Student Learning Assessment Toolkit

Students will be able to investigate how information sources work together around a topic. (Scholarship as Conversation/Research as Inquiry)   

Some skills that teach to this outcome:  

• Scholarly Conversation  
• Identifying gaps in research  
• Understand they are entering ongoing research and not a finished conversation  
• Audit their own bibliography to determine what sources they need to add and how their sources work together   
• Rhetorical analysis of sources   
• Evaluation Tools: SIFT, RADAR, CRAAP, News You Can Use   
• Critical reading of sources – what is the source saying? How are they saying it?   
• The role of publishers in the information dissemination process and how they can bias a source   
• Types of information – scholarly, popular, grey, trade   
• Discipline Specific Information Types  

Activity 1: 

Outcome:  

SIFT detective – SIFT discovery – using the methods of SIFT, students will go through an article provided by the instructor to complete a Microsoft form walking them through the methods. Class will then review with instructor. This part can be done individually or in groups. Part two, within a second Microsoft form, using an article they have found for their research assignment, students will individually use SIFT to evaluate their source.  

Skills: 

• Evaluation Tools: SIFT, RADAR, CRAAP, News You Can Use  

Activity 2   

Outcome: Students compare and contrast information in order to create connections across information.  

Skills:  

• Identifying gaps in research  
• Understand they are entering ongoing research and not a finished conversation 

In groups of four or five, students are given a series of cards with images of similar types of objects, e.g. mythical/folkloric monsters or candies. Each card has an image of the item and a brief written description. Students create groupings and categories of the items. These groupings are at the discretion of each group, but every item must fit into at least one group. For example, groupings for candy might be chocolates and fruit-based, or bars, pieces, want round-shaped. After students share out their groupings, a class discussion follows about how this compares to grouping and synthesizing sources in research.  

Assessment Option: 

Students complete a worksheet that asks them to categorize or group their sources for their research project.  

Rubric: 

Activity 3 

Outcome: Students identify how an article is situated in the scholarly conversation. 

Skills: 

• Scholarly Conversation  
• Identifying gaps in research 
• Understand they are entering ongoing research and not a finished conversation 

After locating a source of interest for their research, students use Web of Science (or Google Scholar) to identify how many times it's been cited. In pairs, students then discuss the relevance and importance of the number of times it's been cited. Students then complete a one-minute paper or exit ticket related to their source. 

Assessment Option: 

1. How many times was your source cited? 

2. What is one thing that number may tell you about your source? 

3. What is one thing you might need to do look up to determine what that number means in relation to your article or its discipline? 

Scoring Criteria Suggestion: 

Activity 4 

Outcome: Students will be able to distinguish types of sources.  

Skills: 

• Types of information – scholarly, popular, grey, trade   
• Discipline Specific Information Types  

Students will look at three print versions of publications: A peer-reviewed journal, a bound conference proceeding, or a trade magazine. They do not need to be from the same discipline because the goal is to look at the physical differences between the publication types. 

In small groups (3-5 students) students will look at the publications and start filling out a worksheet that looks like this: 

After 15-20 minutes of small group work, the class will discuss each type of publication and the various characteristics. 

Assessment Option 1: 

The instructor can mark how many groups successfully identified each publication type. 

Scoring Option:  

• Successful: All groups successfully identify publication types 
• Developing: More than half of the groups successfully identify publication types 
• Unsatisfactory: Less than half of the groups successfully identify publication types  

Assessment Option 2: 

The following One-Minute Paper: 

1. What are 3 characteristics of a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal? 
2. What are 2 reasons you might use a conference proceeding instead of a peer-reviewed journal article? 
3. What is 1 difference between a trade publication and a scholarly journal? 

Rubric: