This self-guided, active learning exercise for Zotero was originally created for a 1–1.5 hour standalone online workshop. Zotero is a free, open-source tool that helps users collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share references. It is easy enough for students to learn quickly, yet powerful enough to support dissertations, theses, and capstone projects. Zotero also provides a practical way to engage with the conceptual goals of the ACRL Framework, transforming abstract ideas such as “giving credit” and “joining a scholarly conversation” into concrete research practices.

The lesson plan focuses on importing sources related to “food insecurity” and “college students” into Zotero, correcting citation metadata, creating a quick bibliography, and generating a formatted bibliography in Microsoft Word using Zotero’s Word add-in. Students are provided with step-by-step instructions and supporting resources throughout each stage of the activity.

The exercise includes the following components:

• Part 1: Practice Importing to Zotero.
• Part 2: Practice: Correcting the Metadata.
• Part 3: Creating a Quick Bibliography in Zotero.
• Part 4: Citing and Creating a Bibliography in Word.

A sample research paper for Part 4 is available in both Microsoft Word and Google Docs formats.

Answer keys are provided in APA style.

A 15-minute instructional video covering Parts 1–3 is currently available. A second video covering Part 4 is in development.

Annotated bibliographies have become a popular assignment in college courses and a way to scaffold research papers. Gathering a bibliography before turning in a completed research project allows students to focus on searching strategically and get feedback on the sources they obtained. Annotating that bibliography requires them to think critically about the sources they choose and their relationship to the research at hand. While there are numerous guides and examples that show students the format of an annotation, there are very few that connect annotations to research questions or guide students through making those connections. This lesson plan Uses Joseph Bizup’s BEAM Method from the realm of rhetoric studies to help students think about how sources are used and adds an additional layer of support. This support bridges the gap between a student recognizing a source is generally related to their topic, and thinking critically about how that source is used to answer a research question. 

Bizup, Joseph. "BEAM: A rhetorical vocabulary for teaching research-based writing." Rhetoric Review 27, no. 1 (2008): 72-86.

This assignment was created to help undergraduate students use research articles to help inform their argument about a "text."  This exercise has been used in library instruction sessions for art history, composition, english literature, women's studies, and history classes. After reflecting on what they know about a text (or image or multimedia), brainstorming search terms, and tracking relevant patterns in search results, students can synthesize information from a variety of sources in an organized, methodological fashion. 

When writing a research paper, it can be easy to overlook the human side of scholarship – how being cited in a study (or not) can have real, material consequences, and how social structures can systematically exclude certain people from scholarship. This activity and lesson explores these ideas and gives students strategies for making their literature reviews more inclusive.

All told, this lesson takes about 50 minutes to an hour -- 20-30 minutes for the readings and pre-workshop activity, and 30 minutes of discussion. 

This workshop introduces zines to a First Year Women's and Gender Studies class including what they are, general history and culture in the United States, and the process of making zines. This workshop supported a class assignment where students make zines featuring class readings and a reflective essay including original creative works. In the sessions, students recieve "handout" zines for note-taking and reflective work, a short lecture on zines, and work with databases to find pieces for their zine topics or ideas. The instructor can find example zines for the interactive exercise on Internet Archive and other collections.

An open access MOOC in French to bonify the information literacy skills of university students (with Moodle).

Each year, I host an Art+Feminism Wikipedia edit-a-thon and I often get students who are new to Wikipedia editing, as well as students who show up for class credit. To help engage students in different activities on Wikipedia, I created the following BINGO cards. These can be used by instructors or event organizers in any way that fits your approach to edit-a-thons. I always provide instruction and an Art+Feminism research and event guide to help everyone get started editing. These BINGO cards are especially useful for new editors and content creators.

This activity provides an interactive, student-centered, fun opportunity to explore skills of critical thinking and evaluation of resources. By allowing students to connect those things that they already know (even if they don’t know they know it) to larger concepts, we encourage them to trust themselves and to begin to develop their intuition as scholars, moving away from checklists and formulas for resource evaluation and toward a thoughtful critique of sources based on individual need and use.