During a large lecture class (300+ students), we used a polling and live quiz tool called Socrative ([www.socrative.com][1]) to engage students in the lecture and test their knowledge on the topics covered.
The scholarly vs. popular exercise pointed students to two articles about bacteria in kitchen sponges. One was [a New York Times Science section article][2], and the other the scientific journal article [published in Nature][3] on which the NYT article was based.
We asked students to briefly examine the two articles and answer questions about their authorship, content, and level of scholarship. Socrative allowed us, and the class, to see the students' anonymous answers and discuss them.
See [the questions and slide prompts][4] for more details.
[1]: https://www.socrative.com/
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/science/sponges-bacteria-microwaving-cleaning.html
[3]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06055-9teria-microwaving-cleaning.html
[4]: https://osf.io/6kpfh/