Activities

Can I Use the Internet?

Applied Strategy: Jigsaw

By Jen Mitchell, Vanier College

At a Glance

Discipline

  • Social Sciences
  • Humanities

Instructional Level

  • College & CEGEP

Course

  • Religious Worldviews 345-102-MQ

Tasks in Workflow

Social Plane(s)

  • Individual
  • Group

Type of Tasks

  • Collecting & seeking information
  • Analyzing
  • Revising & improving
  • Writing

Technical Details

Useful Technologies

  • A curation website, like Netboard.me, where students can have their own pages for sharing what they have found. They will also need to be able to put comments on their articles and add documents or text of their own to the page.

Class size

  • Small (20-49)

Time

Part of a semester (4-6 weeks)

Instructional Purpose

  • Application & knowledge building
  • Assessment & knowledge refinement

Socio Affective Engagement

  • Array
  • Array

Overview

The goal of the activity is to help students learn how to evaluate the quality of sources they use for gaining information. Students learn to better evaluate the credibility of online sources by actively evaluating the credibility of the sources used for their research.

This activity takes place across two stages. First students learn some techniques for finding resources for their topics and some tools to evaluate the quality of those sources. Then they practice these skills by finding and posting articles, with the evaluations. They then receive feedback on this step from the teacher. In the second stage, they ...

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The goal of the activity is to help students learn how to evaluate the quality of sources they use for gaining information. Students learn to better evaluate the credibility of online sources by actively evaluating the credibility of the sources used for their research.

This activity takes place across two stages. First students learn some techniques for finding resources for their topics and some tools to evaluate the quality of those sources. Then they practice these skills by finding and posting articles, with the evaluations. They then receive feedback on this step from the teacher. In the second stage, they revise the sources they use and then develop a summary and explanation of the key points for their topic, which is posted to the whole class. The whole activity takes 3 weeks of class time.

This activity is essentially a jigsaw activity, where the final research is shared with the class. Students then use each other's research to help them develop and write two essays within the course.

 

Read Less -

Instructional Objectives

Students will be able to find credible sources for their topic by being able to identify sources that cover their topic and explain why they are credible. They will also be able to summarize and explain the key points for their topic by identifying those points and then organizing them into a clear explanation. Finally, they will be able to apply revision strategies to their work.

 

Student Learning Outcomes

 

 

Workflow & Materials

Video

Evaluating Sources Video
Video

Doing Research Video
Pdf

Research Assignment Instructions

Jen Mitchell

Pdf

Activity Workflow - Can I Use the Internet

Jen Mitchell

Contributor's Notes

Jen Mitchell
Jen Mitchell

Vanier College, Montreal, QC

Benefits

  • Students improve their ability to evaluate the credibility of online sources in different contexts. By actively engaging in explanations of the credibility, they are applying this knowledge and making adjustments and revisions to their skills.

 

Challenges

  • One challenge is the amount of work this can produce for the teacher in a short period of time. Giving each student feedback on their article evaluations takes time. The teacher needs to check the credibility of the sources and the topics covered, which can take time. However, over time this becomes easier. Students from one semester to the next often use similar websites for their sources. You will become familiar with the common sites and this process will become easier.

 

Tips

  • Students will be at varying stages of this process through the time spent working on it. Some students will do a good job in their articles right from the start, others will need more feedback and more time to make adjustments. During the work sessions for the second stage, allow students to work at their own pace. Some will finish early and won’t need to come to all the classes. Others will fall behind and will need some encouragement to stay on task, or will need the full class time.
  • This activity shouldn’t be a stand-alone activity in the course. Ideally, students will then use the research they did for an essay. It is even better if you can get them to have to look at the research of other students for their essays. To do this you, can either give an essay topic that forces them to consider links or relationships between the different topics, or a compare and contrast type of essay.
    Students started this project in groups. They sign up for one of the 5 main religions. Then they work in groups to identify and divide the subtopics needed to cover their religion. While most of this part of the assignment is done individually, students still tend to work with their group members to help identify good sources and understand some concepts.

 

Applied Strategies

  1. 1
    Jigsaw