Learning Resources: Information Literacy &amp; Library Instruction Resources for Faculty: Sample Assignment Ideas

Links to Sample Library Research Assignments

The linked assignments below are examples of assignments created by other libraries. If you like one of these examples, please contact a librarian to begin collaborating on how to make it your own!

Evaluating the Interwebz with Designated Skeptics
Students will examine sources for currency, relevance, accuracy, authority, and purpose. o Students will explain how different elements of a source (author, date, scope, slant, reading level, etc.) effect how the source meets or doesn’t meet their information gathering needs.
Fake News, Lies, and Propaganda: How to Sort Fact from Fiction
An assignment example from CORA, the Community of Online Research Assignments. This particular example is for a multi-week course in identifying "fake news" and learning about journalistic credibility. Parts of this could be pulled out for educating students on how to identify and consume news.
Sample Assignment: Making Sense of Scholarly Journal Abstracts
A brief two page handout on how to read abstracts for scholarly journals for lower division undergraduates in particular. Examples include one from social sciences and one from humanities.
Synthesis Assignment
Learning Outcomes:
-Understanding research as a conversation
-Understanding and using synthesis to organize and weave together sources + our own ideas
-Understanding how essays/arguments can be organized by idea, not by source
Pass The Problem
Learning Outcomes:
Strategically select a database appropriate for their research topics Brainstorm keywords appropriate to a given research topic Evaluate the effectiveness of searching language

Creating a Library Scavenger Hunt

This activity will provide your students with a hands-on discovery experience in the library. A librarian will assist you in selecting and crafting a list of resources and items to locate in the physical library and/or the online collections.

This activity is completely customizable and can incorporate course-specific resources or serve as a general overview of library holdings.

Examples

Mobile Scavenger Hunt
A mobile, game-based way to introduce students to the library.

Incorporating Information Literacy into your Course

Critical thinking and research skills are relatively easy to incorporate into existing assignments. You may already be teaching information literacy in your classes without realizing it. Examples of assignments which require research skills could include:

Annotated bibliography - Include evaluation with summary.
Editorial fact-finder - Read an editorial and find facts to support it.
Interview preparation - Research a company, institution, or organization as if preparing for a job interview.
Newspaper story - Write a newspaper story, based on research, describing an event. Heighten interest by having several people research the same event, then compare stories.
Research Studies - Locate a research study reported in the news. Using library resources, find the original research article. Read both articles and write a summary of each, comparing the articles for audience, purpose, and style.
Primary vs. secondary sources - Research the same topic - one with primary sources, one with secondary sources. Compare the two sets of results.
Prominent scholar - Identify a noted scholar or researcher in your discipline. Research his/her career and publications. Include biographical information, a bibliography of publications and an analysis of the individual in his/her field.
Research log - Create a record of library research: methodology, sources consulted, keywords or subjects searched. Note both successes and failures.
Same topic across disciplines - Select a topic and research it in different disciplines (e.g., food from an agricultural, historical, and cultural perspective).
Scholarly and popular sources -Compare two articles on same topic, one scholarly, one popular.
Statistical fact check - Find a magazine or newspaper article containing statistics. Find the original source of the statistics. Compare how the statistics were used in both the original source and in the article, noting differences in viewpoint and interpretation.