Zoe McDonald Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity transforms a familiar annotated bibliography into a full class activity to give students hands-on knowledge of two central components of composing: writing as a social process (Adler-Kassner and Wardle) and “authority is constructed and contextual” (ACRL). As Tressie McMillan Cottom observes , “writing is always […]
Faqryza Ab Latif Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description The goal of the activity is for learners to be able to describe the components that make up the abstract of an empirical social science paper and apply them to other abstracts in the field. This goal is connected to introducing students to the conventions of
Unpacking Abstracts: Conventions of Empirical Abstracts in Social Science Papers Read More »
Arielle Bernstein & Chelsea L. Horne Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Increasingly, online publishers and distributors of information – news sites, popular magazines, professional blogs – have implemented paywalls to limit the number of articles to which the public has free access. This has traditionally been true for scholarly sources and databases, and prompts
Playing with Paywalls: Information Literacy in Theory and Practice Read More »
Philip Longo Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Recent widespread concern over the spread of misinformation and disinformation has placed a renewed emphasis on information literacy skills in FYC courses. Traditional approaches often draw on student skepticism, asking them to analyze the credibility of a single source. But such skepticism-laden approaches risk adding to our
“Upstream” and “Lateral” Moves Through Information Networks Read More »
Jessica Jorgenson Borchert Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment comes out of my English 302: Advanced Composition course, a course that primarily services our English Education majors, and serves as an elective for all English majors and minors. Because of this audience, the assignment incorporates readings from Writing Spaces and/or Bad Ideas About
Writing About Writing (WAW) Synthesis Essay Assignment Read More »
Charles Woods & Devon Ralston Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description Instructors who maintain a robust definition of text “connect our students so much more with the real world of writing. We prepare them for the world […] so that they can participate in that conversation” (Marchetti & O’Dell). Podcasts represent a digital genre that
Engaging Podcasts as a Dynamic Genre for Invention Read More »
Matthew A. Vetter and Oksana Moroz Volume 5 Chapter Description In a previous Writing Spaces essay entitled, Wikipedia Is Good for You!?, James P. Purdy introduces us to the idea that the online encyclopedia, often devalued in educational spaces, can serve as a starting place for research and a process guide to research-based writing. By
You Are Good for Wikipedia Read More »
Cassie Hemstrom & Kathy Anders Volume 4 Chapter Description This chapter extends John Swales’ theory of discourse communities into the sphere of information literacy, as it is conceptualized in the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. We propose the concept of research communities, where discourse communities with the common goal of research use,
Creating, Using, and Sharing Information in Research Communities Read More »
Ellen Carillo & Alice Horning Volume 4 Chapter Description Because reading and writing are related interpretive practices, attending to critical reading is an important part of teaching writing. This chapter defines critical reading and offers students strategies for undertaking a specific kind of critical reading, namely reading for credibility, particularly of online sources. The chapter
Effectively and Efficiently Reading the Credibility of Online Sources Read More »
Kate Warrington, Natasha Kovalyova, and Cindy King Volume 3 Chapter Description This article walks students through how to use critical reading strategies to help them select credible sources for their research papers and helps them understand how critical reading assignments they may have completed earlier in the semester have prepared them for the difficult task
Assessing Source Credibility for Crafting A Well-Informed Argument Read More »
