Suggestions for Effective Research-based Assignm

Suggestions for Effective Research-based Assignments
    Good morning, everyone! Through the assignments they make, faculty have the power to influence students’ development as seekers and users of information. A well-designed assignment can teach students valuable research skills and improve the quality of their papers. Unfortunately, assignments also have the potential to confuse and frustrate students, leading to a poorly-written product. Here are some suggestions to keep in mind when developing assignments that require library or Internet research. First of all, the faculty should set objectives and make them clear to students. A statement of objectives helps students focus on the research-related skills they should learn as a result of the assignment. The following example might be appropriate for a term paper in the social sciences or humanities. As a result of this assignment, students should learn to develop a suitable topic for research, using the library reference collection and other sources of background information; select and use the most appropriate library catalogs, article databases and printed indexes, and Internet search tools to locate relevant and timely materials; distinguish between popular and scholarly sources and detect signs of bias, whether the material is in printed form or on the Internet; quote and cite sources in a way that gives proper credit and avoids plagiarism (剽窃，抄袭).
    Secondly, the faculty should teach research strategies. Research strategies may seem obvious to experienced researchers but are often unknown to students. Breaking down the assignment into research strategy steps will help students accomplish the stated objectives. The following research strategies might be appropriate for the term paper described above.
    1. Define the topic by using an encyclopedia article or textbook chapter for background information.
    2. Develop a list of relevant keywords and phrases to use in searching.
    3. Use the library catalogs to find books on the topic.
    4. Use article databases and printed indexes to find more recent information in magazines and journals.
    5. Use Internet directories and search engines selectively to locate authoritative (权威的), high-quality websites.
    Besides, it is the faculty’s duty to provide resource lists. Resource lists give students a starting point, directing them to the most useful information sources for a particular assignment.
    However, there are also some common problems that the teaching staff should avoid.
    1. Students are forbidden to use anything from the Internet, when in fact many scholarly resources are only available online.
    2. An entire class is looking for one piece of information or researching the same specific topic (especially difficult when printed materials are involved).
    3. Students are required to use printed materials the library does not own (or does own, but not in sufficient quantity), or online sources they are not licensed to access.
    4. Students are working from incomplete or incorrect information.
    5. Students are assigned excessively vague or general topics, for example, "Women in America", without guidance on narrowing a topic.
    6. Students are given obscure trivia (微不足道的细节) questions and told to find the answers. To sum up, I have introduced using library and Internet resources to finish assignments. I hope the suggestions will be of some help for effective research-based assignments for you.