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About this Kit | Using the Resources in this Kit | Creating Units

How to integrate Resource Kit activities into exisiting lessons

About this Kit

The final step in information fluency is proper attribution. Citing the source of the information combines good scholarship and ethics. Knowing how to find the information that needs to be cited involves a different type of searching which we call investigative searching.

Once the author, publisher, document title and date have been found--as part of the evaluation--the rest is a fairly simple matter of plugging the information into an online citation formatter. For students, knowing how to cite the information in a research paper is important in order to avoid plagiarism. For educators, knowing what information and how much of it may be used for teaching has legal implications.

This Kit contains exercises that strengthen investigative abilities and the use of citations. Topics include:

Finding the author, publisher and date

Avoiding plagiarism

Citation formats

Fair Use guidelines

Using the Resources in this Kit

Resources suited for stand-alone applications

When time permits only one activity, we recommend using any of the following with students, depending on the objective:

Timed Search Challenges

• Action Zone: Sorting Hat Challenge (Self-guided) -- Tests ability to find the author of the information

• Action Zone: Useless Facts Challenge (Self-guided) -- Tests ability to find the copyright owner of the original information.

Tutorials

• Investigative Searching (Teacher-facilitated) -- Techniques for tracking down citation information for an online source.

• MicroModule Companions: Copyright (Self-guided) -- Tutorial games that complement our MicroModule on Copyright; reinforces techniques used to locate copyright information.

• MicroModule Companions: Citation (Self-guided) -- Three different tutorials aimed at creating proper citations. MicroModule Companions: Plagiarism 1 (Self-guided) -- The original plagiarism challenge: can you tell which students are guilty of plagiarism?

• MicroModule Companions: Plagiarism 2 (Self-guided) -- Part two of this series of tutorial games for improving one's understanding of plagiarism and how to avoid it.

• MicroModule Companions: Plagiarism 3 (Self-guided) -- The third installment in this series challenges players to detect evidence of plagiarism in science research when students use information found online.

Assessment

• Citation Assessment (Self-guided) -- An online assessment to help identify strengths and weaknesses in finding necessary information for citation.

Resources suited for sequences

When time permits more than one activity, combine activities into sequences for more powerful effects.

The Internet Challenge Model I (Challenge - Tutorial - Challenge)

1. Start with the Sorting Hat Challenge to encourage awareness of the difficulty of finding necessary information for a citation.	2. Follow this with either a presentation of investigative techniques from Investigative Searching or one or more of the MicroModule Companions on Citation or Copyright.	3. Conclude with the Useless Facts Challenge to allow students to apply investigative searching techniques. Compare timed search challenge experiences.

The Internet Challenge Model II (Challenge - Tutorial - Assessment)

1. Start with the Sorting Hat Challenge to encourage awareness of the difficulty of finding information about an author.	2. Follow this with either a presentation of investigative techniques from Investigative Searching or one or more of the MicroModule Companions on Citation or Copyright.	3. Conclude with the Citation Assessment to see how well students can locate necessary information for citations.

A shorter option includes using one of the tutorials either preceded or followed by a timed Search Challenge

Creating Units

For information on creating larger units in which materials from this Kit are embedded, see Creating Units.