Designing Research Activities In The Internet Age

ED 199/ Miyagishima
June 24-25 Linn-Benton Community College
Designing research activities in the Internet Age

What was your most memorable research assignment (as a student)?
Please discuss in small groups and be ready to report on the following:
Describe the assignment
Why was it particularly memorable?
What sort of information resources did you use?
What did you learn from doing it?
Did you learn anything about research in general – what was the most valuable lesson?

Research before the Internet
How did we ever accomplish anything?

Research before the Internet
What tools did students use?
What skills/concepts were necessary to access and understand the information?
Are any of these skills of value today?

Calvin – a model for research reports

The Big6
Task Definition
Information Seeking Strategies
Location and Access
Use of information
Synthesis
Evaluation
How many of these steps did Calvin actually go through?

Your favorite research assignment (that you give to your students)
Please discuss in small groups and be ready to report on the following:
Describe the assignment
What sort of information resources do your students use?
What research concepts/skills do they learn?
What do you think you could improve upon?

Let’s talk about our students

What are some characteristics of this generation?
“Millenials” – the term used in higher education
Digital Natives – coined by Marc Prensky

The changing infoscape
Name as many national newspapers as you can / local or regional / international
Name as many news magazines as you can?
How many newspapers have gone out of business in the last year?
What is the Huffington Post?

What lessons are our students learning?

Break!

Revisiting the Big6 (the Big3, actually)
Task Definition
What’s involved in the following assignment?
Write a paper at least 5 pages in length on …………. using at least 4 appropriate credible resources, only one of which can be an online source?

Task Definition
Considering the standards – AASL, ISTE NETS, ODE
Which of the ODE standards do you employ with your students?

The Information Cycle
Considering information need, audience, and publisher

And what about credibility?

Location and Access
In the online environment, what resources will your students use?
How do you ensure that your students make use of high quality resources? What about flexibility/ student choice?
What habits can we instill in our students at this point in their research?

Improving Calvin’s next assignment!

Improving Calvin’s next assignment!
Can we break down the tasks to make it easier to complete and assess?
What resources do we wish to use?
Let’s consider different grade levels!
Ensuring access
Moving past “copy and paste”

… and speaking of assignments!