Hi Everyone!
On Tuesday, January 27th: I am introducing the Information Literacy Essay. Full instructions can be found here. Links to the Dan Olson documentary and the excerpt from The Lost World of the Dinosaurs can be found on the Information Literacy Essay assignment portal on Canvas.
In class, we will complete the Bees! activity found on Canvas (this was originally intended to be a group activity, but it can just as easily be completed as a solo project). We'll discuss how to tell if a source is credible, how credibility exists on a spectrum, and the importance of measurements like Impact Factor. I may also go into greater detail about how to navigate the FLITE library website. I have recorded a video of these segment of the class if you need to revisit it: FLITE Library Tour. In the video, I also discuss how you can get your course books free through Interlibrary Loan and MeLCat.
Sunday, February 1st: Submit the Dino Detective worksheet to Canvas. The Information Literacy Essay asks you to describe good information/digital literacy practices. Your vocabulary for this section of the paper should come from "A Primer on Falsifiability," the Dino Detective worksheet, and the Bees! activity, as well as in-class discussions about academic search engines. If your definitions and examples of good information/digital literacy practices come straight from Google (or resemble the dozens of AI papers that I have received for this assignment in the past), you will lose points.
By Monday, February 2nd: Submit your completed Information Literacy Essay to Canvas. Please review all assignment requirements in the Syllabus before submitting your work.
Other Notes: As students who did not receive full points for the Signed Syllabus assignment already know, it's important that you actually read the materials I send you and watch the lecture videos. I try to teach this lesson early on in the semester. If you didn't actually read the full Syllabus, you're setting yourself up for a difficult time in the class.
If you have not yet received a grade for the Basic Research Skills Assessments, it's because you need to fix something. Check the submission comments on Canvas for that assignment. I'll allow students a little time to post revisions to this assignment (just attach the updated file as a submission comment) before I enter the final grade.
The most common issue was that students did not include page numbers for their parenthetical (in-text) citations in Part B. This is a requirement for citing articles in ALL major assignments in this class. In my FLITE Library Tour, I again go over how you can find this information to include in your citations. Be aware that if you give me inaccurate or fabricated page numbers or timestamps for your essays, the highest grade you can earn on that assignment is 50%. This is not punitive. It is THE main way for me to able to track your research process and verify your quotes/your engagement with your sources.
If you are still confused about how to create MLA formatted in-text citations or Works Cited pages, please visit the links to the relevant Purdue OWL pages in the syllabus.