Introductory Exercise

1. www.martinlutherking.org/
2. www.georgewbush.org
3. www.ihr.org/
4. en.wikipedia.org/
5. Are we living in interesting times?

Outcomes

1. insight into electronic (mostly) library resources and services that can assist you in research and professional development.
2. insight into creating coursework that will lead your students to reliable, authoritative information - and to an understanding of what constitutes "good" information.

Information Services Toolbox

• Information Services and Resources for Faculty
• Library Resources for Online Learning
• UNR Course-related Information Resources
• UNR Libraries Subject Specialists
• A Researcher's Best Friend

Sample course-specific Library pages

• English 102: Selected Library & Internet Resources
• English 441: Beowulf
• History 432/632: History of Women in the United States
• Nursing 300: Definitions Assignment

Sample non-course-specific pages useful for students

• Library Research Guide
• What is a Primary source?
• What is a Scholarly or Peer Reviewed journal?
• Evaluating Information Sources
• Evaluating Internet Resources
• Citing Online Nursing Resources
• Documenting Information Sources & Avoiding Plagiarism (PowerPoint)
• Computer Science Graduate Student Research Projects
• U.S. History Bibliography - Colonial Period to 1900

Assignments

Plagiarism

• Confronting PLAGIARISM
• Plagiarism and Anti-plagiarism
• Cheating 101 : Paper Mills and You
• Combating Plagiarism
• School Sucks (search Google for paper mills)
• UNR Student Conduct Information
• Plagiarism.org
• Turnitin.com

General Observations - The Don'ts

• Don't send them to the library with no guidance (don't assume they will figure it out on their own)
• Don't have them look up their birthday
• Avoid picking a subject by student's first or last name
• Don't assign projects just for the sake of having a project
• In other words, avoid assignments that do not fit the course's subject agenda
• No trick questions or intentional wrong citations for them to stumble over
• Do not have library/research instruction without an accompanying assignment
• Avoid scavenger hunts
• Bottom line — avoid perception of "busy work"!

General Observations - Try these!

• Add a research component to an existing assignment
• Have students annotate their bibliographies with information on how they found each citation
• Have students collect a thesaurus of search terms related to their research topic, then possibly rate them for usefulness (i.e. what works best in a general database, on Google, in a higher-level database?)
• Split "library" assignments into a variety of tasks throughout the semester
• Ramp up the skill level over the semester by requiring more intense research skills with each writing assignment
• Highlight bad information for students to analyze
• Have students contribute to a class-wide collection of course-related Web sites, articles
• Ask students to create a set of standards for Web sites
• Discuss research strategies, finding tools, and Web sites via a course bulletin board
• Have students create a flow chart for researching a topic, including the steps and tools they would use for finding each type of information
• Effective Research Assignments - Guidelines for Instructors