Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Annotated Bibliography, Evaluating Websites, and Sports Law

Many college freshmen do not understand what an annotated bibliography is.  Mary George provides a definition in her book The Elements of Library Research: What Every Student Needs to Know:
A list of sources that includes a brief summary of each, which may be descriptive, critical, or both.  Faculty may request that students submit an annotated bibliography during the library research process as a way to tell what sources students have discovered and how they expect to use them.  Scholars sometimes publish extensive annotated bibliographies on a topic, either as long journal articles or as whole books.  See also abstract; review; survey article. (166)
For many freshmen it sounds like some big scary thing, but once they understand that it is just a Works Cited or References page with a short paragraph or two describing and evaluting each source, then it makes more sense. 

At the end of the course I taught last semester, I had a day in which we evaluated websites, worked on doing this in groups, and discussed the final project, or the annotated bibliography.  The outline has been posted to my ACAD 1199 webpage.  When evaluating sources or websites I still think that the CRAAP Test provides a good list of criteria to consider.  However, in the end, it seems the most important criteria is whether or not a source is relevant or not.  Will it support my argument or not?

A couple of weeks ago, I taught a physical education class to upper division students.  The class focuses on disabilities, and students are required to give a report on a single disability or someone with a disability.  A colleague of mine helped me teach the class.  She taught the students about the health science resources, and I talked about basic search strategies and the sports sciences resources. 

My colleague created a wiki page with the title of the course: PE 4494.  I went back to look at the page, and she had updated it.  Interestingly enough at the bottom of the page a note appears telling how many times the page has been viewed: "This page has been accessed 1,785 times."  This was interesting.  It appears that many have seen this page.  It does have useful resources for anyone needing to look up information on disabilities.

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