When searching for scholarly documents, researchers often stick with the same familiar handful of databases. Yet, just beyond these limited horizons lie dozens of alternatives with which they could search more effectively, whether for quick lookups or thorough searches in systematic reviews or meta-analyses. Searchsmart.org is a free website that…

Online information is not regulated for quality of content or accuracy; therefore, content found online is not always complete, accurate, or unbiased. While media-literacy education exists, educators often only see the final result of students' online research in the form of the assignment or a works cited page. For teachers to address the media…

The Internet, which has made information ubiquitous and seemingly infinite, has transformed education. Universities are challenged to educate students to navigate and evaluate critically the undifferentiated information of the Internet so that students gain the ability to transform it into knowledge. To better understand the effects of taking a…

Recognizing the importance of designing educational opportunities that draw upon students' prior knowledge and experiences, this paper uses focus groups to explore how Spanish-speaking students in a graduate program at the University of Kansas (KU) in Lawrence understand academic information literacy practices within their new cultural contexts.…

Courses: Research Methods, Public Speaking, Communication Theory, any other course that requires college students to engage in a formal research process. Can be conducted in traditional, online, or hybrid courses. Objectives: In this original single-class activity, students will be able to evaluate source credibility for resources that extend…

Chemistry majors at Goucher College are now required to take a 1-credit course in their sophomore year entitled Chemical Information Literacy. Students in the course learn the structure and organization of the chemical literature, and how to carry out searches of various databases for topic, author, chemical compound, or structure. They learn…