This week we were asked to work on an active learning exercise to teach students about the differences between scholarly and popular articles/journals. I like the idea of giving the students two articles and having them evaluate them on the spot before giving them any sort of lecture on the difference between popular and scholarly (much like Mark did in the class I observed a few weeks back). This approach, in my opinion, gets the students to think critically about some terms they are already familiar with (“popular” and “scholarly”) and apply them to a research/library setting. This way, the instructor can talk the students through the reasons why they decided “Article A” is scholarly and why “Article B” is popular. After all, these are concepts they are already familiar with (at least in the abstract). We’re just giving them the tools/knowledge to help them apply those concepts to their research.
In addition, I have also created a Sporcle quiz* that could possibly work as a quick little assessment after the article evaluations. It does not look quite like I want it to, but it is a nice start. If anyone knows of a Sporcle alternative or quiz generator that is a little easier to use/format, please let me know.
*Here is the bitly for the quiz:
http://bit.ly/popvschol
Also, here is a pretty sweet photo I found on the interwebs:
