As faculty, you assess textbooks against a set of criteria that reflects your long experience and knowledge of student needs. You do the same with Open Textbooks, but there are a few additional considerations.
This guide is a helpful way of remembering the criteria you should consider when evaluating information: Currency, Authority, Relevance, Documentation, Information Type, and Objectivity. CARDIO.
Related lesson plans are also available for download and adaptation in the Guttman Community College OER collection in the CUNY Academic Works institutional repository. This goes along with the C.A.R.D.I.O. Evaluation Handout.
In this lesson, students will create evaluation criteria that they can use to determine the quality of a source.
Free practice modules for Spanish language educators
Introduction to Oral Proficiency Levels is a free open educational resource that can help Spanish teachers gain a foundational understanding of how to evaluate Spanish speakers. The resource includes 17 video-based practice modules designed to strengthen your understanding of the ACTFL Speaking Proficiency Guidelines and to help you evaluate the speaking levels of your language students.
You will learn how scholarly information is produced, organized, and accessed; how to construct and use effective search strategies in a variety of web tools and scholarly databases; how to choose finding tools appropriate to the type of information you need; critical thinking skills in the evaluation of resources; and best practices in the ethical use of information.
The Problem Solving Profile is a tool to help evaluate and/or assess instructional projects or courses that may have technology components or are technology enabled.The Problem Solving Profile contains questionnaires of one page length, or a short web survey, that measures proclivities of problem solving styles that learners exhibit.This site contains PowerPoint presentations on the use of the Problem Solving Profile, sample Profiles, research papers on the use of the Problem Solving Profile and a Frequently Asked Question page (FAQ).The Problem Solving Profile has been used at the University of Michigan since the early 1990s and has been used for determining groups of learners problem solving profiles and then using the information to help modify and improve learning processes. It has been used in evaluating:Distance learning in business administrationTeacher education computer competenciesDistance learning in nursing and midwifery and Advanced research methods courses in designing evaluation for new technology in instruction
Students use real-world data to evaluate the feasibility of solar energy and other renewable energy sources in different U.S. locations. Working in small groups, students act as engineers evaluating the suitability of installing solar panels at four company locations. They access data from the online Renewable Energy Living Lab from which they make calculations and analyze how successful solar energy generation would be, as well as the potential for other power sources at those locations. Then they summarize their results, analysis and recommendations in the form of feasibility plans prepared for a CEO.
Associated lessons plans are also available for download and adaptation in the Guttman Community College OER collection in CUNY Academic Works.
This activity helps students evaluate their own authority on a particular subject so that they can begin to understand how authority is created and effectively evaluate the authority of other sources they encounter. Additional evaluation criteria is also introduced.