Research check!
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This activity aims to develop the student's academic digital competences when it comes to assessing and using sources at a scholarly level. Through the activity the student gains skills to be able to take an academic and critical approach to articles at a scholarly level. All links for running the activities are at the bottom. |
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CONTEXT
It is important that students learn to acquire skills to assess sources at the highest knowledge level, since there are also sources here that pretend to be more than they are. The open web is most often the first step in students' search process, and they therefore need skills to critically assess apparently academic search results. There are plenty of scholarly articles, web pages etc. on the internet that try to give the impression of being research-based, scholarly, unambiguously factual or similar without being so; an example could be: http://www.abrj.org/
If students do not acquire the necessary critical skills, they risk using and relying on erroneous sources, which makes their theoretical basis unusable.
OUTCOME
- The student can take a reflective approach to the existence of untrustworthy scholarly articles and possesses methods for checking credibility. Particularly in connection with searching online.
- The student achieves greater skill, and confidence in their own abilities and certainty in the choice of academic sources found online.
CONTENT AND STEPS OF THE ACTIVITY
The activity helps to get students to take a critical approach to articles found online that appear scholarly at first sight, and introduces simple methods that can help assess the credibility of publishers, issuers and journals.
BEFORE THE ACTIVITY
It can be a good idea before the activity for the students to reactivate their knowledge of source criticism before they move on to the activity's specific focus on the credibility of the publisher. See e.g. https://mit.ek.dk/studieviden/kildekritik
THE ACTIVITY STEP BY STEP
The untrustworthy article (which is subject-relevant, and which the teacher has found in advance) is handed out to groups of students.
1. Start by talking about which knowledge level the source belongs to. In groups, the students are asked to assess the article's credibility on the basis of bibliographic information (publisher, author, journal title, DOI, peer review). The point is that here they do not have any particular tools.
2. Round-up in plenary. Questions are asked about how the groups assessed credibility on the basis of the bibliographic information.
The students are presented with the problem of fake scholarly journals, drawing on e.g. https://beallslist.net
The students are presented with the credibility checklist that the teacher has selected. Alternatively, 5 cards can be handed out, each with its own question from the checklist, which the students draw in turn.
3. Ask the students to assess the article once more, now drawing on the checklist.
4. The assessment is presented by the groups or in plenary
AFTER THE ACTIVITY
The students are sent a version of the checklist the teacher has made and links to the external resources mentioned.
To summarise and add nuance to the activity, it can be useful after the activity to have a joint discussion – on the basis of the following questions:
Do you know of any cases involving untrustworthy research yourselves? Examples?
How do the sources we have worked with here differ from other sources (possibly make a matrix on the board or similar, where you set the different types up next to each other and write up the students' comments about purpose, devices, target group etc.).
MATERIALS AND PREPARATION
| Preparation | Materials |
|---|---|
| The teacher must have found 2-3 ”untrustworthy” articles, possibly from a journal of dubious character, and print a couple of copies for the groups. | A couple of printed copies of ‘untrustworthy’ sources |
| The teacher selects questions for the checklist, for example from https://thinkchecksubmit.org or https://videnskab.dk/kultur-samfund/saadan-laeser-og-forstaar-du-en-videnskabelig-artikel | A screen for showing selected websites, such as thinkchecksubmit.org , DOAJ, videnskab.dk or studieviden-siden about source criticism (see links under external resources) |
| The questions are formulated in the same way as in the example, and written on small cards or a list. |
CREATED BY
KEA Bibliotek,
Together with information specialists and students.
EXTERNAL RESOURCES
Checklist in Danish for scholarly articles:
https://videnskab.dk/kultur-samfund/saadan-laeser-og-forstaar-du-en-videnskabelig-artikel
Think. Check. Submit. Helps researchers to identify trustworthy journals and publishers for their research:
https://thinkchecksubmit.org
EK studieviden. Short videos and articles in Danish about, among other things, source criticism:
https://mit.ek.dk/studieviden
THE STAK PROJECT
This learning element is an edited version of a learning pattern from the research project STAK (Studerendes Akademiske Digitale Kompetencer).
Through a particular method, the project developed a number of learning patterns/paths, especially within information literacy. The elements are aimed
primarily at teachers, either as inspiration or to be integrated directly into teaching.
If you are curious about the method, you can see the original research website at: https://web.archive.org/web/20251118005249/https://www.stak.dk/