Information Literacy Reflection Prompts Salt Lake Community College, Library Services
The Reflection Prompts document on this page contains a list of questions which can be used as signature assignment reflection prompts or as stand alone reflection prompts to encourage students to reflect on the research process, what they accomplished, or how they would change if they were do the assignment again. The prompts provided are merely suggestive examples focusing on information literacy and the research process. The prompts focus and are collected around six sets of skills which help lead to some of the threshold concepts of information literacy, they are as follows:
Students will identify sources with an appropriate level of authority based on information need and/or describe determinants of or issues around authority.
Students develop an understanding of the personal or disciplinary information creation process, and recognizes the capabilities and constraints of information based upon format, audience, or purpose.
Students cite and attributes the ideas of others using a consistent format throughout.
Students determines an appropriate scope of research needed, explains how their understanding of a topic ha evolved and draws logical conclusions based upon the research.
Students identify and evaluate the contributions of others while adding their own thoughts to the multiple evolving perspectives in a discipline.
Students create appropriate search strategies in a persistent and flexible approach to the iterative information search process.
**More resources about Information Literacy at SLCC can be found on their website.**
Threshold: Authority is Constructed and Contextual How does authority and credibility influence your decisions about which sources to include in your assignment? What steps did you take to determine if your sources were authoritative and credible?
If someone came across your project while doing their own research, how would they evaluate the authority and credibility? Explain what makes your assignment authoritative and credible.
Did you identify experts or authorities in your project’s topic area? What made someone qualified to be an “expert” in this field? Do you now consider yourself to be an “expert” on this topic?
Did you locate or use informal sources by an expert in the field (blog post, social media post, discussion board comment, editorial, etc.) at any stage in your process? Discuss the advantages or disadvantages to using these types of sources and when they might be appropriate.
Threshold: Information Creation as a Process Think about the way you presented your assignment (blog post, video, research paper, poster, infographic, magazine article, website, presentation, etc.). Explain how you decided which format to use. What might this format decision imply about your message, audience, or other aspect of your work?
What were the challenges of presenting your ideas and research in the format you chose (blog post, video, research paper, etc.)? What were the benefits? Is there a better format and if so, why is it better?
Describe the real or imagined audience of your project. How did you make decisions about the information you shared, the language you used, the format you selected (infographic, poster, video, paper, etc.) based on your audience? Be specific.
When you looked for information to use in your project, did you target specific source types (newspaper articles, scholarly journals, books, blogs, etc.)? If yes, list which sources were they and explain why you prioritized them. Did your instructor require the use of certain sources? Explain why you think this decision was made (to require specific sources or not) and if you agree with it.
Threshold: Information Has Value Consider which parts of your project/paper/research draw upon other sources and which are your own original thoughts and ideas. Have you clearly indicated so in each case? How?
Hypothetically, if you were not required to include citations, would you anyway? Why or why not?
How would you improve the citation process? Why would this be an improvement?
As a creator of information, discuss how you expect others to use and/or acknowledge your work. Did you place a copyright or creative commons license on your project? Why/why not?
While searching for information, did you encounter any sources that were not readily available to you? What steps did you take to overcome this obstacle? As a college student, do you think you have better or worse access to information than non-students may have? Should people have to pay for access to information?
Threshold: Research as Inquiry Consider the process of identifying a topic or research question for this project. Did you find the answer right away? Were you left with more questions than you started with? How did your topic and/or the assignment evolve (or not) with changes in your thinking?
Did your understandings, perceptions, viewpoints, or opinions of your topic change over time? What surprises did you encounter as you researched your topic? Were there any “aha” moments? What questions still remain?
Did you intentionally seek out information that contradicted your existing perspective or understanding? Were you critical of information that confirmed your existing perspective or understanding? Explain your approach to discovering and using information that may support or contradict your perspective or understanding.
Was it difficult to provide enough information for your project? Or to include all of the information you found? Explain what happened, any changes you made when you encountered these issues, and/or what you might do differently next time in determining an appropriate and manageable focus for your assignment.
How do your conclusions compare to the conclusions of your sources? Explain how they are similar or different. Be specific. Consider what you’ve learned about your topic during this project and what questions might still remain. What is one way you could re-think or further develop your research question?
Threshold: Scholarship as Conversation Have the opinions of experts on your topic changed over the years? How do you see them evolving over time? If someone else was researching your topic and came across your project, what value would it provide to them? How might they use it?
How does the research you have completed and the conclusions you have reached in this assignment fit into the research of your topic area as a whole? Have you added a new idea to the field? What would you say to current experts and researchers after studying this field?
How varied were the perspectives you sought out in your research? Did you identify areas of consensus and/or disagreement among publications on your topic? Were you surprised by this?
What steps could you take to share your findings or perspectives on this topic with current researchers/experts/scholars? Do you anticipate barriers to involvement? What are alternative or non-traditional ways you could participate?
Threshold: Searching as Strategic Exploration Describe the process of finding information to use in your assignment. Where did you look and why? Did you have to adjust your search (filters, limits, terms/keywords, etc.) or were you satisfied with your first attempt? How long did you spend looking for appropriate sources? Are you satisfied with your final sources? Why or why not?
Would you ask for help when doing research for information sources if you were doing this project again? Why? Who would you ask?