History Research Paper Series--Bibliography

In the previous blog post, your students submitted, and you approved, the thesis statement for our short 3-5 page research paper. The next step is to research the topic more thoroughly as it relates to the thesis. This is a good time for the instructor to coach students to evaluate the types and effectiveness of sources they find and demonstrate how to cite them.

Title: History Research Paper Series--Bibliography
Objective: Students will build a rough draft copy of a bibliography or works cited page.
Assessment type: Formative
Assignment Details:
1. Explain to students that you expect either MLA or APA formatting and citation for the paper.
2. Provide examples of citation for various sources, these may include web resources such as http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
3. Provide some sources to students to help them identify reliable online research sources. http://www.suite101.com/content/online-references-a57651
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fy827
4. Student will post one correctly cited source in a discussion for the instructor to evaluate and classmates to see. Students will include in the post why they think that source is reliable for their paper based on the information provided in the previous step. Students will respond to two classmates after visiting the source provided and add their thoughts or questions about its reliability and effectiveness.
5. Student will locate at least 10 sources. Prior to this assignment the instructor should determine how many sources are to be primary and secondary. (You may want to visit other posts in this blog that have assignments on Primary and Secondary sources. We will also revisit this topic later this year, but assume here your students already know the differences.)
5. Student will construct a traditional bibliography or works cited page but will also include a brief explanation following each source with a description on why the student believes the source is reliable.
6.Student will submit rough draft of bibliography to instructor for feedback.

Rubric: Assignment based on 100 points
Student posted a correctly cited source in discussion and described why it is a reliable source, 0-10 points
Student responded to two classmates about reliability of source provided, 0-10 points
Student submitted at least 10 sources for paper, 0-10 points
Student cited each source correctly using MLA or APA formatting, 0-30 points
Student explained why each source was reliable in a couple of concise well written sentences, 0-30 points
Student submitted assignment on time, 0-10 points

As I mentioned in my previous post, timeliness can be vital to the successful feedback loop between instructor and student with this type of graduated assignment. In this rubric, I am deducting ten points to suggest that you may want to reflect on this more.

Webliography

Very similar to an annotated bibliography, I ask my students to create a short Webliography, on a specific term. There are many ways to do this and one that I would like to explore, but have not tried yet, is for students to research a bigger topic like Black History Month. I would like them to create the Webliography as a team on a wiki. Each semester the class would explore a different topic with access to previous semesters Webliographies for research reference for other assignments. As Learning Management systems offer diverse ways to create and grade wikis and other tools, I believe this format could become a preferred way of student collaboration, and overtake discussions role for building a sense of community.

Since I want to limit access to my students work and keep their work in the course, for now I use this webliography assignment. Learning how to research topics is not only an important skill for history courses but also for future history and college courses students take. Students practice acquiring information, breaking sources of information into parts, using library sources, demonstrating understanding of primary and secondary sources, and using technology. Also since there is a wealth of sources on the internet, some good and some bad, this assignment asks students to go a step further beyond just finding sources to explaining why they chose certain sources to include in their webliography.

Assignment Tasks:
1. Select a term from a list provided by the instructor.
2. Search the internet for web resources on this term.
3. Select the 5 best web sources.
4. Create a bibliography that lists the web sources.
5. Describe each source in a brief paragraph and why choose it as a reliable, informative source on the topic. Does the source include primary and secondary sources?
6. In addition to turning it in to the instructor, students can also post their assignment in an optional Study Hall discussion in the unit so that classmates can see the list of sources and possibly use them in upcoming assignments.

While writing a grammatically correct bibliography is an important skill for college students, I believe it is even more important for them to analyze those sources and be able to explain why they chose to use them.