Little Memorial Library: Information Literacy: Information Literacy Exercises

Outside Sources of IL Exercises

ACRL IL Resources Sandbox
This is a link to the ACRL IL Resources Sandbox. It contains sample activities from ACRL members. They are open access and open to adaptation unless otherwise noted.
CORA - Community of Online Research
An open source resource for faculty and librarians.

Exercises for Formulating a Research Topic

Triangulating your research question
This exercise guides students with a broad topic to identify search terms and narrow their topic, arriving at a research question.
Formulating a Research Question from a Broad Topic
Students often begin their research (and writing) with a very broad topic. This means they waste a lot of time looking for resources that they will never use. Before they begin to research, it is ideal to have a focused question. This 10 minute assignment teaches them how to turn a very broad topic into a focused research question.
Identifying and Refining a Research Topic Using Concept Maps
This exercise is designed to help students think of words and concepts and see how they are related. They create a concept map of their topic, which may help them see ways to narrow their topic and arrive at a research question.
Identifying and Refining a Research Topic Using Journalistic Questions
Journalistic questions are a set of questions you can use to define your topic more clearly. This exercise will help student ask questions about their topic. Having specific questions to answer makes researching the topic easier when you get to that stage.

Exercises for Finding Information

Library Website Scavenger Hunt
An exercise to familiarize students with the important features of Midway University's Library Website.
Defining Search Terms
Students will often try one or two search terms when using a database and assume there’s no information on their topic if it doesn’t work the first time. This exercise gets them thinking about synonyms and related words. This 15 minute exercise may seem simple, but I can almost guarantee that the next time they sit down at a database they will try multiple searches before giving up.
Identifying Keywords
In this exercise, students will practice identifying keywords that might be used to research their topic. The exercise has three parts. First, they will identify the keywords from sample research questions. Then they will brainstorm synonyms for those keywords, demonstrating the need to search using more than just one keyword. Finally, they will complete the exercise for their own research question.
Information Source Comparison
This activity helps students explore the strengths and weakness of Google, Google Scholar, Academic Search Complete and topic specific databases as information sources.
Understanding Boolean Operators: AND, OR, NOT
In order to apply your keywords to an effective search, you must be able to employ Boolean logic. Those operators are AND OR & NOT.
The object of this exercise is to practice your use of those operators by looking at an everyday experience : Ordering food from a fast food restaurant.
Creating Keyword Searches Using Boolean Operators
In this exercise, students will practice selecting search terms and combining them using boolean operators in order to create an effective search.

Exercises for Evaluating Information

Popular, Trade or Peer Reviewed?
Great hands-on exercise to teach students about the differences among the 3 types of publications. Students can read the differences in the provided example, but real learning takes place when they have to sift through the actual publications and write down differences.
CRAAP Analysis
This assignment does two things: one, it makes students find 4 different types of sources rather than just search the Web; two, it teaches students how to evaluate ALL information and compare and contrast different types of sources.
Information Source Comparison
This activity helps students explore the strengths and weakness of Google, Google Scholar, Academic Search Complete and topic specific databases as information sources.
Pin the News Source on the Fake News Continuum
This activity asks students to research a variety of news sources and place them on a continuum to define their reliability.
Evaluating Sources Process Cards
This is a group activity in which students are given cards with a variety of sources on them. They evaluate the sources based on criteria such as "authority," "ease of creation," "time to creation" etc.
Evaluating sources writing assignment
Requires the student to answer a series of questions about a source they have found.
Article Analysis 300 level
This exercise requires students to evaluate a scholarly article for not only its relevance to their research topic but also for its potential to help them find more sources via citation mining and keyword generation.
Evaluating Web Resources
Students choose one of three websites to evaluate. After evaluating the website they must make a judgment on whether it is good or bad for academic research and explain their decision.

This assignment can be tailored to use websites related to your subject area. Just ask!

Exercises for Incorporating Information

Un-research Project
This exercise helps students focus on why they choose sources to support their research.
Evaluating quotes and paraphrases (100/200 level)
Students are given a sample citation and 7 easy uses. They judge if the use is appropriate or plagiarism.
Evaluating quotes, summaries and paraphrases
Students are given a sample text and 4 summaries. They judge if the summary is legitimate or plagiarism.
Analyzing how to integrate quotes and summaries
This exercise has students analyze how and why scholarly authors have integrated quotes and summaries in order to help them learn smooth methods to use quotes and summaries in their own research.
Integrating quotes
Given a single sample paragraph, students are asked to identify several key methods quotes are integrated into the paragraph.
Quotes, Summaries and Paraphrases from the Purdue Owl
This PDF from the Purdue Owl explains what each of these are, how to use them and concludes with a hands on exercise that requires students to quote, summarize and paraphrase several sample original texts.
Write your own quote, summary, paraphrase
Given a single sample text, students are asked to write their own quote, summary, paraphrase for the instructor's evaluation.
Analyzing supporting evidence
An exercise that asks students to analyze how and why evidence is used in an existing scholarly article.
Is your paper well supported with evidence
A quick, easy and visual exercise to help students determine if their paper arguments are well supported with evidence.
Updating a literature review
This exercise is appropriate to introduce 100-200 level classes to the concept of a literature review.
Mini-literature review assignment
A 200 level introduction to literature reviews.
Synthesis Matrix
A 100-200 level matrix to help students begin thinking about synthesizing their sources.
Advanced Synthesis Matrix
A source synthesis matrix for 400 level and graduate level writing assignments.

Excercises for Citing Information

Have students sign up for a Grammarly account and copy/paste some text in there to show them how the plagiarism detector works.

Give students an article, book etc from library website and have them write out citation using LibGuide resource. Then show them the built in citation resources (Cite in Ebsco databases and Citation on the details page in PRIMO)

Create a list of sources with improper citations. Have the students attempt to locate the sources. This should demonstrate to students how citations are used to track down sources and how frustrating it can be for their teachers and fellow researchers when they don’t provide adequate citations. Examples to use here could include books with multiple editions or books with very generic titles.

Breaking citations down: Develop a list of citations. Break these citations down (components: author, date, publisher, title, etc). Type or write them down on larger pieces of construction paper, cardboard, etc. You can utilize a variety of colors, shapes, sizes. Have students work as groups to assemble the parts (you can use pin boards, a wall and tape, magnetic boards, etc). This can easily be turned into a competitive game.