Students will learn how serial publications are presented in databases and how to read them chronologically to determine trends over time using the MLA International Bibliography.

In this exercise students use the Voyant word analysis tool to analyze Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. (Any literary work would work.)

This assignment leads students through an analysis of media coverage of the 1965 Watts uprising. The intention is for students to learn more about the uprising and how a database can be used as a digital humanities tool.

As part of the research process, students need to learn how to organize and synthesize their sources. This short lecture, followed by a matrix outline given to every student, gives students the opportunity to focus their research question even more and to add their own ideas to the conversation of research within their chosen topic.

This lesson, created for English 2010, or Argumentative Writing, teaches students how to use library databases and keywords in order to focus their research topics. Most students come prepared with a general or broad topic in mind, but they need to narrow their focus in order to get more relevant search results. Here they simultaneously learn to search in and use the library databases and to focus their research topics.

During this activity, students work in small groups to explore assigned databases and then share back what they learn in a Google Doc projected at the front of the classroom.