By Kirsty Thomson, Academic Support and Liaison Librarian, Heriot-Watt University

1. www.hw.ac.uk/is
Teaching how to structure
literature reviews via 1990s
movies
Kirsty Thomson
Academic Support and Liaison Librarian
Heriot-Watt University

2. Why?
• Most assignments require a review of the literature.
• We teach students to do literature searches.
• Then tell them to use search results to write their
literature reviews.
• But questions in classes and appointments showed lack
of confidence about writing literature reviews.
• Gap in teaching – needed to help students understand
the process of turning search results into a structure for
a literature review.

3. How can I help?
• “One-shot” teaching for most subjects.
• Had been showing a slide on writing literature reviews
to project classes, but didn’t feel that it helped.
• Wanted some group work to break up lecture format.
• Wanted something fun.
• Idea of using films adapted from Deutsch, A. and West,
B. (2018) Starting strong: engaging students with
anticipatory sets [Presentation], LILAC Conference.
University of Liverpool. 5 April.

4. What I did
• Two slides setting the scene…

7. • Using films because they hadn’t all read the same articles.
• Careful to explain that the films were just a metaphor.
• Handout with three films:
Titanic; Jurassic Park;
Romeo and Juliet.
• Work in pairs/small groups.
• Summarise film, and identify
themes.
• Gave them ten-ish minutes.
• Followed by class
discussion.

8. Plot [summary/abs] Theme [overall
message]
Titanic Boat hits iceberg, almost
everyone dies.
Tragic love story.
Social class.
Death.
Jurassic Park Humans bring back dinosaurs
and are surprised when they
are hungry.
Almost everyone dies.
Don’t mess with
genetics.
Lack of foresight.
Did they do Health &
Safety paperwork?
Death.
Romeo &
Juliet
Boy meets girl; family
disapproval.
Almost everyone dies.
Death/love.
Bad H&S – didn’t
communicate plans.
Facts not checked.

9. Summary Theme
Titanic Iceberg hits boat.
Boat sinks.
People die.
Love.
Nostalgia.
No forward planning.
Jurassic Park Dinosaur theme park
goes wrong for
humans, but not for
dinos.
Survival.
Lack of Health &
Safety.
Romeo & Juliet Fall in love.
All goes wrong at the
end.
No forward planning.
“Juliet is a muppet
who didn’t
communicate”.
• Each class is different:

10. • Turn their themes into a mindmap/outline for a
literature review:
Idea 1: No forward
planning
Chemistry [Juliet
sedative]
Engineering [unsinkable
Titanic]
Lab [cloning dinosaurs]
Health & Safety
Idea 2: Leads to disaster
Idea 3: Key authors

11. Practical things
• Give worksheet to students – one per group to make
them discuss.
• Must have a display to write answers, draw arrows, etc.
• Room layout not important – have done this with:
– around 25 students in a room with round tables and
chairs.
– around 80 students in a traditional lecture theatre.
– 10 students in a small computing lab, i.e. desks in
rows with PCs and little workspace.
• “worst” room layout were the most enthusiastic class!

12. What I’ve learnt
• Students love having something to criticise!!!
– discussions were much more light-hearted
than I expected.
• They did not identify the themes I expected,
and each class identified different things.
• Let the discussion flow, but occasionally link
their comments back to literature reviews:

13. Students Literature review
Same actor in two films. Key author in the field.
“Two people could fit on that
door.”
Critical reading important – look
for flaws in research design and
conclusions.
Jurassic Park has lots of sequels. Cited reference searching.
What would happen if you
combined all three film plots,
with a dinosaur loose on the
Titanic. Could a T. rex swim?
Possible areas for future
research.

14. Concerns
• “This isn’t physics”.
– parallels to link discussion back to writing literature
reviews.
• Students won’t engage.
– groupwork – they’ll talk to each other, and normally
someone will speak up in class discussion.
– [groups also increase likelihood of someone having
seen the film.]
• What if none of the students have seen the films.
Would this work with a non-Western class?

15. What did the students think?
• Didn’t formally evaluate these classes.
– fear of “survey fatigue”.
– students did appear to be engaging with the
ideas.
• Informal feedback via email to lecturer:
– “I really liked Kirsty's way of teaching the
session- she made it fun.”

16. Future plans
• Would like to use more recent films:
– difficult to find films (or stories) that everyone has been
exposed to.
– important to have two films with similar themes.
• Overlap in students’ suggestions for “summary” and
“themes”. Now calling this “plot” and “themes”:
– explaining that the plot is like your abstract/summary of
an article, and that themes are like tags or keywords.
• Has been really successful, so now taking this with me as an
“emergency” session e.g. for classes where I’ve seen the
students before.

17. www.hw.ac.uk/is
Contact details
Kirsty Thomson
k.s.thomson@hw.ac.uk
0131 451 8074