This link has been bookmarked by 38 people . It was first bookmarked on 28 Apr 2008, by Mario A Núñez.
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05 Aug 15
English 670"They have to do a good bit of reading before they really know what they’re looking for."
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28 Jul 15
Marjorie ShepardReintroducing research--without relying on traditional "research papers"
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07 Nov 13
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01 Feb 13
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01 Jan 13
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09 Dec 12
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04 Dec 12
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03 Dec 12
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Elaine Tucker"we think research, broadly defined, is a valuable part of an undergraduate education. Even at a rudimentary level, engaging in research implicates students in the creation of knowledge. They need to understand that knowledge isn’t an inert substance they passively receive, but is continually created, debated, and reformulated—and they have a role to play in that process.
Second, taking a leaf from our experience with writing across the curriculum, we recognize that research is situated in disciplinary frameworks and needs to be addressed in terms of distinct research traditions." -
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02 Dec 12
Sharon LuxFor example, Colleen Keen, who teaches geography at Gustavus, wanted students in a freshman-level course on Africa to learn how to be critical about the "facts" one encounters in a variety of sources. She gives them a statement that uses a quotation from an Internet source, one retrievable by searching the phrase using the Google search engine. She asks them to locate the source and verify the facts given in the quote. They have to find the original source, read it critically, and find one or more additional sources that either confirm the "facts"-or not. In some cases they can be confirmed-but they've been taken out of context. In some they're simply wrong. And in others, the facts are more ambiguous than at first glance. Later in the course, after having developed their skepticism, they use it in a larger project-she gives them a film set in Africa and asks them to do a geographic critique. What did the filmmaker get wrong? What do the liberties they've taken with reality do to our perceptions and tell us about our cultural assumptions? I'll never watch African Queen the same way again.
media literacy alternative assessments assessments alternative assignments
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Dennis OConnorWords of wisdom from the turn of the century.
They are on point and still apply today. -
01 Dec 12
Marc HamlinWhat are our assumptions about how students get research done in the humanities? How do those assumptions affect our instruction, and what really is our students' approach to research?
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First, we think research, broadly defined, is a valuable part of an undergraduate education. Even at a rudimentary level, engaging in research implicates students in the creation of knowledge. They need to understand that knowledge isn’t an inert substance they passively receive, but is continually created, debated, and reformulated—and they have a role to play in that process.
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we recognize that research is situated in disciplinary frameworks and needs to be addressed in terms of distinct research traditions.
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research is a complex and recursive process involving not just finding information but framing and refining a question, perhaps gathering primary data through field or lab work, choosing and evaluating appropriate evidence, negotiating different viewpoints, and composing some kind of response, all activities that are not linear but intertwined.
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learning to conduct inquiry is itself complex and recursive. These skills need to be developed throughout a research project and throughout a student’s education.
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the hybrid nature of libraries today requires students to master both traditional and emerging information formats, but the skills that students need to conduct effective inquiry—for example, those mentioned in your mission statement of reading critically and reasoning analytically—are the same whether the materials they use are in print or electronic.
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Too often, traditional research paper assignments defeat their own purpose by implying that research is not discovery, but rather a report on what someone else has already discovered. More than once I’ve had to talk students out of abandoning a paper topic because, to their dismay, they find out it’s original. If they can’t find a source that says for them exactly what they want to say—better yet, five sources—they think they’ll get in trouble.
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In reality, students doing researched writing typically spend a huge percentage of their time mapping out the research area before they can focus their research question. This is perfectly legitimate, though they often feel they’re spinning wheels. They have to do a good bit of reading before they really know what they’re looking for.
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she has students seek out both primary and secondary sources, make choices among them, and develop some conclusions in presentations that are far from standard literary criticism. One lab focuses on collecting and seeking relationships among assigned literary texts and other primary sources from the second half of the twentieth century to illuminate American society in that time period.
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For this lab, groups of students must find ten primary sources that relate in some way to literary texts under discussion and then—here’s the unusual bit—write three new verses of “America the Beautiful” that use the primary sources to illuminate a vision of American society. Instead of amber waves of grain and alabaster cities, they select images that reformulate the form of the song to represent another vision of the country. At the end of the course, her final essay assignment calls upon all of the work the previous labs have done, asking students to apply the skills they’ve practiced through the semester. While students in this course don’t do a single, big research project, they practice skills that will prepare them to do more sophisticated work later.
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09 Sep 10
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20 Nov 08
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28 Apr 08
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The first misses the point that what we’re really talking about is the process of turning information into knowledge; the second word is overused, politically charged, and implies some sort of remedial intervention. Neither of these words speaks to what liberal arts colleges do—and have done for many years. I rather prefer the very straightforward language of your mission statement: “We encourage students to read critically, reason analytically, communicate persuasively, and, above all, to think for themselves.”
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