Help for Faculty

Designing Effective Library Assignments

Library faculty are happy to collaborate with you on designing an effective library assignment tailored to your instructional goals and our available library resources. Research indicates that library assignments developed collaboratively by subject and library faculty are most effective. Library faculty may have some helpful ideas or spot potential problems with an assignment. They can determine whether the library has the needed materials to support the assignment and can help you keep abreast of changes in the information world that may affect your assignments. 

Be creative!

Traditional research papers are one way students use and demonstrate research skills, but there are many other types of assignments that help students learn and practice information skills. Consider assigning presentations, posters, persuasive speeches, annotated bibliographies, source reviews or evaluations, etc.  Try to promote critical thinking too—doing something with information—not just looking it up! Consider assignments that provide practice in a specific information skill rather than the whole gamut that is required by a research paper. 

Integrate information literacy objectives with course objectives.

Students can simultaneously learn course content and research skills.  Consider putting your objectives on the assignment.  Students need to see relevance of assignments to the course.  They also need to understand that information skills learned now will be helpful to them in future courses and in real life.

Consider scaffolding large assignments.

Breaking down a big research assignment into a series of smaller, graded assignments helps students learn the research process. This can also help keep students on task, help you check their progress, and can help avoid plagiarism.

Promote ethical habits of scholarship

Make sure your students understand the importance of academic integrity and the avoidance of plagiarism.  Expect proper source citations.

Do a test run. 

Can you complete the assignment with the resources that are available to your students? 

• Have you checked that the needed materials are available? 
• Is the assignment too hard or too easy?
• Does it meet your objectives?
• Are your instructions clear? Ask someone else to read them and give you feedback. 

Overestimating students’ research skills.

Dissect the assignment and analyze the skills needed to complete it.  Do your students have these skills?  You might want to work with a librarian to design needed instruction, handouts, tutorials, etc.

Using an old assignment or one from a textbook without testing or adapting.

Some textbook assignments are fine, but others require resources such as specific databases that are different from those currently available through the library. Research assignments can quickly become outdated. Database platforms and search tools are constantly evolving. A librarian can help you test, adapt, or create an alternative assignment that meets your learning objectives. 

Setting limitations that are unclear or difficult to achieve

• Requiring scholarly journal articles for non-scholarly topics.
• Telling students they “can’t use the Internet.” Much quality information purchased by libraries is accessed online, and high-quality open access journals can be found through library databases. It's better to tell students what types of sources they may use; not where they are allowed to look for them. 
• Banning use of encyclopedias when what you mean to ban are general, not subject encyclopedias. Subject encyclopedias can be a good authoritative place to start learning about a new topic or may provide scholarly discussion of topics in the field.
• Requiring primary sources without defining what you mean.  Primary sources vary by discipline and research topic.