Community of Online Research Assignments

An open access resource for librarians and educators

BEAM Me Up: Source Use and Synthesis

BEAM Me Up is a one-shot session that works well in addition to a search strategies class, but can be done without. This session asks students to use the BEAM framework coined by Joseph Bizup to organize and synthesize research materials to create a complex and well-supported argument. Rather than evaluated sources using a checklist, the instructor using BEAM asks students to consider how the information will be used (and to consider how authors use information to build arguments). Adaptors may want to replace the sources given here with ones relevant to the students' curriculum.

Wikipedia Edit-a-thon BINGO

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.

Cast Your Students as Scholars

This is a participatory, variable lesson frame ready for you to modify to suit your instruction needs. This lesson and it's variations focuses on encouraging students to see themselves as information creators and part of the scholarly conversation and can also variously include conversations about about the scholarly information cycle and/or authority depending on instruction constraints and configuration.

Sphere of Discourse

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.

Missionner les étudiants surmotivés sur des objectifs connexes / Self-driven side-quests with minimum mentoring

Comment envoyer une minorité d'étudiants surmotivés sur des objectifs pédagogiques intégrés et connexes dont le parcours est structuré ? 1) Faire une courte introduction engageante (15min.) 2) Identifier la minorité surmotivée et leur distribuer un parcours. 3) Assurer une supervision mininal avec un suivi distant et ponctuel au besoin. Avec 2 exemples de parcours: une auto-initiation en 5 niveaux pour contribuer à Wikipédia; et un programme de 12 semaines pour démarrer un blogue sur un sujet de recherche. How to get the few really motivated students involved?

Artist Statements: Context, Content & Conversations

Art and design students are almost always asked to write about their work, in the form of an artists’ statement, at some point in their academic career. This is a skill that is crucial as they move from student to professional or practicing artist because it gives them the opportunity to reflect on their work, share concepts and develop their authority in their field, and, very importantly, discuss how their work builds on the work of others who share similar themes and/or processes.

Keeping It Real: Teach ACRL Information Literacy Frames with FRED data

A hybrid teaching module with two elements: an interactive online module for students to complete ahead of class and a face-to-face lesson plan that builds on the skills learned in the online lesson. The in-class session provides students with a critical exploration of the purchasing power of minimum wages across states and/or the earnings gap between men and women employed full time. The pre-class online course is titled: “FRED Interactive: Information Literacy” available through www.econlowdown.org.

Data Literacy

This session was part of an undergraduate, critical thinking and global perspectives course. The course is offered by various disciplines on campus. This instance focused on global challenges (The Seven Revolutions developed by csis.org). For the session the students applied two frameworks to data: authority is constructed and contextual and scholarship as conversation. Students learned about a data life cycle concept with emphasis on evaluation.

Visual Aids and Descriptors in Primary Source Evaluation & Curation

This lesson was developed for HIS484 (Topics in the History of Gender and Sexuality/Pride in the time of HIV/AIDS) in the Spring of 2018. The students’ final assignment culminated in a multimedia or digital research project on a topic of their choosing and heavily relied on primary source and visual materials. This lesson focuses on how students, as content curators and analysts, can engage in deeper analysis and contextualization of the sources they present through their projects.

Synthesis

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.

Exploring the Scholarly Territory Using Library Resources

In this lesson students view a series of short videos about searching library resources, interspersed with exercises in which they conduct searches on their topics and reflect on what they find and on the research process. (The first two videos and accompanying activities are done outside of class; the third can be done in class.)

Scholarly Articles: Reading for Understanding

This activity/assignment was designed for a first year composition course in collaboration with an English/Writing instructor. It could be used in an information literacy credit course, First Year Experience course, or in another discipline-specific context. The purpose of the lesson is to lay the foundation for students to be able to read scholarly work more effectively and critically.

Social Justice Role Playing Game: Net Neutrality Lesson Plan- Part 2

Students will participate in a game-based learning scenario based on Net Neutrality. Participants will each assume the role of an individual vested in the issue (Chairman of the FCC, President of the U.S., CEO of telecommunications company, or Supreme Court Justice). They will form alliances, discuss issues, formulate a strategy, and briefly share their viewpoint with the hope of winning the game. The learning experience is student lead.

Critical Thinking in Action: Sustainability

Students will be exposed to various entry points of a sustainability topic in various formats. They will take notes as they experience those expressions on the Elements of Thought evidenced throughout. This in-class, two-part lesson includes an independent guided activity and a Think-Pair-Share activity for further reflection on source/ claimant evaluation. Prior to this lesson, instructor will have chosen a topic relevant to their subject area or course content – Possible examples: food deserts, clean water in US, bee colony collapse.

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