SOMEDON’Ts and DO’s FOR CREATING RESEARCH ASSIGNMENTS

USING LIBRARY & OTHER INFORMATION RESOURCES

Anne Fields, PhD, Subject Specialist for English

OSU Libraries,

  1. DON’T: Design a library assignment from “front to back.”

DO: Design your assignment “back to front.” That is, decide what you want your students to learn from the assignment and what evidence will demonstrate that they have learned it. Design your rubric or other assessment instrument. Thendesign your assignment.

  1. DON’T: Assign students a firm mix of resources to cite in their Works Cited page; for instance, “1 book, 2 journal articles, and 1 website”. Doing so encourages students to take the first—possibly less relevant--resources they find in each category rather than exploring a fuller range of possibilities. More importantly, it hinders them from revising their search strategy and distracts them from selecting the most compelling, relevant, and credible resources to meet their research needs.

DO: Encourage students to explore a range of types of resources (books, articles, etc.) before settling on the resources for their research project. To ensure that they explore various resources consider creating a briefseparate assignment that asks them to list several sample resources in each category in order to show that they do know how to use different search tools effectively. This could be in the form of a preliminary bibliography. Considerasking students to keep a research journal that includes some reflection on why they selected certain items and rejected others.

  1. DON’T: Tell students, “Do not use web sources” or “Use a maximum of two web sources” without clarifying for them what you mean by a “web resource”.

DO: Differentiate between magazine, newspaper, and scholarly journal articles that are transmitted via the web and “websites” such as the homepage of the Democratic National Committee or the National Rifle Association.

  1. DON’T: Ask students to do anything that you haven’t tried to do yourself using the OSU Libraries web site and OSU Libraries databases and other resources. (Better yet, ask a colleague to try it.)

DO: Check to make sure that any research databases you ask students to use—perhaps ones that you used at a former institution—are in fact accessible to OSU students.

  1. DO: If you’re thinking about creating a library “scavenger hunt,” ask yourself, “What will my students learn by answering this question”? Remember that most factual questions, such as “What’s the capitol of Peru”, now can be answered (correctly or incorrectly) with a simple Google search. Asking twenty questions like this will only have students re-using Google over and over again, rather than experimenting with different library-based information resources.

DON’T: Create in-person or virtual scavenger hunts that ask students to answer questions that they won’t see the usefulness of in the context of their other work for your course.

  1. DON’T: If you do create a scavenger hunt, make students guess about which library tool to use. This will only frustrate them (and the library staff who have to repeatedly point a crowd of students to the same tools over and over again.)

DO: Tell students which library resource or tool to use. Then ask questions that will encourage them to explore the features of the tool and the resources it can lead them to. This will be a much more valuable learning experience in the long run.

And finally…

  1. DO: Consult with a subject librarian about your assignments ahead of time. We can help you design constructive and engaging assignments and help you avoid common pitfalls. For a list of OSUL Subject Specialists see: .
    Revised 8/10/11