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Activity instructions:
Practice Session (optional & ungraded)Practice for the Web Search Activity: Do a News Search [optional] Goals of the Practice Activity:
Here are the instructions for the News Search Practice Activity. In order to successfully complete this Practice Activity, you will need to first read the document, News Search Reading. Find specific examples here: News versus Opinion Examples Before completing your (required) Web Search Activity, working through this News Search Practice will help you to discern various types of sources available on the web.
News Search Practice (this is not graded; treat it as preparation for the Web Search Activity): 1. Copy your research question onto a blank document and highlight, boldface, or underline its key terms or concepts. For example, Will open educational resources replace commercial textbooks? 2. Brainstorm a little to come up with related alternate search terms for each of the question’s core components or concepts. Create a list of these terms. For example: Will open educational resources replace commercial textbooks?
You will come up with new terms once you begin searching (be sure to add them to your list!), so it’s okay to begin with just a few. 3. Search for relevant newspaper sources through Nexis Uni or Google New, or both. Each database contains sources other than newspaper sources. Please review the instructional materials in the Week One reading to ensure that the sources you retrieve for this activity are newspaper sources, specifically. 4. Identify two (2) newspaper sources that seem potentially relevant to your project, and write complete and correct citations for them. Information about how to cite newspaper sources is included in the Week One reading. 5. Identify each of your two sources as “NEWS” or “OPINION.” (If you’d like, you can be more specific: for example, “news analysis,” “feature,” “editorial,” etc. are some other options. See the “News Search Reading: “Using News Sources in your Research” document linked above.) Identifying sources by type will involved actually reading, or at least skimming, the articles. If you are unsure how to categorize one of your sources, ask for help from your instructor, classmates, or a National University librarian. Note: Variety is not a requirement of the Activity, so if both of your sources are news stories, as in the example that follows, write “NEWS” before each of your two citations. (Most of the newspaper sources you encounter will be news sources since editorials, opinion columns, reviews, etc., represent only a small percentage of newspaper content.) EXAMPLE: Here is an example of a completed News Search Activity: Will open educational resources replace commercial textbooks?
NEWS Guttenplan, D. D. (2012, March 19). Open resources: Transforming the way knowledge is spread. The International Herald Tribune. NEWS Free online content forces publishers to adjust. (2013, July 10). Education Week. Now you should be ready to go back to the Web Search Activity with a better grasp of the kind of sources you will need for your project. |
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Web Search
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