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This page outlines good practices with corresponding assignments to ensure a successful research project in your class. A few general considerations includes:
Scaffolding research assignments gives your students opportunities for check in and plenty of time to navigate resources.
Creating collaborative learning engagements for students is challenging. Consider smaller low stakes assignments that offer students opportunities to share knowledge, present, and work in a team in ways that acknowledge the complexities of online collaborative work.
Requiring that students use a citation manager as part of their assignment will encourage organization in the research process and can facilitate collaboration. The Citation Management Subject Guide can help users determine the right citation management tool for them. Recommended tools are Zotero and Mendeley.
Students can use the Research Calculator to help keep on track of their assignments.
This toolkit is a collection of assignments and activities created by librarians for use in the classroom. Librarians are here to assist you and your students. You can meet with librarians in person or online. We are also available over email and chat.
Ideas on How to Implement the Research Skills Tutorials
1. Before Library instruction
Do your librarians have limited time with students to teach them research and information literacy skills?
It can be hard to balance teaching students the conceptual knowledge they need and the basic mechanics of research for their assignments in one sitting. Use multimedia to flip your library instruction. Students can go through multimedia on their own time (before or after class) to get basic concepts of information literacy.
Benefit: Librarians can focus their in-person time with students on hands-on searching and practice for their assignment, and reinforcing information literacy concepts.
2. Scaffolded throughout your Course
Are you concerned about having enough time to cover your course’s content and incorporate research instruction into your syllabus?
Use multimedia to flip information literacy instruction throughout several weeks of your course. Students can go through multimedia on their own time to learn basic concepts and practice research skills.
Reinforce IL concepts through the research assignments you planned to give as part of your syllabus - like annotated bibliographies, research papers, etc. Relevant multimedia can be shared with students at each step of a major research project.
Benefit: Students can benefit from information literacy instruction without a significant impact on your syllabus.
3. As a Remedial Tool
Do some of your students need a refresher or additional help with how to do research (transfer students, non-traditional students, at risk students)?
Use multimedia as a remedial tool to for students who need to review basic information literacy skills. By making materials available online, students can get the help they need without significantly impacting your course syllabus.
Benefit: Students who need additional help can benefit from information literacy instruction without a significant impact on your syllabus.
Below is a brief summary of what each module covers. Click the link to see all the components of each module, or check out the In-Depth teaching Guide linked above.