Lesson Plan II

Lesson Topic:
Web Evaluation

User Group and scenario:

First -year college students. Class size 12 students. IL workshop is embedded into Introduction to National Government class. Students are required to write a paper on passed within the last 10 years public law (Legislative History Paper) and they need to support their essay with government information found on the web. Therefore, the class instructor asked academic reference librarian to conduct a short 10 minutes instruction on how to evaluate web resources. Upon the librarians request students were required to fill out the assessment survey and read the article: Beck, Susan E. (1997, July 7). The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, or Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources. Institute for Technology-Assisted Learning, New Mexico State University. Retrieved from : http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html.

Demographic information:
Students come from different environments and socio- economic status and they are first-year college students. Students are all under 25 years old and 2 students speak English as their second language.

Previous information literacy skills, research habits, and educational background:

Day before the session, students were asked to fill out the assessment test in order to adjust the difficulty of instruction to their needs and skills. The results of the tests indicated that learners have basic technology skills, such as searching the internet, word applications and knowledge of Blackboard software. They have similar educational background and graduated from high-school within the last year. Also, they have never participated in any formal library instruction. All students answered that they use search engines such as Yahoo and Google to conduct their research.

Learning objectives:
Students will learn to evaluate the accuracy, relevance, appropriateness, comprehensiveness, and bias of electronic web sources.

Students will learn web evaluation criteria and based on that knowledge they will be able to select appropriate web sources for their Legislative History Essay. Students will be able to identify and define authentic problems and significant questions related to publicly accessible web sources.

Content:
1. Introduction 2. Brainstorming question (why Web page is useful for research) 3. Lecture (Web evaluation criteria: purpose, authority, objectivity, appropriateness, currency, responsibility, clarity, accessibility) 4. Group activity 5. Closure and assessment homework assigned

Activities for a class period:

1. On the beginning of the session instructor will ask students to brainstorm a list of criteria which make a Web page useful for research. 2. Instructor will present short lecture using PowerPoint about the web evaluation criteria (purpose, authority, objectivity, appropriateness, currency, responsibility, clarity, accessibility). All the examples of web sites used during the lecture will be related to government information in order to make the instruction more relevant to students. 3. Students will be given a handout with web evaluation criteria and significant questions to ask while evaluating web page. Then they will need to form 4 groups of 3 students. Each group will have access to the computer and will be given 3 websites. Students in small groups will evaluate the information on the Web page using the critical evaluation criteria.

Resources and materials:

Computers and projector PowerPoint software Handouts Article: Beck, Susan E. (1997, July 7). The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, or Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources.

Recommended time:
Introduction (30 seconds) Brainstorming question (1 minute 30 seconds) Lecture (5 minutes)
2

Activity (2 minutes 15 seconds) Closure (45 seconds)

Assessment:
After the session, based on assigned reading and IL instruction students will be asked to post a short answer on the class blog on question: Why is it important to evaluate the source and validity of the information found on a Web site and why is it essential for their Legislative History Paper?