What if every student was a good online researcher?
They could find relevant information efficiently
They could evaluate information effectively
They could use information ethically
That's what we call Information Fluency
What if your students could become competent
evaluators on their own? (they won't unless they are taught)
That's why we developed Information Investigator
The biggest challenge
for students today
is evaluation
Information Investigator is...
self-paced 
challenge-based
performance-driven
for middle school and
high school
interactive tutorials and
authentic assessment
Let's look at that more closely
Originally designed to meet the research needs of students attending Center for Talent Development courses
at Northwestern University, Information Investigator is a 3-hour learning experience that reinforces strategies and techniques for evaluating the credibility of online information. 

Students may work independently (or teacher-facilitated, if desired) through a series of 10 Challenges that require successful demonstration of the following skills:

browsing
querying with an unfamiliar search engine
navigation and truncation
fact-checking
locating page information 
conducting deep Web queries to determine ownership
using the link: operator to find authoritative references
investigating author bias
choosing appropriate techniques and tools for the task at hand
identifying potential Red Flags in information



Challenges are all authentic. They involve live searching with feedback on the answers submitted. The 10 tutorials are supported by First Aid Kits which contain help when needed.
This summer, the learners
at Northwestern improved 
their scores by an average of 50%.

Without practice, students typically
earn 45 points. That means they 
are weak at finding 
relevant information and 
evaluating its credibility.
Following the tutorials is a Certification Exam that integrates the strategies and techniques. The exam has 10 performance challenges; learners get only one attempt to answer each one. 

A report is generated with the learner's score. The target is 70%. Mastery is 80% or higher. Teachers with administrative accounts can access the reports online. Students who have repeated Information Investigator (this is the third year Northwestern has required it) tend to demonstrate mastery.
3 hours
self-paced
competencies
for example:
Use PubMed Advanced Search to locate an article coauthored by D. D. Rose and published in 2010.

In the box below, Copy and Paste the Title of the Article: 
The Challenge
Help
only 1 in 5 students can do this without help
First Aid (and some xtranormal videos) provides step by step
instructions for using PubMed
Visit this link to see the Kit
http://newmedz.com/first-aid/querying-1.html
Would you like to try it?

to sign up for 20% off the regular price, 
click here: 

https://21cif.com/selfguided.html
Pricing is variable, depending on the number of licenses purchased. A single copy is normally $10.
A school license may be a little as 25 cents per student.
After training the average score is close to 70.
We call that competency.
you'll need about 3 hours for the experience

get ready to change the way you search