In this sequence of activities, students will learn how to identify scholarly sources using three pronged test: 1) Is the source written by a researcher or academic 2) Is the source published in a scholarly book or peer reviewed journal, and 3) Does the source have an extensive bibliography. They will then be asked to find one scholarly book and one scholarly article on a general topic.

Learning Activities

Scholarly source pre-test

This assignment is designed to help students develop a thoughtful research topic. Students go through a series of steps, questions, and background reading to help them better understand and refine a research topic.

Students interview their professor(s) and ask them to describe how they do research, how research gets disseminated in their discipline, etc. Each student can ask one question below. This assignment can be useful as a “first day of class” activity for a First Year Seminar. Novice researchers are introduced to scholarly discourse and discipline-specific approaches to producing knowledge by experts.

Students pick a topic related to Communication Studies (or another social science discipline) and then define the topic operationally by finding a way to measure it. They test out their instrument on a partner.