Best Practices for Creating Effective Library Assignments

		Best Practices		Assessment of Assignments
		Plagiarism		Information Literacy Webliography
		Pitfalls to Avoid		Back to Home Page

Video Shown During the GESI Presentation: E-Literate?

Is available for loan in the CSULB Library Media collection.  

Assignment Structure

• Give students some direction with project topic.
• Break down large assignments into parts.  This will allow you to assess student progress more efficiently, as well as keep students from waiting until the last minute.

Develop outcomes

• develop measurable Learning Outcomes for research assignment
• take a look at outcomes from the CSULB Library Information Literacy standards
• or the ACRL  standards

   

Integrate library research with course curriculum

• orient your students to the library
• schedule an Instruction Session (request sessions electronically) with your Subject Librarian.
• provide a demonstration of the library home page
• recommend to your students to use an online tutorial to become familiar with the library (see Information Literacy Webliography)

Try to incorporate a variety of information types and formats

• let students compare the content of different types and formats e.g. Internet, books, journals, magazines
• have them evaluate sources used

Specify the level of research expected

• scholarly vs. popular materials
• length of paper and number of references
• do students need to include statistics or data?

• especially when it relates to internet or full-text databases
• advises students of any specific citation style required for research papers (APA, MLA, Turabian, etc.)
• Use the Advance search in Google and search for exact phrases:

Google

www.google.com

This site will also retrieve bits of text from web sites.   It is also an excellent search engine for students to use when trying to find reputable and quality web sites for research.

For more on plagiarism or citing sources see:

• Taming the Beast of Plagiarism: A Webliography of Sources for CSULB Faculty/Tiffini Travis (CSULB)

Avoid scavenger hunts for facts

• they are ineffective & students often have no idea where to start.
• they test librarian’s ability to find unrelated bits of trivia.
• 30 students seeking the same factoid doesn’t teach them anything about independent
  research.

Avoid Assignments That:

• require students to research the same topic
• presume knowledge or experience the student does not have
• assign the same article to all students; unless you put the item on reserve
• are on a narrow topic that the library only has a small number of items
• limit students to a list of specific journals

• Check COAST and some of the Library Databases to verify quantity of information on a topic before you assign it.

Changing an old assignment to an information literate assignment

Click below to see the modification of an old library assignment. 

• Before and After Assignment

Three stages of designing and assessing an information literate assignment

Sample Library Assignments from other universities

Story Behind the story from Columbus State University, Georgia
Instruction Links from the LOEX Clearinghouse for Library Instruction
Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Teaching Online
Sample Assignments from Gettysburg College
Term Paper Alternatives from UC Berkeley
Library Assignments from CSU Chico
Library Research Assignment Ideas from University of Michigan
Ideas for Library Related Assignments from University of Puget Sound
Sample Research Assignments from University of Buffalo

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This page created by
Tiffini Travis
Psychology & Communications Studies
Librarian
University Library
California State University, Long Beach
Last Updated April 8, 2004

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