Developing an Interdisciplinary Search Strategy

Title

Developing an Interdisciplinary Search Strategy

Description This is an activity that helps students develop an interdisciplinary search strategy in stages. Students define their topic, brainstorm questions related to their topic area, and connect these questions to the disciplines and experts where they might find more research and information. Students learn how to identify search tools & information sources based on their questions using the library’s website.
Steps
  1. Demonstrate the entire process on the whiteboard (see an example of a Interdisciplinary Strategy below). Choose a topic relevant to the course content and write it in the center of the board
  2. Ask students to think about what kinds of questions they would ask about this topic. Then invite them to brainstorm
  3. Write the questions down around the central topic in a different color
  4. When sufficient questions have been created, show the students how one can link the question to a specific discipline
  5. Provide students with a sheet of paper. Invite them to write their topic in the center which will encourage them to think more creatively than to make lists on the page. Tell them to brainstorm question about their topic
  6. After 5 minutes, ask students to think about what kinds of experts would do research on the questions they generated
  7. Explain how different kinds of disciplinary experts publishing their research in different publications and explain how you can use disciplinary-focused research databases to find sources in those disciplines. Show students how to browse databases by subject and/or format
  8. Demonstrate a search
Tags beyond-google; refining-topic; in-class
Time  20 minutes
Attachments noun_204955 Interdisciplinary Strategy (Example);  noun_204955Interdisciplinary Strategy (Blank Template)