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Provides brief, capsule reviews of all kinds of visualization projects.

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Newsmap harvests data from Google News and reformats it into a treemap for a visual display. Readers can drill down by topic, or by geographic region.

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Indeed, the find­ ings of this study offer no silver bullet (or single intervention) that will produce an information-literate college graduate.

George D. Kuh and Robert M. Gonyea (2003). The role of the academic library in promoting student engagement in learning. College & Research Libraries. 64:4, 256-282. http://crl.acrl.org/content/64/4/256.abstract

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We offer these side-by-side comparisons not to suggest that the writers are misusing sources (though sometimes that is indeed the case) but to demonstrate that these students are not writing from sources; they are writing from sentences selected from sources.

Rebecca Moore Howard, Tricia Serviss, and Tanya K. Rodrigue. (Fall 2010). Writing and Pedagogy. 2:2, 177-192.

http://writing.byu.edu/static/documents/org/1176.pdf

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In an educational context, information literacy as a skill‐based literacy is seen as cognitive, measurable, and transferable to other contexts. The process of transfer across contexts, that is, from school to work, is viewed as largely unproblematic, a view that underlies statements about information literacy facilitating lifelong learning

Annemaree Lloyd (April 2007). "Learning to Put Out the Red Stuff: Becoming Information Literate through Discursive Practice." The Library Quarterly. 77:2, 181-198.

DOI: 10.1086/517844

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We argue that finding context is one of the most laborious, yet requisite, parts of the research process for today’s students.

Alison Head Project Information Literacy: What Can We Learn about the Information Seeking Behavior of College Students Presented at the ALA Annual Conference 2013 http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/conferences/confsandpreconfs/2013/papers/Head_Project.pdf

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(via Jossey-Bass::How College Affects Students: A Third Decade of Research, Volume 2) Comprehensive review of college student development theory.

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Confidence in problem-solving abilities measures the user's self-assurance while engaging in problem-solving activities. Findings suggest that Confidence has a significant impact on the perception of sources. The Low-Confidence users who feel less assured while solving problems tended to have a rather negative perception of information sources in general. They viewed information sources less comprehensive, less familiar, less interesting, and less easy to use. They also perceived most sources to be more costly to use, than the High-Confidences did.

Kyung-Sun Kim & Sei-Ching Joanna Sin. (December 2007). Perception and Selection of Information Sources by Undergraduate Students: Effects of Avoidant Style, Confidence, and Personal Control in Problem-Solving. Journal of Academic Librarianship. 33:6, 655-665. 

http://www.frinq-workshop.michael-flower.com/resources/Thursday-the-18th/kim_sin.pdf

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Decision-making and sound science (Bridgewater State)

J. Khodor

"Making decisions in today's world frequently requires processing a lot of information. Advertisements for consumer cleaning products make claims about the product's effectiveness. Patients make decisions about which course of treatment to follow. Government agencies and non-profits try to figure out the most effective way to spend limited funds. Sometimes, we base our decisions on the information we gleam from various descriptions of scientific studies. Frequently, these descriptions are delivered to us in one form or another by mass media. Sometimes, we encounter sources or pseudo-scientific studies, some of them taking great pains to appear considerably more credible than they actually are. How can we tell good studies from the bad? When are a study's conclusions relevant to the question we are considering? And how can we tell whether the size of the effect a study demonstrates makes it worth our while to worry about it in making our decisions? We will delve into these and related questions while considering a number of situations that call for a well thought out decision."

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Science Myth Busters (Oregon State University)

Kyle Cole.

"Do humans really only use 10% of our brains? Do vaccines cause autism? Do astrological signs correlate with personality traits? Does birth order determine intelligence? Does Facebook make people sad? In this class students will investigate a broad range of pervasive beliefs with the goals of learning critical analysis, performing literature research and evaluating scientific data to draw conclusions—important skills for separating fact from fiction and succeeding in college. Students will be introduced to the concepts underlying common myths and learn how to develop a research question by delving into their own interests on a current topic in this field."

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Cleopatra in History and the Imagination (Oberlin)

D. Wilburn

"The sister-wife of Ptolemy XIII, lover of Julius Caesar, and co-regent of Marc Antony, Cleopatra VII is one of the most famous individuals from antiquity. This course will attempt to answer the question: who was the real Cleopatra – wise ruler, conniving queen, or decadent temptress? The course will begin by examining the life of Cleopatra and the role she played in determining history during her lifetime. Then, the course will turn to the portrayal of Cleopatra in popular culture from antiquity to the modern period, looking at how contemporary society shapes history and memory. In addition to ancient sources, the course will analyze art works, including a painting at the Allen Memorial Museum of Art, literature and film. We will trace the changing interpretation of the figure of Cleopatra through different periods, particularly emphasizing the themes of artistic portrayal and realism, colonialism, cultural identity and the role of powerful women in ancient society. The course will focus on writing and analysis of different kinds of sources: literature, history, art, and film."

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"The University of Oregon Documenting Freshman Year Experience Project is undertaken every Fall Term by a Residential Freshman Interest Groups (FIG) course. As part of each course students create weekly project entries in a variety of media that include ephemera and photographs taken during their first term at the University of Oregon."

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The students enrolled in this FYS showcase their work in an annual Symposium. The library then archives the student work here.

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This is an example of a class using Wikipedia articles as an alternative "output" -- an alternative to the traditional research paper.  

Notice the care and attention paid to grounding student work in an understanding of Wikipedia's unique culture. 

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The checklist model is an internal model: it focuses on criteria internal to the Web page in question. An alternative to the checklist model is the contextual approach. The contextual approach uses peer and editorial review, comparison, and corroboration to bring external criteria to bear on target Web sites. The contextual approach uses information to evaluate information—it promotes the library’s resources, teaches information literacy, and encourages reasoned judgments of information quality

Marc Meola. (July 2004). Chucking the Checklist: A Contextual Approach to Teaching Undergraduates Web Site Evaluation. 4:3, 331-344.

http://www.tcnj.edu/~meolam/documents/Chucking_003.pdf

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The thing is, you inevitably declare that the author is "biased" as if this is all you have to say on the subject - as if discovering "bias" is some form of analysis. I hate to tell you this, but it's really not.

New Kid on the Hallway (blog). (April 23, 2008). "An Open Letter to My Students." 

http://newkidonthehallway.typepad.com/new_kid_on_the_hallway/2008/04/an-open-letter.html

This is why I don't like checklists -- I think it teaches students to evaluate like this.

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First, I don't think students are made to understand how hard it is to do research. And how very, very hard it is to do important research. It's a lot harder than taking even very demanding courses. What makes it difficult is that research is immersion in the unknown. We just don't know what we're doing. We can't be sure whether we're asking the right question or doing the right experiment until we get the answer or the result.

Martin A. Schwartz. (June 2008). "The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research." Journal of Cell Science. 121, 1771.

DOI: 10.1242/jcs.033340

This is about PhD students, and it is about original research, but I think the basic premise holds for FY students -- we're asking them to dive into stuff *they* don't know about, where they don't know if they're asking the right questions or consulting the right sources.