Designing Library Research Assignments

The Purpose of a Course Related Research Assignment:

• Has a specific understood purpose
• Relates to some aspect of the course subject matter or learning objectives
• Leads to an increased understanding of a subject or the process of locating information related to the subject
• Makes students aware of the variety of information sources and formats (e.g. print, video, DVD, electronic, web, internet)
• Teaches students to select and evaluate quality information sources appropriate for their topics
• Reinforces habits of ethical scholarship

Suggestions for Effective Library Assignments

• Tell students why they are doing the assignment and what purpose it serves
• Divide complex assignments into a sequence of smaller, more manageable parts and provide feedback to students on each part of the research process separately
• Browse the library’s collection in advance for coverage of holdings
• Urge students to go to the reference desk for assistance
• If using a website, check a few days, before giving the assignment to make sure the site is still working
• Provide librarians with a copy of  your assignment
• Don’t assume students know how to use the library, even if they tell you they do
• Test the assignment yourself to make sure it can be completed realistically
• Schedule library instruction sessions
• Give clear instructions for assignments in writing, rather than orally to reduce confusion
• Give a copy of the assignments to the reference librarians
• Give enough time for students to complete assignments successfully (research takes time)
• Consult a reference librarian before, during and after an assignment
• The Potter Library collections and services are continually changing. New sources and ways of accessing information replace old ones every day. Check your assignments regularly so that you are not asking your students to use outdated or withdrawn sources.
• Schedule an Information Literacy session preferably close to the time students will actually be doing the research
• Use E-reserves when many students have to use the same resource
• If the assignment requires the use of specific sources, give students a list of them
• Check availability and access in the Potter Library
• Clarify to students that the “Web” or “Internet” is not the same as library databases, e-journals, online catalog, etc.

Sample Discipline Specific Assignments

Biography

• Select a scholar/researcher in a field of study and explore that person’s career and ideas. In addition to locating biographical information, prepare a bibliography of writings and analyze the reaction of the scholarly community to the researcher’s work.
• Nominate someone or a group for the Nobel Peace Prize. Learn about the prize, the jury, etc. Justify the nominations.
• Identify significant people in a discipline. Consult a variety of biographical resources and subject encyclopedias to gain a broader appreciation for the context in which important accomplishments were achieved.
• Identify a significant event or publication in a discipline. Ascertain the important people, etc., involved by consulting a variety of library resources.
• A verbatim transcript of an analytical description of a news conference can serve as a format for simulated interviews with well known people of any period. What questions would contemporaries have asked? What questions would we now, with hindsight, want to ask? How would contemporary answers have differed from those that might be given today? Take a rigorous, analytical approach, both in terms of the questions to be asked and the information contained in the answers.

Biology or Health

• Ask students to chose a diagnosis and have them act as responsible patients by investigating both the diagnosis and the prescribed treatment. Have them to do a comparison of the relative effectiveness of alternative treatments and then present it as a slideshow.

Communication & Presentation Skills

• Have students research a topic and present it as a poster session that other students will use to learn about a topic. This gives them experience with research as well as with expressing important points succinctly.
• Ask students to create a web page or PowerPoint presentation incorporating digital images found by searching the web; in preparation for the assignment facilitated a discussion of the issue of copyrighted images.

Critical Thinking

• Ask students to compare and contrast primary and secondary sources on the same topic; ask them to contrast the sources, their content and treatment of the topic
• Provide students with an article from the internet, or have them locate one through a search engine, then ask students to determine if the author is affiliated with a credible source such as a college, university or online journal.
• Prepare a list of citations to articles on a particular topic- example: “hurricanes”-from a variety of sources such as scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, government documents and/or websites. Ask the students to identify which items would be appropriate for a research project in a college course called “Natural Disasters: Or How to Avoid Being Killed by Planet Earth.”
• Verify assumptions or opinions on a specific topic. For example, for a course about inequalities of race, gender, and economics, students could be asked to find the average income for black women and white women in the U.S. What source did they use? How did they find it? Is it reliable? What other sorts of information could the source provide?

History

• Have students write a family history story. Students will use various sources of

Literature

• To develop the ability to evaluate sources,  have students prepare a written criticism of the literature on  a particular issue by finding book reviews, and by searching citation indexes to see who is quoting the context of the scholarship in a particular field.
• Create a profile of a species, or chemical compound found in a household product. Familiarizes students with the common scientific reference tool and introduces them to a scientific literature.

Management

• Have students describe a career and research the career choice. Ask students to find and specify why companies are the leading companies in that area? Also, what’s the best company in their county of residence to work for a generic career of their choose?
• Have students choose a company and find out what its employment policies are-flex time, family leave, stock options. Further, to find the net worth of the company if its traded publicly; the outlook for this occupation; the expected starting salary and how does the outlook and salaries vary by geography?

Music

• Write a review of a musical performance and include both reference to the performance attended and reviews of the composition’s premiere. Place the composition in a historical context using timetables, general histories and memoirs when available, using this information to gain insight into its current presentation.
• Judge variant editions and formats of a piano concerto. Critically think about performance practices exhibited in the various editions and formats. Conclude what each source employs, and state the implications for one’s own performance.

Plagiarism & Understanding Intellectual Property

• Ask students to prepare an annotated and evaluative bibliography of references to submit with their research paper or project. Ask students to include items in their bibliography they did not use and have them explain why

Political Science

• Have students follow a piece of legislation through Congress, tracing the lobbying groups for and against the legislation and how campaign financing affects the final decision. Students will use various legal sources.
• Have students follow a particular foreign policy situation as it develops, the organizations involved, the history of the issue and the ideological conflicts.
• Have students write a family history story. Students will use various sources of information.

Primary Sources

• Use bibliographies, literature guides, and the Internet to find primary sources on an issue or historical period. Contrast the treatment in the primary sources with the treatment in the secondary sources.
• Locate primary sources about any event. Any type of material can only be used once, i.e., one newspaper headline of a major event, one quotation, one biography, one census figure, one top musical number, one campus event, etc. Compile a minimum of six different sources. Write a short annotation of each source and include the complete bibliographic citation.

Problem Solving

• Compare the treatment of the same topic in two different disciplines

Psychology

• Determine the adequacy of a psychological test based on the literature about the test. Then develop a test battery designed for a particular situation, by using published tests and the literature about them.
• Have students find out the many journals published in psychology and to identify those journals that are basic to the discipline. Compare and contrast them. Analyze their content, tone, audience and impact.

Social Sciences

• Ask students to find a specified number of sources on a topic and write descriptive or evaluative annotated bibliography. Affords students an opportunity to imagine how a secondary source might fit into their own argument and encourages students to think critically about selecting quality resources, as well as provide them practice in using a bibliographic citation style.
• Assign students a topic on which a review article was written a number of years ago and have students update that review. This introduces students to literature reviews, subject specific databases, indexes and reference sources. It also requires students to analyze, synthesize and integrate the ideas they find.
• Have open discussions about the availability of research papers for purchase on the internet. Use this as a way to open dialogue about the ethical issues of using intellectual property.

Alternatives to the Term Paper

• Create a web page on a narrow topic relevant to the course. Include meta sites, e-journals, discussion lists, and organizations.
• Conduct the research for a paper except for writing the final draft. At various predetermined deadlines, turn in 1) a choice of topic; 2) an annotated bibliography; 3) an outline; 4) a thesis statement; 5) an introduction and conclusion.
• Write a newspaper story describing an event–political, social, cultural, whatever suits the objectives-based on their research. (Limited to one or two articles, or be more extensive.) Research the same event in different sources and compare the newspaper stories that result.
• Write an exam on one area; answer some or all of the questions (depending on professor’s preference). Turn in an annotated bibliography of source material, and rationale for questions.
• Write a grant proposal addressed to a specific funding agency; include supporting literature review, budget, etc. (Best proposal could be submitted for funding of summer research).

Pitfalls to Avoid

• Do not assume students have had prior experience using the library or that their general orientation is relevant to your assignment
• Materials the library owns changes from semester to semester. Retest an assignment before an assignment is given
• Giving a scavenger hunt. It lacks a clear purpose and does not teach students to do meaningful library research.
• Assigning the entire class the same exact assignment causes vandalism and makes it difficult for students to find needed resources.

~ Adapted from library websites of University of California, Berkeley and University of North Carolina, Ashville ~