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Faculty Toolkit: Information Literacy & Library Instruction

Use this guide to learn about information literacy and ways to collaborate with the library to incorporate information literacy learning outcomes into your courses.

Assignment Ideas

Librarians are available to collaborate with faculty to develop assignments and activities that reinforce information literacy and critical thinking skills. 

Potential Assignment Ideas:

  • Dissect a scholarly journal article or book chapter: What question did the authors ask? What is their answer?
  • Give students a dissertation by a well-known scholar and have them find related articles and books by the same author. Then, have students discuss how the author revised their research question over time.
  • Select a primary source. Ask students to analyze the source, read it closely, and summarize it. Then, ask them to find 2-3 primary and secondary sources that support, contradict, or deepen their understanding of the original source. 
  • Show students that the creation of information is a process, not something that occurs at a single point in time: Have students analyze how an event is written about over the course of severalyears, tracing the progression from newspapers to magazines to scholarly articles.
  • Have students trace the development of a medical treatment. Include a discussion of how current research has changed earlier medical practice or scientific understanding.
  • Find a popular article on a health or scientific topic in a magazine or newspaper article that is based on scholarly research, and have students track down the sources that were used. Students should describe how well the facts are presented, and whether important findings were misrepresented. 
  • Find a persuasive editorial that does not cite sources for its claims. Have students look for evidence, then rewrite their own version of the editorial with sources acknowledged.

*Assignment ideas from Middlebury College Library: https://www.middlebury.edu/library/research/infolit/assignment-ideas

 

Assignments & AI

To counter ChatGPT

  • Use local topics, more current topics and require students to use academic journal articles and books that are behind library subscription paywalls
  • Require students provide outlines and drafts, with explanations of their thinking and process

 Incorporate and use ChatGPT

  • Have students create a ChatGPT-generated essay, then critique, correct, and edit the essay
  • Assign your students to ask ChatGPT the same question and compare answers
  • Students can have a dialog with ChatGPT about a topic, asking follow-up questions critiquing ChatGPT's answers correct incorrect
  • Use ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas

ChatGPT Exercise: Developed by Mike Ryan, Professor (Texas Tech University)

Update Your Course Syllabus for chatGPT: Article by Ryan Watkins, Professor of Educational Technology Leadership, George Washington University that includes ideas for creative assignments adapted using chatGPT

For more information, visit the ACPHS Library Services ChatGPT & AI Guide