Skip to main content

Community of Online Research Assignments

An open access resource for librarians and educators

Who’s an Authority? Recognizing Scholarly Sources in the Library

Are you finding reliable sources for your research papers and projects? Has your professor asked you to use scholarly sources? What is a scholarly source anyway? In this workshop, learn how to critically evaluate the information you find through books, articles, and websites. **This lesson plan was adapted from "Establishing and Applying Evaluation Criteria" p. 74 -78 in Teaching Information Literacy Threshold Concepts Lesson Plans for Librarians, edited by Bravender, McClure, and Schaub (2015).**

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.

The Information Spectrum

This concept map and activity explores how various sources of information are created, accessed, and shared. Students collaboratively define what makes a source traditional, emerging, public, or exclusive. Students are given a type of information source to map on the grid according to each axis, and provide a rationale for their placement.

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.

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.

Richard Prince, Aesthetics, and the Value of Information

This lesson was developed for a Photography course on the theory and psychology of photography (non-majors and majors both take this course). This lesson is typically presented at the beginning of a course section on the aesthetics of photography. It was meant to challenge their assumptions about art, information (online) as a commodity, and copyright practices of artists. Students may be asked to look up Richard Prince before class or during, as the lesson suggests.

Scholarly Article Autopsy

This lesson is intended as a single session within a major’s research methods course. Rather than using a shorter “scholarly vs. non-scholarly” comparison worksheet, this activity asks students to work in groups to systematically examine a scholarly article in depth, identify and evaluate its various components visually and in writing, and then compare it to a non-scholarly article on the same topic. Groups then report back to the entire 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.

Classroom Assessment Techniques for Librarians

Classroom assessment techniques (CATs) are learner-centered activities that engage students in learning and yield actionable assessment results. The CATs featured in this book are arranged by what they assess, i.e., prior knowledge and understanding, analysis and critical thinking, synthesis and creative thinking, application, attitudes and self-awareness, and learner reactions. Examples include the minute paper, preconception check, muddiest point, think-pair-share, opinion polls, and chain notes.

Primary and Secondary Sources Tutorial

This interactive learning module takes students through the process of identifying the differences between primary and secondary sources. The structure of the tutorial consists of four parts. First, students learn the definitions for both primary and secondary sources. Next, the students work through various examples of primary and secondary sources in different academic disciplines at their own pace. In the third part, common mistakes are addressed in “Mythbusters” style.

Subscribe to ACRL framework