Don't Blame Wikipedia for This One: Reframing Research Through the Reflective Annotated Bibliography

by Chris Judson

Instead of shaming students' almost exclusive use of websites in their copy-and-pasted papers, we ought to reexamine what we want from our students. The emphasis ought to be on a real-world process: to help students think about ways to approach problems by asking questions, finding answers to most of those questions,  sifting through and selecting the most plausible answers, and sharing those "answers" with others.

To address these goals, I created a mash-up of the Big 6 research paper organizer (Jansen, 1999) and project-based learning task (Shaffner; Markham) dubbed the Reflective Annotated Bibliography (RAB). The RAB is the foundation or the first layer for inquiry-based papers. Students have three different papers during the trimester. The first paper is a RAB, subsequent papers begin with a RAB, then another "layer" (e.g. literature review or comparative analysis) is added so that by the third paper, the student has followed the process three times.

To manage the process, students sometimes use mapping tools (Inspiration® or CMAP) or an outlining function of a word processor.

Questioning. Students begin with an "essential question"-- the question that is large in scope and will drive the inquiry throughout the process. Students then form 10 supporting questions from each of four identified categories based on Bloom’s taxonomy:

• Memory questions ask “What?” and “Who?” and reflect naming, defining, and identifying information
• Convergent questions ask “How” and “Why?” and reflect explaining and stating relationships
• Divergent questions such as “Imagine if…" and "How might…" emphasize hypothesizing and inferring of information
• Evaluative questions

It is in these questions that students have the basis for their searching for sources and answers.

Sourcing. Students then locate a number of sources (10-12) from a wide-variety of sources (print, electronic and live interviews) to help find answers to the students’ supporting questions. Some questions (memory questions) are better answered by reference material whereas other questions (such as divergent and evaluative) are better addressed in personal interviews.

Annotating. Students create annotated bibliographies from their 10-12 sources using MLA format to cite their sources (I encourage students to use www.citationmachine.net for formatting) and then annotate each source. In about four sentences, students summarize the findings from the source and evaluate how helpful that source was in answering the supporting questions. (I try to emphasize that some sources are more helpful than others. Something on a blog may or may not be as valid or "truthful" as a published-in-book-form source. I skip the step of lecturing my students on the use of electronic media and go for the real issue: Which sources are more helpful in answering their questions?)

Reflecting. Once students have created an annotated bibliography from the sources that helped answer their supporting questions, they must write something "official": a reflective essay using their annotated bibliographies. This is a natural place to stop and take stock of what information has been found and making a connection back to the original starting place: the essential question. It's in this essay that students get a chance to synthesize and consider their findings as they relate to the bigger context.

Sharing. This is an appropriate place to use many of the technological tools such as a wiki-like site (e.g. http://pbworks.com/) or a content management system (e.g. Moodle) to allow other students in the class or course to see what others have contributed to the overall unit of study.

A good writing assignment should avoid a retelling of someone's view of the facts; a good writing assignment should show a student's thinking about a particular topic / issue. The RAB seems to de-emphasize the "find the facts" transcript and re-emphasizes asking good questions, looking for answers and reflecting on which of those answers seem more plausible than others.

Students need more opportunities to learn how to ask germane questions and consult a wide-range of informational sources. Instead of typical research papers, we should look toward better writing engagements such as the RAB, I-Searches, Multi-genre and Project-Based learning activities: all of which emphasize deeper knowledge over superficial copy-and-pasted knowledge papers.

Reference

Jansen, B. (1999). Big 6 research paper.

East Central High School Small Learning Communities, Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://www.hs.ecisd.net/Library/ResearchPaperOrganizer.htm.

Markham, T. (2003).

Project Based Learning. Novato, CA: Buck Institute for Education.

Shaffner, M. (2007).

PBL instructional module. Edutopia. George Lucas Educational Foundation. November 5, 2007, from http://www.edutopia.org/teachingmodules/PBL/index.php.

Chris Judson

Chris Judson teaches High School English at Concord High School in Elkhart, Indiana.

This featured article appeared in Volume 3, Number 2 issue of the Write Connections quarterly newsletter. View other archived newsletters , a topical organization of all newsletters, or sign-up to receive notification when the next newsletters are ready to download.