When we did the website evaluation lesson, the students breezed through the quiz like nobody's business, and answered questions appropriately. One of the requirements for website evaluation, if it didn't meet obvious criteria (reputable/well known media outlet/museum, etc.) was to fill out a checklist (put together by the ITS and myself) adapted from Kathy Schrock's guide to website evaluation. What I can't decide is whether or not the students should turn it in every time they fill one out.
The checklist is pretty comprehensive; hopefully, it will very efficiently weed out the bad websites. However, we have a LOT going on in the library, and I'm not sure if it defeats the purpose of having the SMA's do this project to grade the website evaluation checklist every time they have to use it.
For example: the whole point here was to get kids to be better researchers AND to save time by educating the SMA's to be examples of good research -- to have them work as my own team of research-librarian minions. If I have to go behind them and check on everything they do, individually, that's going to be a pile of paperwork, particularly after the lack of guaranteed-reliable resources discovered during the Great Philosophical Crisis of '14. However, I don't want students to make a massive mistake and pass it on to other students under the guise of reliability -- I have to remember that the SMA's are, after all, students. They are not professional reference librarians.
Maybe a compromise could be reached? Instead of a full-on thorough grading of the checklist, I could just require they turn one in and keep it on file for every website evaluated?
It's a consideration.
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