Helping my students correctly identify and cite legitimate sources is an on-going challenge. I find the best way to instruct is to give clear guidance (the Millennium Digital Copyright Act and Creative Commons are the best way to get started) and constantly model problem solving in this arena.
During our Digital Citizenship strand on digital learning, we broke the issue of academic ownership into two components. First, we had students answer questions about the tree octopus from a cite with shaky credentials. We then let the students the website was full of false information, and asked them to think about how to evaluate their sources. Here is additional handout (Evaluating Your Sources) from my colleague, Michelle Tabor. Students can use this acronym to discern vaulable and accurate information from the rest. For our Government Unit in Humanities, we weave in instruction on detecting bias in media.
Citation Guide
Academic Ownership
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