The fourth class is utilized to discuss and demonstrate the five criteria needed to critically evaluate information obtained from the Internet (Beck, 1997).
* Discover and critically evaluate information obtained from electronic resources
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly: or, Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources.
The Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL) (2003) information literacy standards for higher education define information literacy as knowing of how to look for, evaluate, and use information.
The library component of this class was designed not only to help students find information for their assigned class presentations, but also to equip them with the knowledge to find and evaluate the wide range of information available about science topics in order to make informed judgments on other science issues.
Annotations are specified in the assignment so that students do not have to simply summarize the information in the sources, but evaluate the credibility and relevance of each source for their presentations.
A learner-centered outcome-based library session of 75 minutes was designed to give students background on how to develop a research strategy, what types of sources are available, how to find, and then evaluate information.
Students also need to know how to find answers to their questions on their topics, to differentiate between popular/scholarly and primary/secondary sources, to evaluate web pages, and to prepare an annotated bibliography of their sources.
Students in their groups evaluate print books and articles related to their topics written by nonscientists, by scientists for non-scientists, and scientists for their peers and report their findings to the whole class.
The librarian, professor, and students review a research web page, created by the librarian (McCulley, 2004), which includes information about where to find and how to evaluate information in print and on the web.
While the Internet offers access to more information than any existing hardcopy encyclopedia, students need to do more than just gather data; they need to analyze and evaluate those data (Tuathail & McCormick, 1998).
With the huge amount of information that is now available on the World Wide Web, students need to be able to critically evaluate a Web page, and its contents, for usability, applicability, authenticity, authorship, and bias.