Topic Trade
- In partners, ask students to describe their topic to their partner
- Each student is then responsible for finding 3 possible sources/articles for their partner (provide baseline criteria for articles based on assignment)
- Tell students they may ask their partner follow-up questions about the topic as they work
- Tell students to email the 3 articles they select to their partner using the database email function
- Optional: Provide criteria for students to then evaluate the articles their partner selected for them:
- Is the article relevant to your topic? Why or why not?
- If the article is not relevant, are there elements you could use, e.g. literature review, bibliography?
- If the article is relevant, what keywords in the article titles, abstract, or keywords section would be helpful for finding more sources?
- Pros: Students are accountable to each other, and have to think beyond a surface level about their topic in order to be able to describe it to their partner
Database Jigsaw
- Choose ~4 databases relevant to the course, and break students into 4 groups. Within their groups,tell students they have 10 minutes to prepare a presentation that answers the following questions using their assignmed database:
- How to find an article
- What kind of information this database is good for finding
- One key feature of the database (one per person)
Database Skills Review
- If students have visited the library for this class previously, type up a list of review questions relevant to the course and put them in a hat/basket/bucket. Break students into small groups, and have each group draw one of the questions from the hat. Give the groups 5 minutes to prepare, and then present their answer to the rest of the class.
Sorting Results by Resource
- Label 5 buckets:
- 5-gallon bucket: Google
- Coffee can: Academic Search Complete
- Slightly smaller can: PsycINFO
- Small can: ARTstor
- Smallest can: GreenFile
- Print items that would be found in each of these resources on cards (try to pick items that would most likely be found in a specific resource on the same topic)
- Break students into groups of ~5, and hand each group a stack of cards
- Ask students to sort their items into the five buckets as a group
- When students are finished, pull the items out of each bucket and review. Ask students to identify the best resource(s) for finding research on this topic
Citation Fill-in-the-Blank
- Either individually or in groups, give students five citations for articles to find. Each citation is missing some elements (title, author, publication date)
- Students find the missing elements by finding the articles in the databases (show students how to use "Journal Finder")
- The first three students who find all of the missing elements win a prize (e.g. a candy bar)
Looking for Search Interface Patterns
- Print screenshots of three familiar search interfaces with all facets visible (e.g. Google search results page, Amazon results page, Zappos results page)
- Install Draw Here bookmarklet on instructor's computer
- Individually or in small groups, ask students to circle on their printed handouts:
- Search box
- Date range
- Customer reviews
- Price range
- etc.
- On the instructor computer, pull the library's catalog and/or a database up on the screen (search results screen), and ask students to point out:
- Publication date
- Source type
- Full-text
- Peer-reviewed
- Geography
- etc.
- Reinforce that most search systems allow them to refine their results in this way
- Optional: Review requirements of assignment (peer-reviewed, publication date, full-text, academic journals, population, geography, subject, etc.), and ask students to do a search on their topic using database facets to limit their results
