skip York navigation York University banner York Home Page Prospective Students Page Current Students Page Faculty and Staff Page Alumni Page Visitors Page Skip site menu
Section: Idea Bank

Ideas for Integrating the Web Research Tutorial into Courses

Here are some quick and easy ideas for using the Web Research Tutorial to broaden your discussions of the issues around using information from the publicly-accessible web in your course and to highlight the expectations you have for students with respect to research, critical evaluation and citation.

In-class activities:

  • Class discussion: Examine portions of the tutorial in class (i.e., case studies).

  • Fishbowl: Structure a fishbowl discussion around possible scenarios that might challenge a students' ability to find suitable material on the publc web and critically evaluate information in the context of your course.

  • Exemplars: Show samples of student work that demonstrate acceptable critical evaluation and citation practices, and discuss how they effectively improve the work.

  • Debate: Structure a debate around the quality of some types of information or specific website examples.

  • One sentence summaries: Ask students to write a one sentence summary of the key message in the tutorial.

Assignment ideas:

  • Take the quiz: Have students print out their test results and sign them and/or ask them to hand in their test results page along with their first paper.

  • Group work: Have students complete the tutorial in small groups and have each group prepare a brief review of the process and how it applies in the context of your course and its assignments. Alternatively, form small groups, each with an assigned question pertaining to the critical evaluation of a specified web page relevant to the course (e.g., How current is the web page?, How authoritative ...?, What is the purpose ...?, ...). After, say, 10 minutes of deliberation, each group can then give a brief presentation on their findings to the whole tutorial. Together, the tutorial class can then decide if the web page would be suitable to use in an essay, and, if so, what accompanying comments or qualifications would be needed.

  • Quiz question: Have students prepare an additional quiz question for the tutorial.

  • Applied examples: Have students prepare their own example of an advanced search and critical evaluation of a public web page relevant to the course.

  • Peer review: Have students review a peer's assignment to ensure that critical evaluation and citation have been properly applied.

***

Additional ideas and suggestions are always welcome — please send a quick note to library@yorku.ca describing your strategy and we may add it to this Idea Bank.

Thanks to the CST and the use of the Idea Bank from the Academic for the Academic Integrity Tutorial for their assistance in getting this Idea Bank started!

York University * Prospective students * Current students * Faculty & Staff * Alumni * Visitors