations between the students and librarians revealed quite a lot about how students approach research at the beginning of their academic careers.

There are five fundamental elements to the research skills students need to learn in order to succeed in first year and beyond. This video introduces the element of evaluating information.

Evaluating information is when students determine the usefulness of individual resources - their relevance to the topic being researched; whether they are scholarly or popular; and where they are situated within the discourse on the topic at hand.

Tips to Address Evaluating Resources

Limited Experience with Critical Evaluation

Many students do not yet have the skills and/or knowledge to differentiate scholarly sources from popular ones, or even primary sources from secondary ones. Instruction and assignment descriptions which clearly indicate the types of resources you expect students to use, and how you/your discipline define those types, can help students to think critically about information sources. Consider providing class time for students to examine examples and practice differentiating and critiquing the different types of sources they are expected to use (primary/secondary; scholarly/popular/empirical; etc).

Assess and Communicate the Merits of a Scholarly Work

Emphasizing that just because an article fits the basic criteria for scholarship doesn’t make it equal to all other scholarly works is an important way to begin the discussion about scholarship itself. One way to do this is to emphasize that a students' final paper (or other finished product) should make clear the value of each source used. Assignments that ask students to question, "Why this one and not the other articles they came across?" will yield more thought-provoking work.

Requiring students to use specific databases can help them focus their research - but it can also take ownership away from students, and make them hesitant to deviate from your instructions if they find useful resources outside of the required sources. Consider placing more emphasis on “teaching them to fish” - explaining what characteristics of your recommended/required sources make them useful, and encouraging students to apply those criteria to other sources as well.