Students expand their knowledge through active, self-determined investigation, learning the steps needed to understand a topic and to distinguish deep research from surface familiarity. They test hypotheses by using methodologies appropriate to their questions and fields; these methods include observing, reading, interviewing, experimentation, documentation, prototyping, data-mining, and surveying. They gain flexibility and responsiveness, cross disciplinary boundaries, and allow multiple perspectives to guide them. Students situate their research within broader cultural and historical contexts, reach new conclusions, support existing theories, or expand on the research of other scholars.
Ask students to keep a search log to document how their search changed over time. What keywords did they start with? What search engines? What did they learn from initial searches, and how did they improve their search with different terminology, limiters, different search engines?
Find three sources of the following about a living woman composer: a CD from Jennings Music Library; an interview with the composer on Youtube; a streaming audio track from Naxos Music Library; a book about the composer from Crossett or Jennings libraries; or a scholarly journal article from a library database. How did you choose your composer, and how did you decide which resources to locate? What happened while you were searching for these items?
Assign students to identify and use subject headings after conducting a keyword search; then, they can report back on the differences between subject and keyword searching.
Ask students to choose a topic, develop key search terms, and use two different search engines to locate information on their topic. Have them compare the results in terms of the types of sources (e.g., government, educational, scholarly, and commercial), the order/sequence of results, and relevance. Pair students who used the same search engine with different topics to compare results.
Prepare an annotated bibliography of books, journal articles, and other sources on a topic.
Assigning a research paper dues in stages is a useful way to ensure students stay on track with their research and plan enough time to order material through interlibrary loan and read the research they find. For example, a research paper could be broken into four due dates: 1. a inquiry paragraph and keywords 2. a bibliography of resources 3. a draft taken to the writing tutors 4. the final paper due.
Ask students to share what markers of quality or red flags they look for in sources to develop a class-developed evaluation tool. Engage them in the critical evaluation of a web source or professional journal, which can display either authoritative or questionable characteristics.
Explore specific source categories, like primary sources or reference sources, to distinguish them as a unique class of sources. Describe their creation process and discuss their unique uses.
Search the library catalog using a keyword of your choosing. From your results, look at the detailed record for a book that looks good to you. Under "find similar items," click on one of the subject headings to find a second book. While searching in the stacks for those two books, browse the stacks for a third title. What you discover by chance may end up being the most important source.
Use library databases and Google Scholar for researching a topic. Use the library catalog, or the journal finder, to get the full-text of articles cited in Google Scholar. Paste a citation into Google Scholar and see what other articles have cited it as well.
Do some browsing online about your assignment using 2-5 words that relate to your topic. Find some sources in the library’s stacks. Then, order one that is not in Crossett through Illiad. (You must have an Illiad account first!)
Choose a new vocabulary word that you learned from your assignment. Look up that word in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). What did you learn about your word from its history? Then, find 2-3 sources relating to your word. Finally, use a quote or an idea from at least one source in your final piece.
For faculty: Make a list of topics/authors/facts/etc. you want the students to research. Pass one to each student. Send them to the library to find at least one source about their topic. And, give them a task to complete: Draw something that they learned from the source; write three questions about the source; make a small poster representing their most interesting finding. Return to class to share discoveries.
Spend time demonstrating when it is appropriate to use non-scholarly sources: news for first-person accounts, late-breaking information only available on Twitter, statistics on government websites, etc.
Find two articles, a book from Crossett, and an image from ArtStor to learn more about a science-related topic.
Ask students to evaluate and analyze social media posts for a current event and determine why the post is or is not credible.
Using an encyclopedia entry, or a literature review, prompt students to recognize references to other works. Show students how to use library tools to trace those citations to other sources.
Have students identify one or two important databases for the project they are working on, then analyze why they consider them to be an effective resource for their research.
