Australian and New Zealand Information Literacy Framework

be available on the unit of study WebCT site so that students can work in their own time. We have also included context specific examples in the workshop of critical evaluation in the hope that this may make the task more relevant for our students. Curriculum design to aid development of critical evaluation Since the third year students obviously found this a daunting task we have decided to introduce a vertically integrated approach to critical evaluation and expose students in a second year unit of study to critical evaluation. This will be built on in third year and prepare the students for their thesis in fourth year. This approach is supported by comments from students " the critical review was the first we had ever done-perhaps more coaching in these areas would be helpful " and " I already realised the importance of this attribute but do not believe I have mastered it in this course. Work should begin in earlier years ". Last year the second year students were given reading material to introduce them to ideas about critical evaluation and an assignment where they chose a paper from a list of published papers to critically review. They were expected to source two additional papers related to the topic. 66% of students said their confidence in critically evaluating material had increased as a result of completing the assignment (encouragingly, 97% also reported an increase in their knowledge of the topic). This year we are hoping to initiate a timetabled workshop to introduce the topic; set an assignment and provide exercises in WebCT to support students. The approach taken by Denyer (2000) of giving students the materials and methods section of a paper without the " expert " commentary of the introduction or discussion to critically evaluate, may provide a good introduction for second year students. We would expect third year students to critically engage in all aspects of the research article. Some may say that by teaching critical evaluation in a very context specific way we are not preparing our students to be true critical readers. But it is a starting point. I know that I would be more cautious about critically evaluating something outside my area of expertise than within a topic I am comfortable with. This work is already proving to be vital in increasing students' confidence and ability to critically evaluate scientific literature. Even though it …