information literacy

Research Literacy with AI: Verifying Sources with Perplexity and the CRAAP Framework to Improve Intrinsic Motivation

Activities, collaboration and group work, critical thought and analysis, digital literacy, genAI, information literacy, Integrating sources, primary source research, Process, research, secondary source research, writing technologies /

Tingyu Zhang Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity teaches undergraduates to critically locate and verify sources by triangulating results from Perplexity AI (free version), Google Scholar, or Academic Search Complete, using the CRAAP framework (Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose) to evaluate sources (Blakeslee 6). Rather than treating AI as a shortcut, it frames […]

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From Connection to Critique: Evaluating an AI-Generated Essay

Assignments, critical thought and analysis, digital literacy, genAI, information literacy, Integrating sources, Process, research, rhetorical appeals and argument, secondary source research /

Abigail Michelini Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment brings generative AI into the writing classroom with the goals of learning about what it can and cannot do well, enhancing students’ ability to critique it, and engaging it responsibly without compromising critical thinking. The best place for this assignment is in the second half

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GenAI Assignments for Critical Digital Literacy

Assignments, critical thought and analysis, digital literacy, genAI, information literacy, Process, reflection, writing technologies /

Aurora Matzke and Angela Clark-Oates Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment is about slowing down the composing process at the beginning, middle, and end of any given assignment to provide students the opportunity to critically examine the technologies they use/d to mediate the composing and designing of texts. Specifically, this assignment asks students

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Owning the Process: Co-Learning AI Through Critical Inquiry and Workflow Literacy

Activities, collaboration and group work, critical thought and analysis, digital literacy, genAI, information literacy, Process, professional writing, writing technologies /

Jennifer N. Mason Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This in-class activity invites students and instructors to co-investigate how generative AI and other writing technologies shape composing processes across academic and professional contexts. The activity is grounded in workflow literacy—defined here as the reflective practice of analyzing how tasks, tools, technologies, and collaborators interact across

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Teaching Critical AI Literacy through Popular Natural Science Articles

Assignments, critical thought and analysis, digital literacy, genAI, information literacy, Integrating sources, Process, research, rhetorical appeals and argument, rhetorical situation, writing across the curriculum, writing technologies /

Chad Lewis and Jackson W. Martin Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description The writing classroom is an opportune space to teach students how to critically think about generative AI (GenAI) outputs and their limitations. This assignment asks students to compare the rhetorical situations of scholarly research articles in the natural sciences with their popular science

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Acting Bias: Staging Media Analysis in First-Year Writing

Assignments, critical thought and analysis, information literacy, news, observation, reading strategies, research, rhetorical appeals and argument, rhetorical situation, secondary source research, visual/multimodal rhetorics /

Freddie (Fiona) Harris Ramsby Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description In first-year writing classrooms, embodied teaching methods, such as Kathryn Dawson and Bridget Kiger Lee’s drama-based pedagogy (DBP), “[provide] an innovative means to stimulate students’ creativity…to foster learning that sticks, cultivating brains that retain information” (Harris Ramsby 1). Combining Newman P. Birk and Genevieve B.

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Convincing the Machine: Using Rhetoric to Get the Most Out of AI Writing Assistants in Proposal Writing

Assignments, digital literacy, genAI, identity, information literacy, professional writing, rhetorical situation, writing technologies /

Ronald B. Cole, Lauren N. Maher, and Rich Rice Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment teaches students to treat generative AI as a rhetorical collaborator that must be convinced through recursive prompting, strategic data curation, and continuous adjustment. Students assume the role of grant writers advocating for a project, community, or initiative of

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AI and Language: Facilitating Emergent Participation in New Discourse Communities

Assignments, cultural awareness, digital literacy, genAI, genre and discourse community, identity, information literacy, language bias /

Kelsey Hawkins Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description Since the public release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022, instructors and scholars have grappled with the ways that AI technologies are transforming writing practices. In a world that increasingly relies on Generative AI (GenAI) technologies like text generators to produce content for public and professional contexts,

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Impersonation Podcast: Understanding Untruth in Uncertain Times

Assignments, collaboration and group work, digital literacy, information literacy, research, rhetoric, rhetorical appeals and argument, visual/multimodal rhetorics /

Joseph S. Vuletich Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description In today’s media ecosystem, politicians dismiss unflattering news stories as “hoaxes” and AI-generated deep-fakes concern us because of their increasingly realistic qualities. Scholars teaching information literacy have responded by developing sophisticated methods for sorting fact from fiction, promoting credibility, and dismissing falsehood. Yet falsehood is not

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“Are Cats Good? An Important Study”: Using a Meme Article for Teaching Writing of Analytic Summaries

Activities, annotated bibliography, information literacy, reading, reading strategies, research, secondary source research, summary /

Wei Xu and Hongni Gou Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity is designed as part of the major project “Annotated Bibliography” in a first-year writing course. At the time the activity is implemented, students should have learned the purpose, context, and audience of an annotated bibliography and that both summaries and evaluations are

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