This study explores the relationship between the dispositions toward research that writing teachers convey through their assignments and those that their students express in their reflective writing. We applied the term "problem-exploring" to a set of dispositions described by the ACRL Framework and coded each clause of instructor…

This study explores the pedagogical effectiveness of assignments developed for a first-year composition course to encourage reflexive reading habits that can aid students in the writing process. Students in this course were asked to articulate the connections they found between multimodal texts of their own choosing and texts assigned by their…

Pedagogical research into cooperative learning and open educational resources supports an expectation for strong learning outcomes in both cases. This article is a guide to the implementation of a group assignment in a college introductory Hispanic literature course where students create critical editions of literary texts. The critical editions…

Critical information literacy (CIL) and critical service learning (CSL) have developed in parallel over recent years but have yet to intersect robustly. Rooted in critical theory, these approaches emphasize both conceptual frameworks and practices that center questions of social inequality in our teaching and learning practices--and in our…

This case study describes the development of CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments), an open educational resource (OER). CORA, available at www.projectcora.org, was developed through a Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) grant. The grant proposed to use a "recipe" metaphor to envision shared information…

The process toward academic literacy aims at developing academic reading and writing together with higher academic competences of increasing relevance for undergraduate students as future teachers and researchers. Such a process is even more complex in ELT vocational courses where non-English speaking trainees study English as a system while they…

The current investigation tested the effectiveness of an online student research project designed to supplement traditional methods (e.g., lectures, discussions, and assigned readings) of teaching research methods in a large-enrollment Introduction to Psychology course. Over the course of the semester, students completed seven assignments, each…

Biography is a popular approach to history education in the younger grades, especially when teaching units of study during Women's History Month, which is March. A biography-centered approach, however, can be problematic when such lessons are not tied to any context, promoting the misconception that individuals create social change in isolation.…

Recognizing the limitations of traditional research assignments, the two authors of this article--one a librarian and one a historian--set out to redesign a history capstone seminar to focus on the research process as much as on the research product: tipping the iceberg to look at what is underneath. The article begins with a brief overview of the…

This article focuses on the development of an engaging library orientation module for UC San Diego First Year Experience (FYE) courses. The library module included a brief in-class presentation about research concepts and library services, an online interactive library scavenger hunt given as an in-class activity, and a homework assignment where…

Research across disciplines in recent years has demonstrated a number of gains involved in community engagement and service-learning pedagogies. More recently, these pedagogies are being filtered into digital contexts as instructors begin to realize the opportunities made available by online writing venues. This presentation describes a specific…

Throughout the last two decades, scholarship discussing learner development and autonomy has expanded from viewing the learner as one who possesses intrinsic or extrinsic motivation to a performer who to varying degrees invests as an agent in the learning process, particularly when able to pursue her or his passions. With this expansion in mind,…

In this paper we outline an approach to learner preparation that provides a framework to effectively structure a collaborative and cooperative student research assignment using a wiki site as a writing platform. While students are familiar with posting pictures and videos online, they may not be aware of how to effectively integrate text and…

A report about college students and their information-seeking strategies and research difficulties, including findings from 8,353 survey respondents from college students on 25 campuses distributed across the U.S. in spring of 2010, as part of Project Information Literacy. Respondents reported taking little at face value and were frequent…

This study examined the views of year 7 students, teacher librarians, and teachers in three state secondary schools in rural New South Wales, Australia, on information literacy and transfer. The aims of the study included the development of a grounded theory in relation to information literacy and transfer in these schools. The study's perspective…