Article Note: On a scaffolded research assignment in a first year course

Citation for the article: Jennifer Saulnier, Corey M. Johnson, and Kathleen Whalen, "Scaffolded Research Assignment Analysis for a Required First Year Course." The Journal of Academic Librarianship 47 (2021): 1-6.

This study took place at Washington State University, a public research campus with about 30,000 students over multiple campuses. The article looks at the effects of library research scaffolded assignments on student learning of information literacy skills. This is in the context of a required class, "Roots of Contemporary Issues" (History 105/305), for all undergraduates.

Some takeaways for me from the article: 

• Some of the things students are required to find as part of research in the assignments: 
• a contemporary newspaper article
• a specialized encyclopedia entry, or a relevant Wikipedia article. (This caught my eye. On my campus many if not most of the faculty are vehemently opposed to students using Wikipedia in any way). 
• primary sources, which can be documentary like a historical newspaper or non-documentary like a speech, a letter, an interview, etc. 
• creating an annotated bibliography
• "Through the progression of the LRAs [library research assignment], students are taught how to move from general topic ideas to a refined thesis statement, in addition to having multiple opportunities to integrate ideas from their sources and practice Chicago Style citation" (1).
•  The literature "found that many forms of information literacy assessment measure student attitudes or confidence in their research skills, but do not explore whether or not student skills have actually increased or if students have met learning outcomes, which is especially important because there is often a gap between ability and actual skill levels" (2). 
• Benefits of smaller assignments: "Breaking down a larger project into smaller sections alleviates the library research anxiety felt by many students; connects information literacy instruction to specific course outcomes; and grants librarians the 'opportunity to develop shared responsibility with the faculty'" (2). 
• Turns out, at least according to this article, that students do not change topics midstream during writing a research assignment as often as faculty think they do. Students may talk about doing it, but often do not do it. "The discrepancy with instructor survey results here could stem from the idea that instructors spend more time with students who are altering topics so therefore have an inflated sense of the total number in this circumstance" (4). 
• Getting students to refine topics was a bit more challenging. 
• "It is not a positive result that almost one in four students got through the whole process (multiple LRAs and a final paper) with little to no topic refinement" (4). 
• "Instructors are divided on the value of detail accuracy in citation, some think this is an important skill to hone, others believe presenting a basic level of traceability is sufficient" (5). This is why you get students often lost about doing citations. Instructors are rarely consistent about what they want ranging from seriously anal retentive (miss a comma here or there and serious points come off) to "do what you want as long as it is consistent." Despite this instructors tend to make a fuss about any small form of plagiarism, which may often be accidental or due to less than appropriate citing. This last part I will note is observation on my part. 
• Again, instructor inconsistency can be an issue: "In addition, instructors vary on acceptance of book chapters as basic equivalents to scholarly journal articles, and some accept newspaper articles as primary sources, while others want primary sources created by key historical figures central to students' topics" (5). So very often instructors in some cases make things more difficult for students. For example, the instructor who only wants those primary sources from key historical figures, well, if the material does not exist or is not accessible to the student, what then? Not always easy explaining that to some faculty members entrenched in their ways. 
• "A strength of this work is the value of having librarians and instructors work together on programmatic assessment" (5).