Schnitzeljagd in der Bibliothek

Adeline Koh beschreibt im Blog ProfHacker “A Scavenger Hunt Exercise to Teach Research Methodologies” eine gelungene Schnitzeljagd in der Bibliothek (via Subreddit “Libraries”):

“Students were assigned to read the first chapter of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, a useful introduction to the rationale for writing a research paper and overview of the types of resources available to them. They then had to submit five discussion questions on the reading that occurred to them as they were doing the reading, planning to simply do a combination of lecture and discussion in the classroom. When I looked over their questions before class began, I realized I had two choices: (1) I could answer all these questions for my students in lecture/discussion form, or (2) I could set them loose in the library and the Internet to answer the questions on their own.

I decided to go with (2). I cut and pasted twenty six of the student-generated questions onto a Word document, divided my fourteen students into two groups and gave each group thirteen questions for each group to complete. I assigned each group a group leader who was supposed to direct discussion and a notetaker who was supposed to collate all the group’s findings. The groups were given an hour to roam around the library, speak to librarians, find out where resources such as microfilm were, and find various research guides on the Internet. After the hour, they all got up in front of the class as a group to present their findings for the last fifty minutes of class. Students were also to report on their research process that led them to these answers and how reliable their sources were. I also indicated that each member of the group needed to understand what every term of their answer meant (e.g. What is an annotated bibliography), as I would ask them to explain the term to the other group. The other group had to ask questions—if they didn’t, I would ask questions of them!

The activity went a lot better than I had expected. My students were running around the library all smiles, speaking to our helpful librarians and students outside of our class for help, and returned completely energized instead of feeling groggy from sitting listening to a lecture. The resulting discussion was also highly energetic. My students were much more engaged because they had just been involved in actually trying to find the answers on their own instead of having their teacher answer the questions for them.”

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