Five Highly Effective First Year Library Assignments

Well designed course-related library assignments help students gain effective research and critical thinking skills. These skills include the ability to identify, retrieve, evaluate, arrange, integrate and use information. Assignments need not focus on all of these skills.

The following are some general assignment ideas that can be adapted for most courses. UWC librarians are happy to collaborate with instructors to create effective assignments which meet your course goals and limit student frustration.

 Networking


Choose a controversial topic to research using a variety of sources, such as newspapers, magazines, and Web sites. Describe how each type of source covers the topic.

  • Purpose: Students learn there are multiple viewpoints on any given issue, and develop critical evaluation skills.
Information Highway

Research a career of your choice through books, magazines or newspapers, Web sites, and by doing an interview with someone working in your chosen field. Identify required qualifications, and employment and advancement forecasts for this career.

  •  Purpose: Students begin to examine their interests, abilities and experience and learn how to research career options. Students are encouraged to take ownership of their education in line with available career opportunities.

 


Students compare searching for information by using general and academic search engines. They should search on their topic by using two academic search engines linked to their library's home page (like EBSCOhost or WilsonWeb), and two general search engines (Yahoo, Google, etc.). Students choose one source found through use of each type of search engine to compare and contrast their results.

  •  Purpose:  To enhance critical reading skills, information literacy and research skills, and general written communication skills.


Students create an evaluative annotated bibliography on a research topic.  Students should use resources in a variety of formats, evaluating sources in terms of usefulness, credibility of source and/or author, and relevancy to the field of study. Students should cite information in the proper format for that given field of study. For examples of annotated bibliographies from Cornell and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill see:

  • Purpose:  To enhance critical reading skills, information literacy and research skills, and argumentative writing skills.


Find a magazine or newspaper article containing statistics, which can be visual (as in charts or graphs) or written. Find the original source of these statistics, which may be a research report, journal article, etc. Compare how the statistics were used in the article and in the original source, noting differences such as viewpoint and interpretation. Students should cite information in the proper format for that given field of study.

  • Purpose:  To enhance critical reading skills, information literacy and research skills, and general written communication skills.

For tips on designing effective library assignments and more assignment examples, consult the following links:

For more ideas about integrating library information literacy and critical thinking skills into your assignments, check out these web sites:
A concise guide to citation formats and style guides, as well as general guides to the research paper process can be found at:

Computer
For web page evaluation criteria, see the UW Colleges guide at:

We encourage you to contact your library liaison for support in creating these types of assignments.

 

 

Last updated October 20, 2009. Comments to Mary Rieder.