Designing Course-Integrated
Research Assignments

Research assignments that are well constructed can teach students information skills by giving them multiple opportunities for guided practice. You may find the following helpful when designing research assignments.

Show your students the research process

• Provide students with reflective moments. Students who can think critically about the research process will give you better results.
  
  
• Break the research portions of the assignment down into manageable parts. Students need time to develop topics, identify search terms, identify appropriate sources, search and retrieve information, and to evaluate what they find.
  
  
• Require scholarly academic sources where appropriate and penalize students for selecting inappropriate or non-academic sources.
  
  
• Make research objectives clear to students.

To develop student learning outcomes it may be helpful to refer to the ACRL standards and to the Library's own Core Information Competencies. The more granular the assignment, the clearer understanding students have of the outcome.

"As a result of this assignment you should be able to:

• Articulate a focused research statement that accurately reflects your thesis.
• Distinguish between popular and scholarly sources using Lexis-Nexis, Social Sciences Abstracts and ABI-Inform databases.
• Consult each of the following: Statistical Abstract of the U.S; the United States Census, and California Code.
• Identify government information publicly available on the web about workings of local government in order to comment on local policy.
• Correctly cite all sources using APA format."

Help your students

• Consider library instruction for your class if the research assignment involves significant use of the library. Contact your department's liaison librarian to schedule instruction and to discuss what you want your students to learn from the library session. 
  
  
• Provide the liaison librarian with a copy of your class syllabus and assignment.
  
  
• Require students obtain an NIS account.
  
  
• Prepare students for the assignment before they come into the library. Classes should come to their library session with a defined topic and basic understanding of their information need and requirements.
  
  
• Many scholarly journals are now available only online in our article databases. Please help students distinguish between scholarly and popular periodic literature versus web and paper sources. Encourage students to use our scholarly journal databases.
  
  
• If using Library resources, put heavily used items on reserve, including optional reading lists. Please verify that we have the resources required for students in order to complete their assignment.
  
  
• Direct students who need help to the Library's web tutorials and free workshops. Computer literacy classes are also available to University students.
  
  
• Encourage students to ask for assistance at the Reference Desk during the early stages of their research.