6.1: Articles Exploration Assignment

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Assignment Overview

For this assignment, use the Nealley Library databases to select two articles related to your chosen research topic. One article must be from a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal; the other article can be from a magazine, newspaper, or trade publication. Please follow the steps outlined below carefully, which are intended to walk you through a conscientious search and reading comprehension process involved with using articles for your research. These skills will come in handy for future research projects.

Before you begin, please do the following to help you prepare and strategize your search process:

Recall the searching and reading strategies you learned from this week’s tutorials.
Review the “Finding Articles” handout before beginning your search.
Be prepared to take notes on your search strategies and for your reading comprehension of each article.
To give your research the consideration it deserves, please give yourself plenty of time (at least 1 hour) to explore different databases and articles before making your final selections. Also, give yourself plenty of time to write your article annotations (Part 2 of this assigment).

NOTE: For this exercise, please do not use Google (or the free web) to search for articles. We will explore free, open access articles next week. Remember, library databases provide you access to articles from subscription-based periodicals that are not freely available through the web.

Instructions

1a. Article 1: Search for and select one peer-reviewed scholarly article related to your chosen topic using the Academic Search Complete database.
1b. Article 2: Search for and select a magazine, newspaper, or trade article using another Nealley Library article database (not Academic Search Premier). Please explore the newspaper and subject-specific databases relevant to your chosen topic before making your final decision for the second article.

Remember to use the search strategies demonstrated in this week’s tutorials and the “Finding Articles” handout.
Also remember to use the database’s “Full Text” and “Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals” limiters.
Be sure to look at a variety of articles and try more than one search strategy using different
search terms before choosing an article.)
TAKE NOTES! Take notes as you go about the specific search strategies you used in your database searches. Also, take notes as you read the articles you selected to help you understand their content (these notes will help you when you write your annotations). Be sure your notes include the decision making/evaluation process you used for deciding on the article you chose (e.g., Why did you decide to use this article over others you looked at?). These notes will help you think through your searching and evaluation process in a more conscientious and methodical manner. Also, you will be sharing about your search process with your classmates in the discussion board activity for this week.

2a. Provide citation information for each article, including the following:

Title of the article
Author
Title of the periodical in which the article is published
Volume, issue, and page numbers
Date of publication
Name of library database where you found the article

2b. Write an annotation for each article that includes the following components:

A two-three sentence summery of the article. Please do not copy and paste from the abstract. Use your own words (paraphrase). It is difficult to write a succinct summary, so please feel free to contact me by Friday if you’d like any assistance with this.
One-two sentences (following your summary of the article) about how the article helped you better understand a specific aspect of your topic.
One-two sentences about what the article makes you want to explore further about your topic. You can also include any questions the article brought up for you about your topic.

3. Review and edit your annotation drafts. Good writing habits, as I’m sure you know, include reading your writing out loud to yourself and then having another person you trust review your writing. It is always a good idea (in your academic and professional lives) to have another person review your writing and provide feedback to help ensure your ideas are clear and understandable. I am happy to review your annotations and provide feedback before you turn them in for a grade. If you would like review your annotations, please send me your draft no later than Friday morning so that I have enough time to respond to you before the assignment deadline. This will also provide you enough time to make edits before the Sunday deadline.

Articles Exploration Assignment. Authored by: Annie Knight. License: CC BY: Attribution