Teaching undergraduate students to evaluate information effectively is
an ongoing challenge for instruction librarians. We feel enormous
urgency to foster students’ development of the critical-thinking skills
they need to navigate a large, evolving, complex and sometimes
intentionally distorted information landscape. In my experience,
checklists such as the CRAAP test can reinforce each student’s existing
inclination to be either suspicious or trusting, while a more nuanced
approach can leave students confused. There is a robust professional
conversation around teaching source evaluation; is it possible that
existing approaches incorporate too much of librarians’ perspective, and
not enough of students’? Open pedagogy and critical information
literacy offer a possible way forward by envisioning turning control of
evaluation criteria over to students. This round table will explore
librarians’ experiences with, and perceptions of, student-created
evaluation criteria. Have you asked students to develop their own source
evaluation criteria? Would you? Why or why not? Does your experience
offer any insight that could help other librarians teach effectively in
this important area?