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InfoWise Assignments:

Bring Out the Best in Your Students

Lisa Kammerlocher: Liaison Librarian (West)
Sandra Ley: Instruction Librarian (West)
Julie Tharp: Instruction Librarian (Tempe)

 

Learning Goals Librarian Contributions to InfoWise Assignments
Faculty Pre-Assessment Assignment Design Strategies
Why Create an InfoWise Assignment Common Problems to Avoid
   

 

Learning Goals

  • Understand how faculty and librarians can team-up to create InfoWise assignments
  • Use stages of the information search process to help define assignments
  • Participants can describe three strategies for creating InfoWise assignments

 

Faculty Pre-Assessment

What are the issues and problems you observe regarding the quality of information students use when completing your assignments?|

Why Create an InfoWise Assignment?

Through the assignments they make, faculty have the power to influence students' development as effective researchers and graduates who are prepared to succeed in the 21st Century.

InfoWise assignments can help instill:

  • valuable research skills
  • encourage the use of robust library and Internet resources
  • improve the quality of student projects
  • promote academic integrity

Assignments that are NOT InfoWise have the potential to:

  • confuse and frustrate students
  • reduce the quality of student work
  • generate negative associations with the library and conducting research

 

What Do Librarians Have to Contribute to Assignment Design?

Librarians are uniquely positioned to observe the barriers and constraints that students experience at various stages of completing assignments.  We have first-hand experience working with students in action during the research process and witnessing the mental gaps in students’ awareness of resources and the information landscape. 

Librarians are:

  • Experts in resources, research and the information search process
  • Assignment design consultants

Consider meeting with your subject librarian as you develop new assignments or modify old ones.

 

InfoWise Assignment Design Strategies

Through the information search process (see Big Six), students need to locate, analyze and evaluate information, and be able to synthesize information from various places to create new knowledge.

1) Be clear about expectations

  • Set research-related objectives for the assignment (what are they skills they’ll need to complete the assignments, what are the research skills they are going to learn for this assignment?) 
  • Specify the types of information that ARE and ARE NOT acceptable
  • Match the scholarly level of the resource to the outcome you expect
  • Provide an explanation of WHY these sources are acceptable and unacceptable
  • Indicate the number of each type of source you expect students to use
  • Incorporate research strategies into the assignment.

2) Understand the breadth and depth of resources available for your assignment. 

  • Make sure the assignment lays a foundation for the type of information students are going to be using and why. 
  • Different types of information can help at different stages of the research process.
Stage of Research Resources

1. Task Definition
1.1 Define the information problem
1.2 Identify information needed

textbooks or reference sources to identify or clarify a topic, increase familiarity with key terms and concepts
2. Information Seeking Strategies
2.1 Determine all possible sources
2.2 Select the best sources

Be aware of all information formats and select those that best that best fit the assignment.  Link to a Source Guide that can help you understand what is available from ASU Libraries and the WWW.

 
3. Location and Access
3.1 Locate sources
3.2 Find information within sources 		Provide hints to student about service available for getting materials from libraries across ASU or through InterLibrary Loan. Consider directly linking to subject pages or course pages available through the Library's webpage. Ex. Criminal Justice and Criminology

Encourage students to use the bibliographies of the best resources they find to identify additional materials for their research topic.

3) Stage assignments to reinforce research process and provide ongoing feedback.

  • ask students document themselves at every step of the process, and give them credit for each stage
  • assign due dates for each stage
  • give students the opportunity to consult you about the appropriateness of their information resources
  • build in accountability - use scoring rubrics that integrate the information components of the assignment.  Give credit for each part of the research process and utilizing the correct strategies; otherwise, students will not value or take seriously the research process if it is not graded.
  • Provide opportunities to reflect on their research strategies and think critically about what they are doing and the sources they’re finding.

4) Define Important Terms Used in the Assignment and Provide Examples

example.  Annotations: A brief paragraph added after a citation in a bibliography to describe or explain the content or message of the work cited or to comment on it. (some faculty may be even more specific about their expectations of an annotation)

5) Specify a Citation Style:

 

Common Problems to Avoid

Students forbidden to use anything from the Internet

Many faculty members are justifiably concerned about the deteriorating quality of student papers caused by over reliance on Internet search engines and unquestioning acceptance of "the first web site they see." However, forbidding all use of the Internet may not be the best solution for many reasons:

  • Students equate using the Internet with using the Libraries’ website
  • Some scholarly journals are only available online
  • There are reliable, teachable ways to find and identify high-quality web sites; you may even want to consider having them evaluate sites as part of the assignment.

Assigning students to find topics in a few select journals or databases

This is too limiting and may inadvertently set them up to fail. For example, telling students to use JSTOR to search for scholarly articles on a particular topic. JSTOR only indexes a select number of journals, and does not contain any current articles. When searching for a topic, the best approach is to be specific about the type of sources you want students to use, not specific about which exact sources. It is best to steer students to search library databases in general.

Students are expected to use materials that are not available at ASU

Check the availability and format of materials prior to distributing the assignment.  If resources do not appear to be available, check with your librarian to identify alternative resources or order new materials, if feasible.  This could require significant lead time.

Other Problems to Avoid

  • An entire class looking for one piece of information or researching the same specific topic; especially difficult when printed materials are involved.
  • Students working from incomplete/incorrect information.
  • Students assigned excessively vague or general topics, e.g., "women in America," without guidance on narrowing a topic.
  • Students given obscure trivia questions and told to find the answers.

 

Modified: November 08, 2007,