Peer Review

Be Credible: Information Literacy for Journalism, Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing Students

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Reviewed:: Apr 22, 2022 by ICT Literacy

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

“Using the themes of credibility and information literacy, the book helps today’s students, who start out all their research with Google and Wikipedia, to specialize in accessing, evaluating, and managing information that often is not accessible through Google searches.” To this end, this textbook explores the concept of credibility, covers approaches to evaluating source credibility, and focuses on several sources of information used in journism and communication studies.

Type of Material:

Open (Access) Textbook

Recommended Uses:

Each chapter has student learning activies so the instructor can assign the chapters and activities as homework, which the students can then discuss afterwards in class.

Technical Requirements:

pdf file, which works on PC browsers

Identify Major Learning Goals:

Teach information literacy and journalism practice

Help readers find information in places, mostly online, where they usually don’tlook.

Help students develop the skills and a skeptical stance for accessing, evaluating, and using information, and to build their own authority as credible communication practitioners.

Target Student Population:

College Upper Division

Journalism and communication studies majors

Library and information science majors

Instructors who conduct or assign research

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

basic ICT skills

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

This textbook provides an in-depth explanation about source credibility, largely applied to communication studies, including journalism. The writing is clear, current, on target, and accurate. The contributors are named librarians and communications academians. The textbook may be read independently, with chapter beginning learning objectives and end exercises to check for understanding. The textbook weaves conceptual underpinnings and applications well. It also makes use of an open resource platform to disseminate informatio broadly. Links work and are accurate. Content is appropriately attributed.

Concerns:

The text is almost 400 pages long, so might seem overwhelming for some students.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:: The content explains a core part of ICT literacy: source evaluation and the value of credibility.The textbook has chapter learning objectives and activities, and is well organized with clear headings, to guide the reader. The chapters are well sequenced to build knowledge and link concepts efficiently. Instructors will find this textbook very easy to design assignments for, and the in-depth coverage of major sources are applicable to academic, professional, and daily life.
Concerns:: no concerns

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:: The content and instructions are clear and relevant, both in terms of writing as well as document layout. The book is interactive in that it provides multiple examples and synthesizing learning activities. The textbook is easy to navigate, and appears ADA-compliant; even the embedded videos are close-captioned. While no help feature exists, the reader can contact the publishing library.
Concerns:: Because the text is a pdf, it is not very itneractive with immediate feedback.

Other Issues and Comments:: Overall, the book is a helpful resource that contains scores of relevant and engaging activities pertaining to information literacy instruction that will promote higher-level thinking on the topic.
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