Research assignments.

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Effective Research Assignments: Home

Suggestions to help teachers help students find relevant information, understand
scholarly sources, and think critically about information.

Communicate your expectations

• Assess the quality of the sources your students cite as part of their
overall grades, and explain clearly in your rubric how that
evaluation will be made.
• Spell out your expectations regarding sources. Instead of asking for
scholarly sources, for example, you could ask your students to
"cite at least two peer-reviewed journal articles and two primary
sources".
• Explain terminology and provide background regarding scholarly
publishing. What’s peer-review? What are some differences
between scholarly books and journal articles? When should one
consult popular news sources? What’s a primary source?
• Clearly communicate which style manual is required.
• Include a policy on plagiarism in the assignment and discuss the
purposes of proper attribution. Discuss examples: does
paraphrasing another author’s ideas require a citation?
• Provide examples of topics that are appropriate in scope for the
assignment at hand, and provide feedback to individual students
as they begin to develop and refine their topics.
Design and test your assignment
An effective research assignment targets specific skills, for example,
the ability to trace a scholarly argument through the literature or the
ability to organize consulted resources into a bibliography.
• Test the assignment yourself. Can you find the kinds of sources
required? Are you required to evaluate the sources you find?
• Ask students for feedback on the assignment. Are they having
problems finding relevant materials? Do they understand your
expectations?
• If the assignment is particularly demanding, consider dividing a
single research project into multiple assignments (outline, draft,
final draft), each one focusing on a different aspect of the
research process.
Ideas for alternative research assignmets
• Assign an annotated bibliography in which students identify primary
and secondary sources, popular and scholarly publications, and
detect and comment on forms of bias.
• Ask for students to document the search tools they use (library
catalog, article databases, Google, etc.) for a research paper and
to reflect on the kinds of information they find in each.
• Provide a resource list or a single source from which students’
research should begin. Discuss the utility of known sources for
identifying keywords, key concepts, and other citations to inform
further searching.
• Assign students to prepare a guide for introducing their classmates
to the essential literature on a given topic.
• Have students compile a glossary of important terms specific to a
given topic in your discipline.
• Require students to edit an anthology of important scholarship on a
specific topic and write an introduction explaining the
development of the field over time.
Avoid these common mistakes
• Since many scholarly sources are available online, it can be
confusing for students when “Internet” or “Web” sources are
forbidden. It’s helpful to describe why certain sources (such as
Wikipedia) may not be allowed.
• Make sure the resources required by the assignment are available to
your students in the library or in library databases. You can also
place hard-to-find required sources on course reserve.
Librarians can help
1 Fill out the library instruction request form online to request class
visits for undergraduate humanities and social sciences courses,
and/or to request an online course guide tailored to your
research assignments.
2 Check the library liaison list to schedule instruction or assignment
consultation for upper division and graduate humanities and
social sciences courses, as well as for science and engineering
courses.
For more information see the Office of Educational Development's
page on Encouraging Undergraduate Research.
Acknowledgements
• The following sources were helpful in preparing the above guide:
• Creating Effective Library Research Assignments [pdf] (College of
DuPage Library)
• Effective Research Assignments (University of Utah)
• Suggestions for Assignments (Gustavus Adolphus College)