that learners can research. When we provided cross-cultural examples, learners researched more diverse topics instead of choosing topics close to their own lives. We also found that it is best to only give learners an abbreviated assignment overview at the beginning of the semester. Too much information up front leads to information overload, causing confusion (Bawden & Robinson, 2009). Jessica found that learners are less overwhelmed if scaffolding assignments are distributed throughout the semester. Jessica also reiterates the assignment’s goals often, so learners continue to connect their work with course goals. We also would like to experiment with an infographic to streamline communication about steps of the assignment.
In early versions of this assignment, Jennifer’s visits to the classroom focused on how and why we were using Wikipedia in class. However, there are other powerful approaches that librarians can take. The initial librarian visit could begin by facilitating a critical discussion of Wikipedia as a source before delving into the mechanics of the project. The librarian can also guide learners through information literacy frames that we focus on in the project, using some of the activities developed by the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) (2020). e assignment could also require a visit with a librarian.
The first time we taught this assignment, we had a learner who did not participate, though he was otherwise active in class. We suspected that he was simply too anxious about sharing his writing to engage. Jessica came to realize this was a stumbling block and started telling learners that some nervousness is a normal part of the research process. In the future, we will draw from Carol Kuhlthau’s (1991) foundational work, “Inside the Search Process,” to normalize anxiety as part of the process to show how meeting with a librarian can help them move past this stage.
This assignment can be modified for a variety of courses. Jessica has since modified the assignment for a lower-level class by offering more professor support, decreasing the required number of citations, and having learners work in pairs. As an alternative, learners could also add citations to an undercited page, rather than write new text (Oliver, 2015). These pages can be found in Google by using the query: “needs
