Teaching students how to use a variety of research sources (opinion)
Choosing required reading for a course is a universal challenge. Each semester, social media lights up with discussions about the struggle to fit all the writing you want into your curriculum, or where to find the perfect reading to address a key point relevant to student learning.
The advent of crowdsourced syllabuses such as #CharlestonSyllabus and #FergusonSyllabus has been helpful to us as college educators in not only finding sources, but also identifying a wide range of source types that inform students about important current events. But we should do much more to encourage students to identify reliable sources.
For the past 12 consecutive years, I have served as a department head. That summer, for the first time in over a decade that I was free from administrative duties, I set out to prepare my curriculum with a clear mind and renewed enthusiasm. Every year I adjust them, but this year I completely restructured them. I’m now teaching two classes this fall: one I’ve taught before (Black Women and Health) and a new one for me (Thinking the Body). And given the convergence of a multitude of human rights violations and the accelerating news cycle, I intentionally structured both so that students learn as much as possible from different types of sources – from the well-known (books and articles) to the rarely cited (dissertations, archives ). and creative texts).
In short, I am actively exploring a source pedagogy. I have completely organized my two courses to take students to different sources and provide a basic approach that allows them to find sources specific to the lesson and their area of interest – and ultimately a distinct contribution with a good source to do final research.
This course reorganization has made me very excited to be teaching this semester. The tasks consist of two short papers that lead to the thesis. Here is an excerpt from my curriculum that identifies the source types and provides a rationale:
Below is a detailed list of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources to help you create a robust, well-cited thesis. I’ve broken down various source types into an acronym and a sentence that captures the limitations of research based only on books, articles, or random websites: Scholars without sources are REAL BAD NEWS.
Week # & source type
- RReport, government document or database
- Live source, oral tradition, interview or video
- Law or legal journal
- Books (two: non-fiction/scientific and memoir)
- Bok review
- AArticles (two: academic journals and journals)
- AArchive, artwork or museum
- AAuthority, professional association or organization
- Ddissertation or thesis
- Ddocumentary or film
- NNewspapers (two: one pre-1945, one contemporary)
- Nnovel or short story
- Elexicon or bibliography
- WEbsite, multimedia, blog or social media post
- Ssong or poem
Why did I decide to do this? I’ve long believed that we need to teach students research skills, not just provide them with information. Remember the old African proverb: “If you give a man a fish he will eat for a day, but if you teach him to fish he will eat forever”? I believe if you give students a source they will read for a day, but if you teach them how to find sources they will read forever.
Ever since I began teaching as an assistant professor in 2003, I have demanded at least 10 types of sources in my students’ thesis. I always heard some grumbling, but I stuck with it because it was my own college work that introduced me to sources like dissertations and book reviews—sources beyond books and articles and the then-nascent internets.
When I was a student at California State University in Long Beach, I had to cite historical book reviews in an English class. A course in Black Studies required me to cite a dissertation. Yet another in women’s studies introduced me to the power of documentaries and interviews. As a McNair Fellow—a program designed to prepare college students for graduate school—I was exposed to a variety of sources on my colleagues’ research projects. So when I construct my own courses, I immediately go beyond the basic book-and-article model of required reading.
I teach information literacy skills by exploring 15 different types of sources during the semester. It used to be a struggle not to overwhelm students with the idea of finding a variety of sources. Working on just one type of source per week should be less intimidating for students and also allow for deeper understanding throughout the semester.
In the past I have taken the time to show students where to find dissertations and introduce them to the beauty of archival work. We’ve also had serious discussions about the validity of sources and the need to conduct background checks and get clarity on who is posting information – whether it’s self-published or peer-reviewed, for example. Now, emphasizing sources as the fundamental structure of the class, let’s have in-depth discussions on how source types can help in creating a more informed, robust, and nuanced thesis.
For this work, students identify a topic that is of interest for their personal and professional development. As an example, I shared recommended resources on Black women and health. Each week, students must find a source type that is relevant to their own research interest. Your own sources, combined with some recommended reading, will enable you to create an original research paper, gathering information from a variety of places.
Each week, students share their discoveries and learn from each other as they find treasure, yes, in books and magazine articles, but also on social media, in law and legal journals, through professional associations, in newspapers and more. At a time when critical thinking is still required, showing students where to find a cross-section of information to compare and contrast ideas is truly an exciting and necessary task.
This semester I have already noticed the advantages of this structure in the way students process information in short assignments and discussion contributions. In the first work, more students could deal with a specific topic of interest and connect it to a law, a report or an interview. The discussion posts required everyone to share a sample of what they found in an archive and comment on someone else’s find. This made the research process more transparent and exposed them to sources they might not otherwise have found. And in the presentations and discussions, the students were able to synthesize information from the sources in a way that helped them build an argument with more insight than if they just used textbooks or simply relied on secondary sources.
The “really bad news” framework can be adjusted, and I hope other educators will find this approach useful. I’ve created a resource site with sample sources and syllabi: Teachingfromthesource.net. As I move into the next phase of my academic career as a post-professor, I couldn’t be happier with this work of teaching – and learning – by leading students on a journey to Source.