One Author, Many Sources

Short Assignment

Give students an article from a popular news source and have them trace the research back to the original study/paper.

Steps

  1. Provide students with a set of resources, either from the examples below or that you have constructed.
  2. Give students the following directions: All of the resources listed below are by the same person, [INSERT AUTHOR NAME HERE].  For each resource, spend a few minutes browsing or listening.  You don’t have to read, listen to, or watch the whole thing, but read or watch enough that you feel confident that you understand what format you’re looking at.  Then answer the following reflection questions:
    • What format is each of these sources?
    • How are the purposes of these formats different? 
    • How is the information likely to differ? 
    • How is the information packaged differently?
    • Who is likely to read each of these formats?
    • What is an example of a time there would be a reason to choose one over the other?

Example Sources

Note: Don’t forget to remove the parenthetical answers before distributing to students!

Considerations

  • Give students a heads up that some of these are popular formats not discussed in the video playlist, such as tweet threads and podcasts. This exercise can be used to extend the conversation about format to include these familiar formats and address when and how they may be appropriate to use in research.
  • If you would like to customize a set of resources around a particular author in your field, the librarians would be happy to help.  Alternatively, here are some tips on trying the process yourself:
    • Start with a scholar who has written a book on your topic
    • From there check Google Scholar or their CV for scholarly articles 
    • Googling their name is likely to turn up podcasts, videos and popular magazine articles or blog posts
    • Check for twitter threads using twitter advanced search

Resources