Session 3: Cutting the CRAAP
You can download the presentation I used for this session here.
This session was designed to get students broadening their search out to general websites and critically evaluating the sites they found. I based it largely on this CRAAP Testing Presentation that I originally developed four years ago for a Year 9 Chemistry group. It really is a gift that keeps giving, and is a constant reminder to me that if I manage to do something properly the first time (even if it takes a disproportionate amount of time to develop compared to its value in that first use!) it will save me so much time in the long run.
Source evaluation is so important and there are many arguments about the best way to teach it (see the forum topic CRAAP and SIFT. Is there something better? and this detailed discussion of the pros and cons of tools like the CRAAP test as part of the forum topic Empowering students to inquire in a digital environment, starting at this post ). I have chosen the CRAAP test, while being fully aware of its limitations. Like inquiry itself, source evaluation isn’t a rote method or checklist but a stance of curiosity and, to an extent, healthy suspicion about the provenance of your information. However, in the same way that the FOSIL cycle and resources scaffold the inquiry process, a ‘checklist’ like CRAAP can scaffold the source evaluation process, which is very challenging when you are new to it because there is so much to consider. Never confuse the scaffolding with the skill being developed. All good scaffolding should be designed to fall away once the skill is secure.
Homework for this lesson was to fully CRAAP test one website to do with their topic and then continue with their investigative journal if they had any time to spare (half an hour isn’t long for a decent CRAAP test, so I wasn’t expecting too much more).
Focus skills for this session:
- Investigate: Evaluates sources for authority, currency, relevance, comprehensiveness, and perspective
- Investigate: Evaluates digital information for authority, credibility, accuracy, comprehensiveness, point of view, and bias
- Investigate: Recognizes difference between sponsored content, opinion-based content, and informational/news content