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Problem Assignment and Revision
Guideline: Talk to your students about the types of resources you require - Many students do not know the differences between popular and scholarly resources, and most students do not understand the concept of peer review. Show your students examples to help illustrate the differences. Charts outlining the differences can be very helpful.
Assignment: A professor requires students to find general information on their topics but insists they only use peer-reviewed/scholarly journal material to complete the assignment.
Problem: Scholarly articles provide in-depth information or research on a topic and are not the most appropriate resource to use to gain basic familiarity with a topic. There is also no indication that peer-reviewed/scholarly journals have been "defined" in class to differentiate them from magazines or trade publications.
Revised Assignment:
- Assignment Objective 1: Recognize and identify sources that provide introductory and overview information on a given topic or in a given subject area (i.e. general and/or subject encyclopedias, subject-specific dictionaries and handbooks, "annual review" publications)
- Assignment Objective 2: Become familiar with the criteria that distinguish scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals from magazines and/or trade publications.
- Assignment Objective 3: Recognize and identify sources that provide in-depth information or research on a given topic or in a given subject area.
- Assignment Description: Develop a draft annotated bibliography of example resources (not expected to be a comprehensive list at this point) you will use to complete your research project. Where possible, find resources that range from general overviews of your topic (encyclopedia entries, dictionary entries) to articles written for the general public (magazines or trade publications) to articles written for and reviewed by the scholarly community (journals, conference papers/proceedings). For each example resource, write a short paragraph comparing/contrasting the type of information (amount of detail, written for what audience, references provided) found in that resource to other types of resources located for the project.
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