Course Design Guide

Overview

Beginning college students are often unfamiliar with the research process and have not honed their ability to incorporate and build upon multiple information sources in a meaningful way. At the same time, research assignment prompts tend to focus on the details of putting together a research paper and don't always adequately encourage key information literacy concepts, such as the importance of evaluating sources or using sources in context-dependent ways. The suggestions below reflect best practices that are intended to promote the research skills students need to successfully navigate a research assignment. 

Considerations

These considerations are based on some common issues we see across CityU assignments. 

Align Resource Requirements with the Assignment Type (or Audience) 

It is important that your assignment requirements match the audience and/or assignment type. It can be tempting to require peer reviewed sources for all research assignments. However, depending on the level of student, field of study, or audience, scholarly or peer reviewed items may not be necessary or even possible to use. An example of a mismatched assignment might be a personal reflection that requires peer reviewed sources to support or a SWOT analysis where students can only use "scholarly" material. 

Avoid Arbitrary Resource Specifications

Students often contact the library when they encounter ambiguous or arbitrary resource requirements for a paper or project. Here are some phrases we see that can lead to confusion for students, as well as some ways to avoid said confusion.

"Don't Use Wikipedia"

While Wikipedia is not appropriate to cite in academic work, it can be useful in other contexts, like familiarizing yourself with a topic or looking for references to seminal works. Without context of appropriate use, students may just use another Internet resource that's potentially even less useful overall. 

• Instead: Provide instruction that explains the cycle of information and how different types of published information is produced and for what purposes. Expect students to evaluate all of their sources using a process, like those outlined in our Evaluate Information guide.

"Only use library sources" or "Don't use the internet"

This is very confusing for students because most journals and magazines are available on the Internet and academic libraries provide access to thousands of scholarly materials that are online. In addition, many substantive news and other content is either born digital or available both online and in print. Lastly, not every item found in the library is automatically credible or will be relevant to their project.

• Instead: Consider a less general prohibition against using material found on the open Internet, leaving the possibility of using library resources and subscription databases. Place greater emphasis on evaluating sources - no matter where they're found - to ensure they're credible, as well as appropriate ways in which to apply sources.

"Only use peer reviewed sources"

Many students are unfamiliar with scholarly materials and don't understand what they are or how they should use them effectively. Additionally, as mentioned above, depending on the level of student, field of study, or audience, scholarly or peer reviewed items may not be necessary or even possible to use.

• Instead: Provide instruction within the course as to why students should or should not use particular source types in the context of an established framework, such as the BEAM method. Encourage the use of a variety of sources and show them how to determine if they're acceptable. Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of particular sources for answering various research questions.

Make Assignments Relevant and "Doable"

Assignments should be relevant and "doable," both considering the knowledge students have gained throughout the course as well as what information is readily available. Some things to consider:

• Ensure your research or library assignment is closely related to your course content. 
• Make sure students understand your assignment. Provide check-ins or write example announcements in Brightspace that your instructors can use throughout a course that outline and emphasize certain assignment aspects.
• Be sure the library has the resources your students need! Avoid requiring students to use resources the library does not own, have access to or can otherwise can provide access to in a reasonable time frame (e.g. financial information for private companies).

We encourage you to try out your own assignments before finalizing them. Were you able to meet the assignment requirements? If not, were you able to work with a librarian to find what you need? How might you change the requirements to be more "doable"?

Understand Your Students' Research Skills

It is important to have realistic expectations of students' research abilities. While students are very good at finding things online, they are less adept at reading, summarizing, and evaluating the resources they locate or engaging in the academic conversation on a given topic when given little guidance. Additionally, many of them are novices in their chosen subject area and are unfamiliar with the conventions of the discipline.

We recommend that, in conjunction with research assignments, courses...

• Design courses to offer students time in class (either in person or as asynchronous learning activities) for focusing a topic and generating research questions.
• Break research assignments into manageable pieces with regular checkpoints. This can include things like short writing assignments, keeping research journals, close reading activities, annotated bibliographies, concept mapping exercises, or in-class and/or online discussions. 
• Focus on inquiry. Use scaffolded activities, like those detailed above, that allow students to engage deeply with the material and think about what sources do effectively, what purpose they serve, and how they relate to other sources or knowledge they've gathered throughout the course.
• Regularly provide instructions for where and how to find resources that meet course expectations.* Have students engage with example content.
• Encourage contacting a librarian early in the research process.*

Remember that the research process and information landscape is changing constantly. Even with some experience doing research, students are still developing their understanding of the processes and tools involved.

*Provide Support Options

Students are in the process of learning the research process. It is not a matter of if they will need additional research support but when. Encourage students to contact the library early in their research! Make sure they know how and where to get help from librarians. You can also provide specific library instruction of the the type that is outlined here:

Collaborate with a Librarian

The CityU Library encourages program managers and/or SMEs to meet with a librarian at the beginning of the course design (or revision) process to work with you while developing your syllabus and assignments.

A librarian can help you:

• Develop learning goals for your research assignment. 
• Align assignment type and audience with resource requirements.
• Create scaffolded research activities or help you design assignment checkpoints.
• Identify and highlight appropriate support options for your students, including those already available through our Research Guides or by creating new, course-specific support guides. For more about this option, please see: Course Design Guide: Information Literacy Instruction.

Portions of this guide were adapted from the following resources:

MJC Library & Learning Center. (n.d.). Designing research assignments. MJC Medesto Junior College. (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Campus Library. (n.d.). Teaching and learning at the Campus Library: Designing effective research assignments. UW Bothell and Cascadia College. (CC BY-NC 4.0)