Writing With a Point—Part 2: The Annotated Bibliography 2.0

What does expertise look like in the Information Age? The image of the sage’s bookshelf is laughable next to the hits our students will retrieve from a database search. Being well-read isn’t so impressive when the scholarly literature is being updated on the daily. But “reading well” is becoming the intellectual’s trademark.

Few things are sadder than the student who cites a work without the foggiest idea of the author’s argument or its relevance to a discourse. To help my undergraduates clarify the reading process, I have them keep an annotated bibliography of course materials and independent research. “Isn’t that a little much?” Here’s the thing. If a student is going to read something for me, I want them to at least get the point of what they’ve read.

This can be done in four lines of text—what I call the Get to the Point + 1.

Formatted Bibliography Entry of the Work:

• Line 1: One sentence naming the work’s topic.
• Line 2: One sentence naming the work’s research question (e.g. what issue the author raises about the topic)
• Line 3: One sentence naming the work’s thesis statement (e.g. the answer to the question).
• Line 4: One sentence about what the work contributes to the student’s knowledge in light of a learning outcome.

“Now isn’t this just more work?” I wondered this the first term that I implemented the activity. Would students revolt against this extra step? But I was encouraged to find that students appreciated it as an opportunity for growth. To paraphrase one of my students, “it was annoying at first, but then I realized we were learning to study more efficiently.” Put differently, the annotated bibliography was saving them from wasting time. My hunch is that the annotated bibliography develops three fruitful techniques: Note Taking Skills, Olympic-Level Reading, and Scholarly Discipline.

Note Taking Skills—Intellectual Discernment

Although the digital age has sparked many changes in the classroom, the need for note taking has not gone away. In fact, the sheer amount of information students can access makes the skill paramount for academic success. Computers offer a good reminder about intellectual discernment. Good note taking is not just about hard drive space, it’s about using RAM wisely. In other words, research involves information storage and making that information functionally accessible. In using the Get to the Point + 1, students practice determining both the core of an author’s argument and whether it should be further entertained. If the work doesn’t appear to contribute to the framing, testing, or qualification of a thesis, then the student can take note and move on to other sources.

Olympic-Level Reading–Faster, Wider, Deeper 

One time in graduate school, I had a professor with the office of my dreams—recessed bookshelves, multiple tiers, the whole package. He was the kind of scholar who actually practiced interdisciplinarity. I remember melting over his collection and asking him how he had managed to read all these books. After a gentle chuckle, he winked at me saying, “Practice!” Elite readers work on the fundamentals. No one is above finding the topic, research question, and thesis statement of an argument. This sort of active reading does build efficiency, but it also frees readers to master the finer and more advance aspects of the game. After students establish the Get to the Point + 1, they can purposefully note quotations or details from a select argument. To visualize the difference this would make, you might think of an amateur reader as a living works cited page with the standard obligatory references. A professional-level reader is like an organic, more expansive works cited page with Get to the Point + 1 annotations. An Olympic-level reader is like a hyper(linked) annotated bibliography, where when asked about any particular reference, he or she can rise to the occasion reference quotations and nuances of an argument.

Scholarly Discipline—Putting the Higher back in Higher Ed

In my experience, the annotated bibliography is an exercise reserved for advance students. I may not have done one until I was in a doctoral seminar. If we want our students to write in a scholarly fashion, why wouldn’t we teach them to reading in this way? Higher education does not need to be about creating experts, but it can be about developing student expertise. The annotated bibliography is a great way to help students do this on the reading front. In the next and final post of this series, I’ll discuss how using the Get to the Point Introduction model in conjunction with literature reviews can help students execute solid, original, and creative research. Until then, I hope you’ll share your thoughts, questions, and musings in the comment section below.

Photo Credit: “books?” by Matt MacGillivray  – CC by 2.0

  [sociallocker] [/sociallocker]

 

Add to favorites