Abstracting an Article or Book

Assignment: Read and prepare a summary of an article, chapter, or book.

Purpose: Assists students in identifying the basic information needed when quickly evaluating the relevance of a given article or book for a given project. Students learn to summarize without evaluative comment while giving potential readers the most pertinent information in a brief format.

Literature Review

Purpose: Reveals the purpose of a literature review, and provides experience in writing one. Students must identify appropriate articles and use them to describe the current thinking or research on a topic.

 

Assignment: Review the literature on a specific topic for a given time period.

Understanding "The Literature" of a Discipline

Purpose: Demystifies the elusive term "the literature" and provides students with an understanding of the mechanisms, organization, and structure of the literature in a given field. Also encourages students to recognize differences and similarities among disciplines, as well as to see diversity of literature within a given discipline.

 

Assignment: The class begins with a discussion of the following questions regarding disciplinary research and scholarship within a given field. Following the discussing students are given the assignment: What does "the literature" of a discipline look like? What comprises it? How is it produced, disseminated, and accessed in a given discipline? How is the knowledge produced? By whom? In which media is it presented? What is the publishing cycle? How important is informal communication in the field? After reflecting with the class on these questions, conduct research on a specific topic relevant to the given discipline in order to develop answers to these uestions. Then provide answer responses which are supported by your experiences researching your topic. Keep in mind that there are no single or simple “correct” answers to the above questions; rather, there is a multitude of ways one might define the literature of a discipline. What is important is that you develop your assessment of the literature in the relevant field through careful analysis of the research you gather. (Students may be asked to respond in oral or written form, or through another kind of project, such as a poster or other visual document.)

Examining a Classical Work

Purpose: Demonstrates the evolution of ideas and identifies factors that make a work "important."

 

Assignment: Explore through book reviews, biographical information, and indexes how and why a work becomes a "classic." What effect does a classical work have on a discipline?

Following Research Trends

Purpose: Demonstrates that many of humankind’s problems and concerns have in many respects not really changed through the years, though our attitudes and understandings of these concerns have shifted significantly. Illustrates the explosion of research and how its issues, content, and methods evolve.

 

Assignment: Select a present day issue or concern. Search the past literature on the topic at 5- or 10-year intervals. Note themes and trends in the literature. Then articulate (in written or oral form) how theories or attitudes toward the issue have changed.

Tracing a Scholar's Career

Purpose: Introduces students to the use of biographical and bibliographical tools, and exposes them to examples of scholarly dialogue.

 

Assignment: Choose (or be assigned) a scholar/researcher to investigate. Explore that person's career and ideas by locating biographical information, preparing a bibliography of the scholar’s writings, analyzing the reaction of the scholarly community to the researcher's work, and examining the scholarly network in which the scholar works.

Dissecting a Scholarly Article

Purpose: Students develop an appreciation for research and scholarship in a given discipline. Students also are introduced to the process of analyzing and evaluating a scholarly journal article.

 

Assignment: Select an article from a scholarly journal (pertaining to a specific discipline). Get the instructor’s approval of the article. Prepare a 4- to 6- page article review which includes the following:1) an introduction to the topic of the article and the issue being discussed, 2) the hypothesis being studied, 3) a description of the study sample (e.g., random/non-random,

Then discuss the author’s opinions, views, clarifications, or claims regarding the research. Attach the article to your critique.

Look Behind the Book

Purpose: Emphasizes that texts are created within complex rhetorical contexts, and that many publications exist “in dialogue” with other writings. Stresses that analysis of information resources involves evaluating rhetorical situations, including authorship and dialogues that develop about original writings.

 

Assignment: Examine the credibility of a major monograph in the field. Consider the following questions: Who wrote it? What are the author's credentials? What is the point of view of the author? Then, after doing your own initial evaluation of the publication, find three reviews of the book and compare those assessments of the monograph.

Analyze the Argument

Purpose: Encourages critical reading and develops research skills. Provides practice in applying principles of citation style.

 

Assignment: Read an editorial. Then find facts which either support or refute the views expressed in the editorial. Using the research you compiled, present your own assessment of the editorial. Explain the reasoning behind your evaluation, and cite the sources that inform your views.

Evaluate a Research Report

Purpose: Develops skills in the critical evaluation of research. Familiarizes students with the writing conventions for research articles in a given discipline.

Assignment: Locate a research paper relevant to the given field of study. Examine the study’s experimental design, data, and interpretation of the data for adequacy and consistency. (The instructor may wish to hand out targeted questions which pinpoint specific aspects of the article.)

Write a Book Review

Purpose: Helps students to identify key arguments and concepts expressed in an information resource and to evaluate the authority and credibility of information resources.

 

Assignment: Review a book/film (either of the students' choice or one assigned to them). Identify the author’s thesis and main ideas and how they are developed. Discuss the author's credentials and the credibility of their ideas, and explain why those ideas are or are not convincing.

Read Scientific Research Articles

Locating a PDF of the article; Analyze an article's structure and content in order to distinguish research articles from review articles; Analyze elements of a database record in search results in order to classify an article as research or review; Understand what information can be found in sections of a typical research article in order to read more efficiently; Apply knowledge of reference tools in order to increase comprehension of research articles.

Evaluate the value of the reading method we recommend for them, ADIR(M) -- Abstract, Discussion, Introduction, Results, (Methods).

 Step 1: Abstract. Although it is not part of the reading exercise, we tell students to start here and ask, "Is this article relevant enough to proceed to the full text, or should I move on to another article?"

 Step 2: Discussion. Ask "What are the researchers' findings?"

 Step 3: Introduction. Ask "Why did the researchers do this study?" and "Does the research question match up with the conclusions I read in Step 2?"

 Step 4: Results. Ask "Are the data collected appropriate to answer the research question?" and "Do the data support the conclusions?"

 Step 5: Methods (optional). Ask "How can I repeat this study?" and "Are these methods suitable to gather the results reported?"

 

Title of Article: _______________________________________________

1. What kind of information can you find about the author(s) of the article?

 

 

2. Find the abstract and quickly scan it. What is an abstract? Why is it included with the article?

 

 

3.Are there any graphics included in the article? What kind? Why are they included?

 

 

4. Identify citations within your article text. Circle below what style of citation your article uses:

a. Numbered endnotes b. In-text citations c. Numbered footnotes

 

 

5. Find one citation in the article text and highlight it, then turn to the bibliography/notes at the end of the article. Highlight the entry that corresponds to your citation.

 

 

6. Find the research question and highlight it (it may be more than one sentence). If it is not explicitly stated, please write the article’s central idea in your own words below:

 

7. Find the methods or methodology section of your article. How was the study conducted? How were subjects found? What tools were used to gather data? Summarize what was done.

 

 

 

After you have completed questions 1-7, come ask me for your comparison article.

8. Look at the comparison article and find at least three major differences between your scholarly article and your comparison article:

a.

b.

c.

 

 

9.When could you use this kind of article?

 

 

10. Is it better or worse than a scholarly source?

 

 

11. So, why do scholarly articles exist? Who should use them and for what purposes?