Stage Fright Survival School or 3 “Super Calm” Tablets a Day? Researching Stage Fright

This fall, student’s in Linda Laderach’s Music 110 First Year Seminar “The Performer: Stage Fright” needed to find information about stage fright on the web.  A google search produces thousands of varied results.  Wikipedia, a newspaper article on Stephen Frye, Stage Fright Survival School, herbal supplements, Anxiety Disorders Association of America: how can students learn to sort through thousands of results to get reliable information, right for their purpose?

The class and I met to tackle this challenge.  We discussed how we could move from having general impressions of the quality of a website to evaluating sources using clear and defined criteria; we made a rubric!  

Using a spreadsheet in Google Docs that linked to the class libguide, students worked in groups to contribute to a rubric that we could use to practice website evaluation in class with some examples, and students could use as a reference throughout the semester as they found information online.

The technology we used allowed us to create a collaborative document right in class.  Students left with an understanding of website evaluation, practice making and applying a rubric, and a tool that everyone helped make and can use going forward with their work in and out of class.

Image credit: Fruchterman, Jim. IMG_5543-42. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jrandomf/5607892090/