primary source research

Research Literacy with AI: Verifying Sources with Perplexity and the CRAAP Framework to Improve Intrinsic Motivation

Activities, collaboration and group work, critical thought and analysis, digital literacy, genAI, information literacy, Integrating sources, primary source research, Process, research, secondary source research, writing technologies /

Tingyu Zhang Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity teaches undergraduates to critically locate and verify sources by triangulating results from Perplexity AI (free version), Google Scholar, or Academic Search Complete, using the CRAAP framework (Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose) to evaluate sources (Blakeslee 6). Rather than treating AI as a shortcut, it frames […]

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Assistive Yet Authorial: Critical Use of GenAI in Personal Narrative Prewriting

Activities, critical thought and analysis, digital literacy, drafting and revising, genAI, identity, narrative and storytelling, prewriting and invention, primary source research, Process, research, writing technologies /

Daehyun Won Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Due to the accelerating adoption of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) across higher education, writing instructors face everyday challenges in developing academic writing skills while integrating GenAI to enhance digital literacy, critical AI literacy, and prompt engineering. Not to undermine students’ authorial agency, authentic voice, and ownership in

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NotebookLM–Assisted Annotated Bibliography

annotated bibliography, Assignments, genAI, Integrating sources, primary source research, reading strategies, research, secondary source research, writing technologies /

Salma Kalim Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This multi-step assignment invites students to compare their own scholarly reading practices with AI-generated analyses within the context of annotated bibliography writing. By incorporating NotebookLM—a document-grounded research tool—students engage in a guided exchange with artificial intelligence as they draft, revise, and refine their understanding of academic sources.

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Learning to Incorporate Source Material with a Full Menu of Options: Developing a Discrete Skill in Isolation

Activities, documentation, genre and discourse community, Integrating sources, primary source research, Process, quotations, citations, and style, research, secondary source research /

Stephen David Grover Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Writing assignments often require students to perform a complex array of interrelated tasks all at once. For example, when composing a typical researched argument essay, students must keep their eyes on higher-order concerns like thesis, organization, and finding and evaluating evidence, while at the same time

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Fuzzy Logic: How the Fuzzy Definition of Plagiarism is Getting Even Fuzzier

Activities, documentation, Integrating sources, plagiarism, primary source research, Process, quotations, citations, and style, secondary source research /

Steven Engel and Staci Shultz Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Rachel Hall Buck and Silvia Vaccino-Salvadore’s Writing Spaces essay, “‘Doing Research Is Fun; Citing Sources Is Not’: Understanding the Fuzzy Definition of Plagiarism,” suggests ways to help students unpack the complexity of plagiarism. Our activity extends these essential conversations by examining several recent highprofile

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Source Speed Dating: Where Do Research Topics Come From?

Activities, demystifying writing assignments, prewriting and invention, primary source research, research /

Hannah T. Davis Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description The beginning of a research paper assignment might involve a discussion of the goals of the assignment and a short brainstorming activity to help students think about possible topics. When students are asked to quickly choose a topic in this manner, without first conducting preliminary research,

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Unpacking Abstracts: Conventions of Empirical Abstracts in Social Science Papers

Activities, critical thought and analysis, genre and discourse community, primary source research, reading strategies, research, secondary source research, STEM, Style, writing across the curriculum /

Faqryza Ab Latif Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description The goal of the activity is for learners to be able to describe the components that make up the abstract of an empirical social science paper and apply them to other abstracts in the field. This goal is connected to introducing students to the conventions of

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Object Ethnography for the Real-World: Using Objects and Documents for Disciplinary Development

Assignments, Community-engaged writing, critical thought and analysis, genre and discourse community, primary source research, reflection, research, rhetoric /

Meng-Hsien (Neal) Liu Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description As Writing Studies has sought to address multimodal and embodied composition, one area has focused on how objects mediate writing processes and identity formations (Shipka). This assignment represents a final term project for an advanced composition class with the overall objective of complicating students’ thinking regarding

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Emotionally Aware Ethnography

Assignments, Community-engaged writing, critical thought and analysis, genre and discourse community, narrative and storytelling, Place-based Writing, primary source research /

Sarah Bramblett Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description I’ve encountered several jarring writing submissions: an essay describing a student’s family member’s tragic death, an essay detailing a student’s battle with an eating disorder, an essay telling of a student’s loneliness in their first semester of college, and an essay recounting a student’s suicidal thoughts. These

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Engaging Podcasts as a Dynamic Genre for Invention

collaboration and group work, prewriting and invention, primary source research, secondary source research, visual/multimodal rhetorics /

Charles Woods & Devon Ralston Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description Instructors who maintain a robust definition of text “connect our students so much more with the real world of writing. We prepare them for the world […] so that they can participate in that conversation” (Marchetti & O’Dell). Podcasts represent a digital genre that

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