Rather than just providing a 20min presentation on academic databases available through the library website--this lesson is designed to have students demonstrate using library databases for their classmates. Delivered to our ENG 1B (a required freshman course) students, and timed to coincide with their Argument Essay assignment, students practice accessing and utilizing databases to find information sources. Working in groups, the students explore an assigned database before coming up to the podium to demonstrate the materials, search functionality and features of that database. Lesson break down (1hr 15min): Presentation by the Librarian: databases; developing keywords; Boolean (30 minutes) Students break into groups of 2-4, are assigned a database (5 minutes) Students explore the database and plan their Teach-In (10 minutes) Groups present on their assigned database (20 minutes) Presentation by the Librarian about identifying information needs (5 minutes) Librarian re-states the role of each database to meet these information needs (5 minutes) *This lesson was first designed by CORA Development Group Member, Nicole Branch along with SJSU Librarian, Toby Matoush.

This annotated bibliography assignment has five different versions for five different groups of disciplines: arts, humanities, social analysis (social sciences), life and physical sciences, and quantitative reasoning. Each is meant to give students a way to identify and explore the key types of scholarly sources in those disciplinary categories; for example, to understand what is meant by a primary source in each category. The titles of these disciplinary categories are specific to the General Education Seminar categories at my institution, as are the titles of the research guides suggested in the assignment. It could be used as a precursor to a research paper or as a standalone assignment.

Students create an entry in the Fremont Wiki - http://localwiki.net/fremont. Students incorporate information literacy concepts, have hands-on experience conducting research, and create actual content on the Internet [while also learning how easy it is for anyone to change that content]. It could also be a great chance to get students into local museums and archives.

Students interview their professor(s) and ask them to describe how they do research, how research gets disseminated in their discipline, etc. Each student can ask one question below. This assignment can be useful as a “first day of class” activity for a First Year Seminar. Novice researchers are introduced to scholarly discourse and discipline-specific approaches to producing knowledge by experts.

This assignment is meant to illustrate the differences between scholarly and popular information sources by presenting students with information on the topic of "fracking" from four different resources: a scholarly article, a magazine, a newspaper and a website. It introduces the idea that information can be presented in different formats depending on the context and information need.