Research Assignment Design

1. In a world that's information rich, teach information smart!

A Workshop for the Teaching Learning Center (pdf)

2. Sample Assignment

• Develop a topic sentence or thesis for your research.

• Take the Library tutorials online at The Library Tutorial or attend a "Find It" session (see schedule on the web at The Calender of Events. Hand in your worksheet completion sheets or your certification of attendance by _(date)__.

• Use what you learned in the "Finding Journal Articles" tutorial or the Library session to search for articles on your topic using the Academic Search Elite index to journals. Choose two articles that will be useful for your research. One article must be full text on the computer. The other should not be on the computer, but must be owned by the UNLV Library in paper.

• As you work through this process be mindful of the steps as you do them so that you can repeat them when you need journal articles for other purposes.
  1. In Academic Search Elite, type your search words into the "Find" box and then press "Search".
  2. Choose two useful articles.

• From the list of results, choose one that is full-text on the computer and print it out.

• Then choose one article that is not full-text and make a print out of the citation and abstract.

• Check to see if the UNLV Library owns the second journal in paper by searching for the journal title (not the article title) in the Library's catalog. Repeat this step until you find a journal that this library owns. (The purpose of this exercise is to make sure you can find paper journals in the UNLV Library.)

• Read the articles critically. For each article write a short paragraph on why it is or is not useful for your research. What will the information in this article contribute to your understanding of this topic?

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