Research as inquiry: Design a teaching instruction.

Explore the psychological impact of crime on teenagers in Cape Town

                  

Learning outcome: 

Students should be able to:

•  determine an appropriate scope of investigation.
•  employ critical skills to evaluate information.
•  organize information in meaningful ways.

Design 3 activities:

1. Go on the internet and find 3 sholarly conversations about crime in Cape Town by C Lemanski.Comment and add your opinion and post the link on twitter. Invite you twitter contacts into this conversation, ask their views and how they feel about it.
2. Write a two page essay without any aid using your own head knowledge. Evaluate sources cited in scholarly conversations and review the 3 scholarly sources with yours. Make changes if you have to. 
3. Formulate research questions and decide what type of research methods will go well with the study.

Disposition:

1. Activity one links to disposition: Consider research as an open-ended exploration and engagement with information.
2. Activity 2 links to the disposition:  Willingness to refine or change the direction, method, or scope of research based  on new insights
3. Activity 3 links to disposition:  Value intellectual curiosity in developing questions and learning new investigative methods.

 

Scholarship as conversation

Teaching Library Science undergraduates with social media:

Learning outcomes:  Students will:

• 1.      recognize they are often entering into an ongoing scholarly conversation, not a finished conversation.
• 2.       identify the contribution that particular articles, books and other scholarly pieces make to disciplanary  knowledge.
• 3.      understand how to understand and analyze a scholarly article/videos and identify and understand all the parts of the article/video.

I have developed the following class activities:

Go on Twitter and discuss or reflect on any you tube clip of your choice:

1. Find online books or articles that you came across that were written in the past year on the topic you researching. Make important notes and post it on a twitter blog where you discuss it with other scholars interested in this topic.
2. Find 2 professional social media sites and share you opinion where you have an ongoing scholary conversation on this topic. 
3. Critically analyze the 2 professional social media sites you selected and share what you think of whatever they contributed to this discussion.

Disposition:

• Students will recognize there is always new research being done and they are often entering into an on-going scholarly conversation and not a finished conversation.
• While doing their research and adding their input students see themselves as contributors to scholarship rather than only consumers of it.
• By critically analyzing the social 2 social media sites, students suspend judgment on the value of a particular piece of scholarship until the larger context for the scholarly conversation is better understood.