Science Librarian
Scientific Information Literacy
Designing Research Assignments with Scientific Information Literacy in Mind
Science literacy and informaiton literacy go hand in hand. STEM students need to be able to find, use, evaluate, and cite information in college and learn skills to be criticial thinkers beyond college too.
Information literacy is "the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning" (ACRL, 2016).
Assignment Ideas
Don't limit students to just peer-reviewed journal articles. Students should understand that perspectives come in different packages for different audiences and purposes. Ask students to compile an annotated bibliography on a topic and find a variety of sources including:
- Primary research articles
- Review articles
- News articles
- Encyclopedia articles
- Datasets
- Patents
In their summary, students should describe what knowledge the source contributes to the topic and how the source compares to other sources in the bibliography.
Guide students in exploring the conversation around a research topic with citation tracking.
For this assignment, students will:
- Find one recent scientific article they are interested in.
- Use Research Rabbit to create a network citation graph of previous and more recent citations.
- Identify at least 3 major scholars in the field and check if they have profiles in Google Scholar or Web of Science.
- Write a short essay about what each scholar contributes to the conversation and in what formats (articles, conference papers, books, etc.), and the impact of the work (i.e., citation counts, h-index).
Ask students to evaluate the outputs of one or more generative AI tools. In their reflection, students should include:
- The prompt and scientific questions asked
- Their confidence in receiving the correct answer
- Verification of the information from another outside source
Have a conversation with students about ethical uses of AI in your classes, whether it be for brainstorming and outlining to deeper synthesis. You can also teach students prompt engineering strategies such as CLEAR (concise, logical, explicit, adaptive, and reflective) and Role + Task + Format.
Engineering Librarian
