In small groups students give a presentation examining how the popular media reports scientific findings.
There is a large body of research on corporate ownership and control of traditional media, such as print, television, and radio. Comparatively, research about corporate control of what we see online is underdeveloped, yet search engines are often the first place students uncritically look for research as opposed to the library website, catalogs, and discovery services. Dr. Safiya Noble shows that Google image searches for black women often perpetuate and reinforce dominant narratives involving racism and misogyny.
This assignment was created for an introductory nutrition course for health related science majors and nonmajors to meet the Information Literacy Flag criteria for the core standards at Loyola Marymount University. The assignment focuses on the evaluation of a primary and secondary source on a specific topic to assess the similarities and differences between the sources of information. The primary goal of the assignment is for a pair of students to select a current popular press article that references a recent scientific journal article.
Using ProQuest SIRS Issues Researcher or similar database, groups of students work together to find and read four informative magazine articles representing a variety of opinions on a topic. For each magazine article they write an MLA citation. In an oral presentation of less than three minutes per group, they summarize the controversy without giving their own opinions and explain why they chose the four articles. Students are told to be prepared to answer questions about their topic and why they selected each of the four articles.
Entering students all take MGT101 – Business Management Practice. Creation of a business plan for a unique product or service is the major project for this course. This Library assignment uses a workshop format to give student groups in Management 101 the task of exploring, evaluating, and reviewing a particular resource important in the business plan research process.
Rather than just providing a 20min presentation on academic databases available through the library website--this lesson is designed to have students demonstrate using library databases for their classmates. Delivered to our ENG 1B (a required freshman course) students, and timed to coincide with their Argument Essay assignment, students practice accessing and utilizing databases to find information sources. Working in groups, the students explore an assigned database before coming up to the podium to demonstrate the materials, search functionality and features of that database.
This is a short, engaging activity suitable for learners of all levels. In it, students evaluate web sources that are provided by an instructor using the acronym CRAAP (currency, relevance, accuracy, authority, and purpose). Students work together in groups and explore evaluation processes aloud, with guidance from the CRAAP cards and the instructor. This is an adaptation of various evaluating sources activities available in LIS literature and professional resources. This activity is ideally implemented as a kind of collaborative game moderated by the instructor. It is highly adaptable.
This annotated bibliography assignment has five different versions for five different groups of disciplines: arts, humanities, social analysis (social sciences), life and physical sciences, and quantitative reasoning. Each is meant to give students a way to identify and explore the key types of scholarly sources in those disciplinary categories; for example, to understand what is meant by a primary source in each category.
Students create an entry in the Fremont Wiki - http://localwiki.net/fremont. Students incorporate information literacy concepts, have hands-on experience conducting research, and create actual content on the Internet [while also learning how easy it is for anyone to change that content]. It could also be a great chance to get students into local museums and archives.
Syllabus and five assignments within a two-credit live course at undergraduate level. See "Relevant Links" section for access to all assignments. Assignments include a rubric.
This activity proceeds via Socratic questioning. The goal is to have students explain the common stumbling blocks they encounter as they look for information and as they write papers (if they have). The role of the librarian is to facilitate the discussion by providing a contextual framework for student experiences. By showing students that their research process follows a common pattern, they can make better choices about how, when, and where to look for information (e.g., not jumping straight to peer-reviewed articles when they can barely define their topic)
A general worksheet for students to find key sources in selected databases for their assignments in Communication Studies.
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 set of assignments is designed to help students: (a) grow initial thoughts and questions into carefully scoped and well-reasoned research papers, and (b) develop critical thinking skills through interrogation of familiar images of religion and spirituality in American popular culture.
The following activity is meant to assist learning the concepts of strategic search. It introduces the idea that sources contribute different perspectives to an argument and that scholarship is a conversation. It can be used for any discipline but is particularly well suited to introductory writing courses.
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.
A 10-minute presentation accompanied by a 20-page research paper. The presentation features highlights from your extensive research on a career field, including a profile of a specific company or organization and an interview with a practicing professional.
A research diary is a log of the steps and thought processes researchers go through as they conduct their research. A research diary gives students the opportunity to reflect on the research process as they discover more information about a topic.
Students are asked to reflect on their experience writing a required “literature review” for the course through a first-person “comic.” The visual narrative format allows students to come to terms with their own experience of what was hard, easy, or confusing about the literature review process and express it in a creative way.
