In any course where the assessment is focused on scholarly writing, students who have not used the online database, or are accustomed to using the onsite recourses of the library often avoid it or go to other more familiar resources such as Google, or even Google scholar. These alternative sources do not focus on scholarly work, or do not give the student access to databases paid for by the university. This process may be overwhelming and create frustration in a learning environment less familiar to the student, creating a lack of confidence in student skill (Moletni, 2015).
To begin the process of creating confidence, as well as to expose the students to the resources available to them, this activity has been developed to help navigate the scholarly search tools. Through a step-by-step process the student quickly narrows down a large amount of data to a manageable about for their research.
While this process was designed for online course delivery, any blended class with a large writing component online could easily adapt and use this assignment as well.
Link to example artifact(s)
This assignment was designed as a week one activity for a Communication and Persuasion course taught by Professor Dusseau at the University of Central Florida. Variations of this assignment, using relevant keywords, have been used for Intercultural and Nonverbal Communication. It is intended early in the course before any content specific scholarly research is completed to both assess student capabilities and increase student confidence, and can be adapted for any content area where research is a core component of assessment. When students open this assignment, a direct link to the university library is embedded in the document.
Please read the assignment instruction ( File:ScholarSearchAssignmentDusseau.pdf ) and sample student comments ( File:SAMPLE STUDENT COMMENTS.pdf ) for more information about this assignment.
Link to scholarly reference(s)
Molteni, V. E., & Chan, E. K. (2015). Student Confidence/Overconfidence in the Research Process. Journal Of Academic Librarianship, 41(1), 2-8. doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2014.11.012
Citation
Dusseau, M. (2016). Develop student confidence in using the online library database. In B. Chen & K. Thompson (Eds.), Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository. Orlando, FL: University of Central Florida Center for Distributed Learning. https://topr.online.ucf.edu/develop-student-confidence-in-using-the-online-library-database-for-scholarly-searches/.