Community of Online Research Assignments

An open access resource for librarians and educators

MIT Clean Start Business Simulation

About: You are the Chief Executive Officer of an exciting start up Clean Energy Business. This is a web-based free simulation. Students play the role of the founder of a new start-up company in the exciting and competitive clean tech sector. Each quarter students must set prices, decide how many engineers and sales people to hire, and set compensation, including salary, stock, options and profit sharing.

Open Access: Strategies and Tools for Life after College

The “Open Access: Strategies and Tools for Life after College” workshop was developed to give students the tools to continue academic research after graduation. Students may not recognize that the library provides many electronic resources for their research that is automatically given to them during their enrollment; by acknowledging their privileged access to information, they are prepared to be responsible researchers beyond campus. The workshop was requested by international students who were concerned about losing access to LMU resources when they returned home.

Scholarly character sheet / Feuille de personnage du jeune chercheur

A scholarly character sheet for self-assessment about information literacy skills - gamification around quantified self, badging and young researcher identity. Une feuille d'autoévaluation pour suivre les apprentissages en compétences informationnelles acquises sur le moyen ou le long terme. Elle est ludifiée avec des éléments de mesure de soi, de badge et d'identité de jeune chercheur.

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?

Foutaisomètre / Bullshit-o-meter

Synthèse ludique des ateliers d'évaluation des sources. Peut être utilisé comme récompense : un exemplaire plastifié est offert à l'étudiant qui trouve l'erreur volontairement insérée dans la formation (les autres n'ont que la feuille en papier). Autre utilisation : trouver le document le plus faible parmi vos références, ou parmi les références du syllabus de tel cours. Gamified summary for the evaluation of sources activity.

ZotLog: Inspiring students to adopt structured methods in Zotero

The purpose of this activity is to inspire students to adopt structured methods when they explore and retrieve information. It is based on lab notebooking methods and on managing and documenting the flow of references in Zotero, a reference management software. The first principle is based on a tree of collections to manage the references arriving in the Zotero library. Some basic methods are suggested and the students are invited to create their own. The second principle is based on standalone notes to document all the research process through online database, libraries and experts.

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.

You Say Periodical. I Say Magazine. And then there are Journals! What Does It Matter as Long as I can Get the PDF?

This is designed to introduce students to the wonderful world of periodicals, in their great variety, and to how they will appear in different databases. It also begins the work of building their skills at evaluating information sources, determining perspective.

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.

Access, Power, & Privilege

This activity is designed to support teaching at the intersections of scholarly communication and information literacy. The choose-your-own scenario activity, designed in LibWizard, can be used in a flipped classroom setting or in a traditional classroom. The choose-your-own scenario activity is inspired by and adapts questions from: Hare, S. & Evanson, C. (2018). Information privilege outreach for undergraduate students. College and Research Libraries.

Database "Speed Dating"

This activity introduces students to a variety of databases in their discipline by asking them to quickly review and prepare an “elevator speech” on the database’s best features and content. Students then do three rounds of “speed dating” to share with other students what they’ve discovered.
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