Community of Online Research Assignments

Citations in the Wild: Wrangling Your Citations with Zotero

This self-guided, active learning exercise for Zotero was originally created for a 1–1.5 hour standalone online workshop. Zotero is a free, open-source tool that helps users collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share references. It is easy enough for students to learn quickly, yet powerful enough to support dissertations, theses, and capstone projects. Zotero also provides a practical way to engage with the conceptual goals of the ACRL Framework, transforming abstract ideas such as “giving credit” and “joining a scholarly conversation” into concrete research practices.

Research Wizards

The most powerful wizards have gathered to battle one another.  Only one will win.  Wizards must use reliable sources to research incantations for the battle, or their spells will fizzle.  Truly wise wizards must learn to tell the difference. 

Introduction to Critical Appraisal for Medical Students

In this session, first year medical students in their second semester of study are introduced to the concept of critical appraisal. During the first hour, students will receive an introductory lecture on critical appraisal and the CASP checklist tool. During the second hour, students will be provided with discussion questions and an article on labor induction versus expectant management in low-risk nulliparous women. Students will review the article and answer the discussion questions in their small groups with their small group facilitators.

Aspects of Patient Care: Layering Voices for Inclusive Decision Making

This is the first of three sessions where the instructor works with pharmacy students to help then understand how to conduct literature searching and research from an inclusive perspective. The students have already seen the instructor once so emphasis is placed on understanding their current search knowledge, addressing the needs of the group, and then on them exploring how to research topics of patient care with a myriad of voices (not just relying on scholarly works). This is done with many activities and group work.

Reinforcement of Cultural Humility in Searching and Patient Communications

The sixth in a series of 6 courses, students focus on the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Plan involving prescription medications, patient history, and more complex patient cases. The librarian has already met with these students in other courses so this is and scaffolded approach with this being their last session with the librarian. The purpose of the librarian session is to make sure they feel comfortable doing advanced research on drug information pertaining to specific topics that will be communicated to patients.

Pharmacy: Aspects of Patient Care Literature Searching

The first in a series of six courses, students focus on the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Plan involving prescription medications, patient history and more complex patient cases with an emphasis on culture humility. This one-shot is intended to help solidfy the lessons taught in previous classes I have with the students (such as Boolean and library services) and allow them to explore the needs of searching for traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine.

Advanced Avoiding Plagiarism

This lesson was created to help further discuss issues surrounding plagiarism after a quick introduction at orientation. It was created for pharmacy PhD students but I do believe it could be useful for many learner types. A large focus on this lesson was why it is important not to plagiarize with emphasis on oppression through traditional citation and review practices. Inspiration and/or content obtained from: Conner-Gaten, Aisha. "Politics of Citation Discussion Activity." CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments), 2020.

Health Disparities and Literacy for Future Health Care Providers

This lesson was given to a health career academy that consists of high school and undergraduate students. The students have a strong interest in careers in the health sciences but have yet to start their education through health sciences programs. The point of the session was to understand how disparities and health literacy intersect and will be important factors in the work they do as learners and providers and to empower the students to use their cultural wealth and voices to make change. I am attaching the slides with notes (which acted as my lesson plan for this session).

Pharmacy: Introduction to Evidence Based Medicine: Building PICO

This is session 1 of 3 sessions that I do for Introduction to Evidence Based Medicine in Pharmacy. For this session I had about an hour so the majority of the session is group work. Included are the materials to build the activity, an overview of the lesson (since so much was group work, I wouldn't call it a lesson plan), and the rubric for assessing /grading the activity. This was designed for Zoom/online synchronous teaching. A guide was created to assist with the work in the class (with links to all class activities) and be a place for students to refer back to later.

Intro to Evaluating Resources

This video was put together to offer health sciences students a brief introduction to critically thinking about their resources in order to evaluate how appropriate they are for use in their work. It was important that the learners understand the complexities of using specific resources and why it is important to always critically evaluate materials. This includes a discussion of critiques of gatekeeping surrounding peer review, how damaging and discriminatory research can still get published, and how to ask crucial questions to subvert dominant narratives.

Scientific research in popular sources classroom activity

This think-pair-share activity in which students compare a popular and scholarly source will help them progress from answering observable questions (type of language and format) to analytical questions (intended audience). As a class, students will discuss their answers and talk about whether the popular source accurately represented the scholarly source.

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?

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.

Subject-Specific ICT Literacy

This website provides several subject-specific guides to ICT literacy resources (bibliographies, websites, articles, learning activity ideas) to help faculty incorporate ICT literacy into their curriculum. Each subject guide can be accessed as an independent website. “ICT proficiency is the ability to use digital technology, communication tools, and/or networks appropriately to solve information problems in order to function in an information society.

Teaching with Data: CET Assignment Repository from USC

The resources included represent 12 data-driven assignments created by USC faculty recipients of the Provost's Data-Driven Assignment Grant Program in Spring 2015. The faculty grant recipients worked with instructional designers in the USC Center for Excellence in Teaching to design these assignments in accordance with advancing USC's strategic focus on data literacy for students including abilities to think critically about data, ask meaningful questions, make evidence-based observations, and communicate findings.

Gooru

Gooru is a free, educational search engine for online resources and lesson plans in science, math, social studies and language arts. Teachers and students can search for and curate collections of multimedia resources, digital textbooks, videos, handouts, games, and quizzes.