Victoria Blanton spent the 2021 Summer Undergraduate Research Experience at WVU asking a question the curriculum takes on trust: does this telescope actually work well enough to hand to somebody outside a classroom?
The approach was to observe with it and check the answers against the literature rather than against expectation — measure neutral hydrogen, derive column densities, and compare with published values for the same lines of sight. Agreement means the instrument is doing its job. Disagreement means either the sky is odd or the telescope is, and it is worth knowing which.
The poster The talk (video) Supplemental materials
If you are working through the Observing module and want to know whether your own spectra are any good, this is the comparison to copy.