Annotated bibliographies play a useful role in a scaffolded, semester long research project. Students can practice:
- Finding sources in library databases
- Evaluating sources for relevancy and authority
- Paraphrasing and quoting sources properly
- Using sources as evidence to support arguments
Things to consider:
- The following guides can help your students prepare for this assignment:
- Remember that choosing a topic is research and at the annotated bibliography stage, students are developing their topic. Help your students to understand the helpful role this assignment plays in the research process so that they are not tempted to grab the first 10 items that come up in a search.
- Do your students know the unique roles played in research by primary, popular and scholarly info?
- Have you talked to them about what makes 'good' evidence in your discipline?
- Have you given them a target for number of sources required for the paper? Sometimes a range is best, as in, "Students who are successful in this assignment use more than X sources, but no more than X are usually necessary."
- NoodleTools is a free and helpful citation manager for your students. Users can create annotated bibliographies, use notecards to pull notes, quotations and paraphrasing from sources, and organize the sources into an outline. They can then share the project with you online, or export it as a document. Sample lesson plan here.
