When it comes to research, a little planning goes a long way. We’ll go over how to come up with a research plan and start a research notebook!By the end of this activity, you'll be able to:Create a timeline of your research goalsDocument your research progress

Before getting started with research, it's important to know the difference between faculty- and student-led projects, as well as how to earn course credit for your research.By the end of this activity, you'll be able to:Identify benefits of faculty- and student-led research projectsIdentify differences between SRP 99 and Departmental 195-199.

Whether you're working on a capstone project, a senior thesis, or taking on an in-depth research paper, it may seem overwhelming to put together an effective plan.In this activity, you will be asked to think about your research topic or question and come up with a few concrete project goals. Then, you will learn more about the research process, what challenges and successes are to come, and several strategies to tackle your tasks!By the end of this workshop, you'll be able to:Articulate your research topic or questionDefine your long-term research project goalsBreak down your long-term goals into manageable tasks

Looking to get involved with research at UCLA? Anyone can do research, and this workshop connects you with resources and opportunities to help you get started today!In this activity, you will learn about getting started with research at UCLA. By the end of this workshop, you'll be able to:Identify possible areas of interest for a research projectFind campus resources that match your needs and interestsCreate a concrete plan with the first steps for getting involved in research

The information literacy in class assignment was introduced to Sophomores and Juniors in STEM during a math class. Concepts such as types of information sources and critical evaluation of information sources were introduced.  The remainder of time is devoted to a group assignment on evaluating information sources both on the Web in comparison to the information resource.Students worked in groups to complete the assignment which was handed out on paper.  The first part explained again criteria for evaluating information sources while the second part gave 3 example sources from a Wikipedia article.  Students were asked to identify the type of information source (scholarly journal, news, book, website) and the authors with their credentials.  Then the students were asked to infer the intended audience for the information source and the usefulness of the information for their coursework later in the semester.  Finally, the students were asked to located an item in the library’s discovery search interface that was of high quality in the characteristics they had explored.

An open access MOOC in French to bonify the information literacy skills of university students (with Moodle).

In this activity, students work in groups to craft a response to a presidential tweet from an assigned perspective (e.g. right or left leaning news source). In doing so, they are required to find, evaluate, and effectively use information to make a case. Unlike a research paper, which aspires to be neutral or unbiased, this activity asks students to respond to a tweet from a particular perspective, with a particular bias, requiring them to engage with their sources in a new way. The activity is followed by a discussion of students' interactions with the information they found and presented. 

This lesson plan uses Kevin Seeber's process cards and our newly created set of process cards that focus on news sources.  In the activities using the process cards, our students were able to define and contextualize different types of information resources, including news sources.  The tranfer and apply assessment used to close the session provides an opportunity for the students to think about how they would integrate these types of information into coursework, the workplace, and their personal lives.

If there were a list of things I absolutely required all my students to understand before leaving my class, the relationship between mass media, politics, and science would be close to the top of the list. But there are a lot of moving parts in these relationships, so the terrain is difficult to traverse.  As one might expect of a difficult topic, there is much to read and a lot to unpack.   This pathfinder discusses how politics and our mass media system complicate the dissemination of important scientific information. 

This is a lesson plan that centers around a 30-minute activity that gets students thinking and talking about the primary sources they create as they go about their daily lives, in order to prepare them to understand and contextualize the primary sources they encounter in historical research. They will also learn skills that can be transferred to future archival research. This works well as part I of a two-part interaction with classes. Typically, I go to their classroom for this lesson, meeting the students in a room in which they feel comfortable. They then come to the library several weeks later for a research-intensive workshop.