In Spring 2012 I participated in a district workshop on information literacy titled "Research Assignment Handouts: Essential Elements to Promote Student Success." I revised the handout for the group research & symposium assignment to better help students get started by suggesting resources, requiring help from a librarian, specifying which data bases to use, and providing more details about what consititutes plagiarism. I also revised the rubric to better reflect these items. I will qualitatively assess the quality of the student research and avoidance of plagiarism in 4 sections of COM100 and compare/contrast with that of prior semesters.
Results: 22 student groups were assessed. All reported utilizing the services of a librarian--(face-to-face or the 24-7 online resource) for information gathering and using APA style for citations. Works cited pages for all groups included a greater variety of valid resources than previously observed, including Google Scholar and data bases; each group cited sources orally during the presentations. Plagiarism was not evident.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| group-research-symposium-assignment-newest-cats.doc | 38.5 KB |
Comments
This is appropo in that I tell students on a regular basis the consequences of plagiarism. This is a needed function of assessment which needs to be a regular component of all educational rubrics in my opinion, and therefore good assessment action for the instructor and us all(as educators).
I am currently struggling with raising the quality of my hybrid students research projects. Your outline of tips provides some concrete ideas that are logical and sequential, and I will incorporate in my next assignment. I have to say, however, the acronym you use for the process of conducting presentations really grabbed my attention: CRAPP!!
I too have attended the "Research Assignments Handout" learnshop and found it very useful in my research-based assignments. Even if you don't find a big difference in results between pre and post students, it helps dramatically that we the teachers are clear about our education objectives. I liked how you incorporated Google Scholar as a resource (as opposed to Google), but how will you teach the studnets which YouTube videos are of scholastic quality?
In reply to I too have attended the Research Assignments Handout by Erik Huntsinger
The videos should cite resources, be timely, and provide contact information. The students can also perform tests of evidence to determine credibility and validity.
Do you have other ideas?