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Assignments & Helpers

Action Items for Research Paper & Blogging!

Written by Michael Stephens

Hey all – Here are some action items to guide you through the next few weeks. Some I carried over from this post.

Everyone also remember to breathe, take care of you and yours. Contact me anytime with questions or concerns.

Research Paper:

  • Go through all the material in Getting Started with the Research Paper
  • All assignments in INFO 200 help build your understanding and knowledge of the information needs and information-seeking behaviors of the information community you are researching. You can feel free to remix and adapt previous assignments and blog posts and incorporate these into your research paper. This is not self-plagiarism!
  • Fine tune your community description to fit the required introduction for the paper. A successful description for the assignments addresses who the community is, what information needs and behaviors they have, and should cite some of our foundational literature as well as your own pertinent, peer-reviewed resources. You might even include some stats pulled from research-based sources as well such as Pew, etc.
  • Be clear with your writing. Use simple, straightforward sentences. Avoid sweeping generalizations without supporting evidence.
  • Work on the blog posts explored below as sections of your paper’s discussion. Research your community’s use of emerging technology (or technology in general). How do they use it as part of their information behaviors? (After the paper, you’ll be creating a media artifact to share some of these findings too!)
  • Pay close attention to minimum and maximum word counts.
  • Follow the formatting requirements closely.
  • Proof everything. Ask a classmate to proof your work and proof theirs.

Blog Reports:

Here are some thoughts on the rest of our course blogging:

  • Blog Post #6: Report on the issues your community may face on an international scale. 

Helper: Blog Post #6: From your exploration of the literature and the resources included in the Global Librarianship Module, craft a blog post related to the issues your information community may face on an international scale. Consider, for example, how similar info communities to yours seek and create information in the context of their culture. Try to discover whether your international counterparts bring social, gender, environmental and economic justice to light. See if you can share your discoveries and observations in hopes that your experience can prepare and even educate fellow information professionals.

ACTION ITEMS:

  • This can be written by exploring the professional literature (Library Journal, American Libraries, etc) or other resources related to your community.
  • Search for articles related to how libraries are offering learning programs for your community and how your community or a related community is being served on the global stage.
  • You can actually start these searches now and keep what you find for when you complete the upcoming modules and start writing.
  • Write both posts to easily fit into your research paper’s Discussion section, perhaps under headings such as “Learning Programming for Citizen Scientists” and “Library Services Around the World for Citizen Scientists.” This is not self-plagiarism!

Next:

  • Blog Post #7: Report on your community’s use of emerging technologies 

Helper: Create a media-based artifact (infographic, video, audio, etc) from your research and explorations of your community’s use of emerging technologies. How do they use technology to advance the community or share information? Be as creative as you’d like! Use these “How To” pages at the Community Site:

Some popular tools students have used, as compiled by include:

Also, checkout  this helpful site: https://marketingtechblog.com/infographic-layouts/

Please comment below with how you are doing, your own coursework strategies and any action items you have for our class, etc

Image: Tea break at The Milkman in Edinburgh, Oct. 2024

 

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4 thoughts on “Action Items for Research Paper & Blogging!”

  1. Hi Professor Stephens,
    Thanks for providing additional resources to guide our next assignments and the research paper.

    The holidays are upon us which means busy days at work, but the extensions you provided have helped break up a lot of the due dates. As of right now, I still need to heavily edit my LRM, but that should be done between now and this Tuesday. I will attempt to keep myself on track with the original blog due dates in an effort to collect more information that could be used in my research. I’m holding myself to a strict schedule to make sure I have enough time to outline, organize, write, edit, and submit my paper.

    My first action item in the next week is to create an outline by looking at some resources and examples to get an idea on how I want to structure my paper. Second action item is to remix, fill, and edit sections with information that did not make it into my blog posts and/or large assignments. There is a lot to say but I also want to make sure I do not deviate from my main ideas. Third action item is to go through the drafting phase of rereading and editing AFTER I have added all components to the research paper.

  2. Hello Professor,
    Thank you for giving us the opportunity to finish the assignments without stress so much about the due dates. Actually I found that I am falling behind the original due dates, so I am trying to catch up the assignments. Now I am working on the blog #6. My plan is to spend a few hours a day on the research paper as you suggested, and try to complete the blog reports so I can focus on the research paper.

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