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 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.
Students are given instruction on reading a scholarly article and directed to look for key pieces of information such as research question or hypothesis, methods, participants or data sources, key findings, and limitations of the study. The instructor then shows an infographic (prepared in advance) showing those key pieces of information in a concise, visual format. Students are introduced to an online infographic maker such as easel.ly or piktochart, and directed to create their own infographic on the article as practice.
The graded assignment is for students to create an infographic on a scholarly article of their choosing, relevant to a larger research assignment in the composition (or other) course (e.g. an annotated bibliography).

A two part instruction session that uses the "fish bowl" method, or students as instructors, to find scholarly sources and complete an annotated bibliography citation.

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. The titles of these disciplinary categories are specific to the General Education Seminar categories at my institution, as are the titles of the research guides suggested in the assignment. It could be used as a precursor to a research paper or as a standalone assignment.

This assignment asks students to map scholarly citations in order to illustrate the concept that scholarship is a conversation. Secondarily, the activity is meant to demonstrate the constructed and contextual nature of authority in academic discourse. It can be used to help students build up to completing an annotated bibliography, research paper, or presentation that requires scholarly sources.

What is it?

An annotation is a brief evaluative summary of a book, article, or other publication. A bibliography is a list of resources cited in a consistent style format (such as MLA). An annotated bibliography, then, is a list of cited sources with brief explanations centering around one topic or research question. The purpose is to help the reader of the bibliography understand the uses of each source and the relationships of one source to another.

Your Assignment:

You are going to compile sources on the same topic for this annotated bibliography, cited in proper MLA format. When writing your annotations, be sure to compare and contrast the source with the other sources you have included. Discuss how this work relates to your topic and what perspective it provides. You can use the RADAR* (relevance, authority, date, accuracy, and rationale) framework to help you evaluate your sources.

Steps:

Follow these steps when writing each of your annotations.

1. Citation: Cite the source correctly using a referencing style (such as MLA).
2. Relevance/Main Purpose: How does this source relate to your topic? What does this source add to the general knowledge on your topic?
3. Relevance/Audience: What is the intended audience level of this source and is it appropriate for your topic?
4. Authority/Author: Qualifications of the author (e.g., John Smith, a Russian history professor at USC, based his research on recently discovered documents). Is this source cited by other sources writing on the same topic?
5. Accuracy/Evidence: Are the author’s claims supported by evidence in the form of references, citations, endnotes, or a bibliography?
6. Rationale/Bias: Is there a bias in relation to your topic (e.g., “However, Smith’s case is somewhat weakened by an anti-German bias”)? State whether or not bias is present.

*RADAR adapted from:
Mandalios, J. (2013). RADAR: An approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources. Journal Of Information Science, 39, 470-478. doi:10.1177/0165551513478889
Meriam Library at California State University, Chico. (2010, September 17). Evaluating information-Applying the CRAAP test. Retrieved from http://www.csuchico.edu/lins/handouts/eval_websites.pdf